The fun flask and other band stories
With the weather being all wonky, there was a question as to whether we'd have band or not on Monday. I mean, we have a concert on Sunday; we have no idea of what we're playing; and the director was out of town last week, so he wasn't even here to conduct. I am 99.9% positive we'll have rehearsal, even if the weather is terrible in the morning. They have ten hours to clean everything up. I don't often check my email at work, but I did then, around noon; they said they'd make a decision by 2 PM, so make sure to check back. I checked at 2:30; nothing. I check about 4 PM, since I was still working; nothing. Finally, at 5:30-ish, when I was hanging out in the other building, I checked and got the message that, yes, we're having band; it also appears to have been re-sent, like it hadn't gone out to everyone but clearly the band manager had emailed *somebody*, I'm guessing just the band's regular account minus BCCing the group. I'm sure people were asking about it, too, hence the "re-sending" note that came with it. Okay, cool, thank you for the information.
I got there about 6:30. School had been canceled in the area, as had a number of park district activities. That may have been in play for the senior group that practices downstairs, since it's considered a park district class, as they didn't meet Monday night. Either that, or they were off following the holiday. All I know is that I got there and the doors were locked, so I couldn't get inside, and it was cold so I really didn't want to stand out there and wait, nor did I really feel like walking back to my car. The second chair flute, who is one of the new librarians, was parked nearby and saw me; I walked over to her car, where she was eating dinner, and she handed me her keys. Great; I'll give them back once you get inside. ...And then I realized she'd need a way to get inside. See, there's an ID badge you need to be able to get the doors to unlock. I've seen people use them countless times over the years. You can then use the keys to unlock the doors from the inside so that the building is open. The keys and the door locks are helpfully labeled so you know which key goes where. Except...I couldn't figure out how to unlock the one door. The key just turned in the lock. Oh, dear. And I would go outside to test the door to make sure the keys' rightful owner could get in, and discover the door was still locked and I would need to use the ID again to get back inside to try again, and it was a pain. The good news is that there are two doors, and I was able to get the one door unlocked, so I called that a victory and unlocked the doors to the band room and went about my merry way.
This was when the percussion section leader and his two daughters showed up. Looks like they're both playing the concert, plus a couple other ringers. See, this concert has been a debacle from the get-go. Originally we weren't going to have a holiday concert, and the calendar said as much (an offshoot group was the first group tagged to play), so several people, including one of the percussionists, made alternate plans. When the full band did end up needing to play this show, we had to find more people for the percussion section, because Christmas music tends to have a lot going on back there--think chimes, sleigh bells, even toys--so not only did we have both girls, but also a retired former band director (we've played some of his arrangements in the past year) and even an NCC student. The college isn't that far away and they're on D-Term (i.e., off school until January), so he doesn't have classes right now. He had on one of the pep band jackets so I know he couldn't make one of our rehearsals during school as it's a direct conflict. Also, given that I'm playing piccolo this concert, I get to face the percussion section, so I got to watch some of the fun of them scurrying around back there. Controlled chaos. It drives non-percussionists batty. We also had to get in some French horn players; they're behind the bassoons, so I can't see them right now. Last week they sounded so anemic, and several of the songs we did had French horn features at times, so it was painfully obvious that the few people we had just weren't cutting it. (Our lead horn player has a conflict involving her daughters, so she came to rehearsal but sat in on 4th horn, basically last chair. That part has never sounded so strong.) This week? Holy cow. What a difference. I don't know who's playing back there, but they're great. I think the bassoons want to keep them.
I almost feel like an honorary double reed player when I'm on picc. I sit next to the oboe player and in front of the bassoons. The oboe player is one of a kind. She's a fabulous player and just a neat person with...a unique sense of style. Including sequined boots. OMG they're so shiny. Even when I'm not sitting next to her, my eyes are drawn to her feet. Like, we got told we could wear festive clothes and not the tuxedos to the concert, and I'm like, everyone needs those boots! Holy crap, could you imagine? The audience would go blind. And that wasn't even the only impressive thing she had this week. She'd bought a flask off eBay, and it had this little door on the side. It might have been meant for cigarettes or matches or something, but she sent it off to this guy who retrofitted it as a reed case. Now she has her reeds plus water in which to soak them, all in one container. BOOM. The bassoons and I were so impressed. Just, wow, that is a million-dollar idea! You'd sell a ton of those on the exhibition circuit for all the various festivals and clinics and stuff! We took pictures. :) I even said to her, I don't drink, and I don't condone drinking, but this is amazing. And, when she accidentally spilled the water that was in her container, she was able to simply pour some more into it from the flask. Genius, I tell you.
So, this concert. None of us really knows what to make of it. Here's what I think is supposed to happen:
--We were told our call time was 12:15, just a half-hour before the start. (Usually it's an hour and a half, sometimes longer if we have a guest conductor.)
--Concert runs from 12:45 to 1:45.
--At 2 PM in the nearby park (where we practice), they will be dedicating the statue. We will not be playing but our sound crew will have a CD going of us performing...who knows what. Apparently we were recorded at some point. The director said he had to be at the park for this, so he was going to hightail it out of there--potentially while in the middle of conducting, he joked. He said, if it's 1:45 and we're still playing, he may just leave and we're to keep going, heh. This could get interesting.
--Finally, from like 2:30 to 5:30, there will be a fundraiser in the concert hall. It's $100 a head, so we can only stay/attend if we pony up. Originally it was $200/head (aha, I thought it was more)...but I guess they weren't selling enough tickets. Shock.
This was not the original plan, which has changed several times since we were first told of it. I know, when this was initially brought up, the director told the people involved that, uh, really, you want to do the dedication at 5 PM outside in December? Are you going to have lights on it? They went, no. He went, uh, it's dark out by then! Who's going to see the statue? (Oh, they hadn't thought of that.) And you're doing this outside? The band can't play outside! The door can't open if it's below zero! (Oh, they hadn't thought of that.) (And according to someone else, that's a lie...it's an airplane hangar door meant to open in all weather. But that doesn't mean the band wants to play in all weather--plus any wooden instruments are susceptible to the cold. So, yeah, we'll just say the door can't open. It's easier.) Besides, it's December; it could be 20F or it could be 50F. It could be sunny or rainy or icy or snowy. (Oh, they hadn't thought of that.) Just...there are a ton of variables, and most don't work in our favor. Why they couldn't wait until the spring when at least there's a fighting chance of decent weather, nobody knows. And look at the weather we had just this past Sunday. *That's* what we could have been dealing with for all this.
Well, okay, we got asked to play; we'll play. Now we'll need to figure out exactly *what* we're playing. We did get 15 songs, which is three more than a typical concert, and again we're having to play 1/3 less time than normal. There were 2-3 songs we completely skipped in rehearsal, and I think they'll make a final determination by Sunday. There will not be programs given out, though we'll get a song list so we can arrange our music. And the directors are all over, popping up and down, rarely doing two in a row. At least, that's how it was at rehearsal. AD1 kept leaving stuff on the conductor stand and having to come back up for it, usually when AD2 was about to start one of her songs, so we started joking, what, are you guys going to wrestle to see who does this one? (AD1 took the wrong baton and had to swap it out, first, then he'd left a score and had to rifle through the pile on the stand to get it back.) AD2 was pretty funny, though I can't recall what she'd said at one point...something to the chimes player. Grr. It was pretty good. There was something he was doing that she went, could you be less like *this* (like relating to a movie soundtrack or something) and more like *that*? Aw, I'll see if I can think of it. I do know that at one point the oboe player missed a key change and she and AD2 had a mini discussion about it...in the middle of the song. AD2 just kept conducting while she was like, hey, Ab! And the oboe player was making a fist and gesturing in a "Darn it!" kind of way and saying she'd get it next time. I think I was in the middle of counting rests but I was pretty impressed that this was happening. They went back and forth a couple times.
AD2 also came up before rehearsal. I got a chance to talk to the director about the folder situation. He was surprised that the folders were nearly twice as much as he was expecting. Between that and my mentioning getting folders not just for now, but for 20 years from now, he put the kibosh on double folders for certain people like the Flute 2 folder and all the French horns. He'll just keep the old folders, to some extent, and they can fight over who gets to use the new ones. I also said, so, the conductor folders...I was talking to at least one of the assistants, who said they didn't necessarily need a folder... That's when the percussion section leader chimed in (*cough*) and went, yeah, AD2 was pretty adamant... I didn't let him finish but was like, shh! I was trying to keep things neutral and not name names! But yeah. At least one of them felt a folder for them wasn't necessary, especially if it saved the band money. We then agreed on a conductor folder and an assistant conductor folder, and no blank spares, and that got us down to 59 folders total--one shy of completely filling up the holder. He'd wanted an extra euphonium folder but ended up cutting that one. All told, we nixed eight folders. I was then able to finalize the list and send it on to the appropriate person, so those should be on their way, probably by the time we get back to band, depending on the holidays. Oh, right, and we got confirmation--after the concert, we don't go back for over a month, first Monday in January. That brought out the holiday cheer in everyone.
I think I'm going to want to practice on Saturday. I have some intonation issues with certain notes in my upper range that just really bother me, and I need to figure out what to do with my embouchure to help with that. The problem is, for example, in the last song I have to enter in on a high F cold, after multiple measures of rest, so it's not like I can really build up to that note. It just seemed really flat, and I tend to back away from it when that happens, which makes it worse. Plus, it was pretty cold on Monday, and again the cold is not good for wooden instruments. Not to mention I simply haven't played that much piccolo recently, which affects things. I was also sticking my piccolo up my sleeve to help keep it warm when I wasn't playing, and I wonder if that moved my headjoint at all and affected the tuning. I likely won't be doing that on Sunday. Well, fingers crossed; we'll see how it goes.
I got there about 6:30. School had been canceled in the area, as had a number of park district activities. That may have been in play for the senior group that practices downstairs, since it's considered a park district class, as they didn't meet Monday night. Either that, or they were off following the holiday. All I know is that I got there and the doors were locked, so I couldn't get inside, and it was cold so I really didn't want to stand out there and wait, nor did I really feel like walking back to my car. The second chair flute, who is one of the new librarians, was parked nearby and saw me; I walked over to her car, where she was eating dinner, and she handed me her keys. Great; I'll give them back once you get inside. ...And then I realized she'd need a way to get inside. See, there's an ID badge you need to be able to get the doors to unlock. I've seen people use them countless times over the years. You can then use the keys to unlock the doors from the inside so that the building is open. The keys and the door locks are helpfully labeled so you know which key goes where. Except...I couldn't figure out how to unlock the one door. The key just turned in the lock. Oh, dear. And I would go outside to test the door to make sure the keys' rightful owner could get in, and discover the door was still locked and I would need to use the ID again to get back inside to try again, and it was a pain. The good news is that there are two doors, and I was able to get the one door unlocked, so I called that a victory and unlocked the doors to the band room and went about my merry way.
This was when the percussion section leader and his two daughters showed up. Looks like they're both playing the concert, plus a couple other ringers. See, this concert has been a debacle from the get-go. Originally we weren't going to have a holiday concert, and the calendar said as much (an offshoot group was the first group tagged to play), so several people, including one of the percussionists, made alternate plans. When the full band did end up needing to play this show, we had to find more people for the percussion section, because Christmas music tends to have a lot going on back there--think chimes, sleigh bells, even toys--so not only did we have both girls, but also a retired former band director (we've played some of his arrangements in the past year) and even an NCC student. The college isn't that far away and they're on D-Term (i.e., off school until January), so he doesn't have classes right now. He had on one of the pep band jackets so I know he couldn't make one of our rehearsals during school as it's a direct conflict. Also, given that I'm playing piccolo this concert, I get to face the percussion section, so I got to watch some of the fun of them scurrying around back there. Controlled chaos. It drives non-percussionists batty. We also had to get in some French horn players; they're behind the bassoons, so I can't see them right now. Last week they sounded so anemic, and several of the songs we did had French horn features at times, so it was painfully obvious that the few people we had just weren't cutting it. (Our lead horn player has a conflict involving her daughters, so she came to rehearsal but sat in on 4th horn, basically last chair. That part has never sounded so strong.) This week? Holy cow. What a difference. I don't know who's playing back there, but they're great. I think the bassoons want to keep them.
I almost feel like an honorary double reed player when I'm on picc. I sit next to the oboe player and in front of the bassoons. The oboe player is one of a kind. She's a fabulous player and just a neat person with...a unique sense of style. Including sequined boots. OMG they're so shiny. Even when I'm not sitting next to her, my eyes are drawn to her feet. Like, we got told we could wear festive clothes and not the tuxedos to the concert, and I'm like, everyone needs those boots! Holy crap, could you imagine? The audience would go blind. And that wasn't even the only impressive thing she had this week. She'd bought a flask off eBay, and it had this little door on the side. It might have been meant for cigarettes or matches or something, but she sent it off to this guy who retrofitted it as a reed case. Now she has her reeds plus water in which to soak them, all in one container. BOOM. The bassoons and I were so impressed. Just, wow, that is a million-dollar idea! You'd sell a ton of those on the exhibition circuit for all the various festivals and clinics and stuff! We took pictures. :) I even said to her, I don't drink, and I don't condone drinking, but this is amazing. And, when she accidentally spilled the water that was in her container, she was able to simply pour some more into it from the flask. Genius, I tell you.
So, this concert. None of us really knows what to make of it. Here's what I think is supposed to happen:
--We were told our call time was 12:15, just a half-hour before the start. (Usually it's an hour and a half, sometimes longer if we have a guest conductor.)
--Concert runs from 12:45 to 1:45.
--At 2 PM in the nearby park (where we practice), they will be dedicating the statue. We will not be playing but our sound crew will have a CD going of us performing...who knows what. Apparently we were recorded at some point. The director said he had to be at the park for this, so he was going to hightail it out of there--potentially while in the middle of conducting, he joked. He said, if it's 1:45 and we're still playing, he may just leave and we're to keep going, heh. This could get interesting.
--Finally, from like 2:30 to 5:30, there will be a fundraiser in the concert hall. It's $100 a head, so we can only stay/attend if we pony up. Originally it was $200/head (aha, I thought it was more)...but I guess they weren't selling enough tickets. Shock.
This was not the original plan, which has changed several times since we were first told of it. I know, when this was initially brought up, the director told the people involved that, uh, really, you want to do the dedication at 5 PM outside in December? Are you going to have lights on it? They went, no. He went, uh, it's dark out by then! Who's going to see the statue? (Oh, they hadn't thought of that.) And you're doing this outside? The band can't play outside! The door can't open if it's below zero! (Oh, they hadn't thought of that.) (And according to someone else, that's a lie...it's an airplane hangar door meant to open in all weather. But that doesn't mean the band wants to play in all weather--plus any wooden instruments are susceptible to the cold. So, yeah, we'll just say the door can't open. It's easier.) Besides, it's December; it could be 20F or it could be 50F. It could be sunny or rainy or icy or snowy. (Oh, they hadn't thought of that.) Just...there are a ton of variables, and most don't work in our favor. Why they couldn't wait until the spring when at least there's a fighting chance of decent weather, nobody knows. And look at the weather we had just this past Sunday. *That's* what we could have been dealing with for all this.
Well, okay, we got asked to play; we'll play. Now we'll need to figure out exactly *what* we're playing. We did get 15 songs, which is three more than a typical concert, and again we're having to play 1/3 less time than normal. There were 2-3 songs we completely skipped in rehearsal, and I think they'll make a final determination by Sunday. There will not be programs given out, though we'll get a song list so we can arrange our music. And the directors are all over, popping up and down, rarely doing two in a row. At least, that's how it was at rehearsal. AD1 kept leaving stuff on the conductor stand and having to come back up for it, usually when AD2 was about to start one of her songs, so we started joking, what, are you guys going to wrestle to see who does this one? (AD1 took the wrong baton and had to swap it out, first, then he'd left a score and had to rifle through the pile on the stand to get it back.) AD2 was pretty funny, though I can't recall what she'd said at one point...something to the chimes player. Grr. It was pretty good. There was something he was doing that she went, could you be less like *this* (like relating to a movie soundtrack or something) and more like *that*? Aw, I'll see if I can think of it. I do know that at one point the oboe player missed a key change and she and AD2 had a mini discussion about it...in the middle of the song. AD2 just kept conducting while she was like, hey, Ab! And the oboe player was making a fist and gesturing in a "Darn it!" kind of way and saying she'd get it next time. I think I was in the middle of counting rests but I was pretty impressed that this was happening. They went back and forth a couple times.
AD2 also came up before rehearsal. I got a chance to talk to the director about the folder situation. He was surprised that the folders were nearly twice as much as he was expecting. Between that and my mentioning getting folders not just for now, but for 20 years from now, he put the kibosh on double folders for certain people like the Flute 2 folder and all the French horns. He'll just keep the old folders, to some extent, and they can fight over who gets to use the new ones. I also said, so, the conductor folders...I was talking to at least one of the assistants, who said they didn't necessarily need a folder... That's when the percussion section leader chimed in (*cough*) and went, yeah, AD2 was pretty adamant... I didn't let him finish but was like, shh! I was trying to keep things neutral and not name names! But yeah. At least one of them felt a folder for them wasn't necessary, especially if it saved the band money. We then agreed on a conductor folder and an assistant conductor folder, and no blank spares, and that got us down to 59 folders total--one shy of completely filling up the holder. He'd wanted an extra euphonium folder but ended up cutting that one. All told, we nixed eight folders. I was then able to finalize the list and send it on to the appropriate person, so those should be on their way, probably by the time we get back to band, depending on the holidays. Oh, right, and we got confirmation--after the concert, we don't go back for over a month, first Monday in January. That brought out the holiday cheer in everyone.
I think I'm going to want to practice on Saturday. I have some intonation issues with certain notes in my upper range that just really bother me, and I need to figure out what to do with my embouchure to help with that. The problem is, for example, in the last song I have to enter in on a high F cold, after multiple measures of rest, so it's not like I can really build up to that note. It just seemed really flat, and I tend to back away from it when that happens, which makes it worse. Plus, it was pretty cold on Monday, and again the cold is not good for wooden instruments. Not to mention I simply haven't played that much piccolo recently, which affects things. I was also sticking my piccolo up my sleeve to help keep it warm when I wasn't playing, and I wonder if that moved my headjoint at all and affected the tuning. I likely won't be doing that on Sunday. Well, fingers crossed; we'll see how it goes.