Thanksgiving Break

This past weekend was thanksgiving break, my family was already on break since the beginning of the past week.  Monday, we had our last rehearsal in the Band of Blue as we prepared the "Soulsville" show for halftime last Saturday.  Rehearsal went by quickly that day and we finished before 2 pm.  Later that day, the auditions for Wind Ensemble/Symphonic Band went underway for the percussion.  I auditioned at 5:15, and it went fairly well, better than last time.  Overall, the school week was really short. 

Wednesday night, I got my stuff packed up for the break coming up.  I didn't need much because I was going to return that Saturday morning for the last home game.  Anyway, that Wednesday night, my dad came and took me home, we went to Kroger to get some groceries first.  After that, we headed to the house, I put my stuff up and hung out with my brother for a while.  I played some video games, watched some TV, and did other things that night.  I had a chance to get some eight hours of sleep that night.  The next morning, I practiced some music for Salsa Band and for my lessons.  I also had a chance to listen to my brothers and sister play their piano pieces as well and help them out with what I could.  I also had a chance to watch X-men first class for the first time, and Captain America: The First Avenger also for the first time.  Both were really good movies.  The Avengers will be coming out next year as well featuring Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, and the Hulk.  From watching movies to playing Call of Duty and practicing piano and percussion, there was not much else to do until we left for our Grandmother's house later that Thanksgiving evening.  It was my mom's side of the family at the get together, all of her siblings, six brothers and sister and their kids/my cousins, and some other family and friends.  We played some more videogames and watched the San Fransisco 49ers at Baltimore that night.  We also had thanksgiving dinner.  It was a fun evening, we also ended up watching an English Subbed Chinese originated movie called "Kung Fu Hussler", so we had to read the subtitles instead of listening to the sound delay of the dubbed version.  It was a good/funny movie with an interesting storyline.  We got home that late that night and we went straight to bed.  The next friday morning, the routine was generally the same, only this time, I went outside and fed the dog: half Border-Collie, a quarter Pit-Bull and a Quarter Black-Lab.  We have a term for this, and it is a hand-full.  The dog has gotten more organized with time, knowing the back-yard and where everything is.  I went back in and did some more practicing and TV watching.  This was probably the first time I had made my own breakfast in a while also.  My brother, the one in high school, having his permit managed to drive with mom and dad to take him to his job at Brixx.  I think mom and dad went Black-Friday Shopping that night, leaving me to babysit the other three kids.  The kids watched a movie or TV, while I practiced for my Music City Audition as well as other music stuff.  I helped out one of my brothers with his midstate music and piano recital music.  That night when my brother got back from his job, we decided to drum on some drum pads. Being the center snare for our high school's drumline, he practiced a lot, even when he wasn't the center last year, his sophomore year.  We played some of the exercises that they're doing this next indoor season and some stuff from last year as well.  It was good going home that weekend. It won't be long until I'm home again.

The next morning, Dad drove me to school for the last home game.  We talked about a lot of things, mostly about college and what to expect as well as some good advice.  He dropped me off at the music building and I put my stuff up in the practice room.  I practiced for a little bit until it was time to get ready for the game.  It was the last home game that was recognizing the 4+ year students.  At practice we went through "Soulsville" a few times and headed to raider walk.   After raider-walk, we had a break and went into uniform as we began to warm up.  They began recognizing as the band walked in, so we didn't play the cadence that time around.  The usual pre-game happened and we headed into the stands.  There weren't a lot of people at this game from the home front, but a lot of us expected that since it was near exam time.  However, the half-time show was one of our better runs of the full show.  We did lose the game, but the Band of Blue still did our thing.  Getting positive feed back about how we sounded that game and other games as well.  The band banquet will be on December 2 for the Band of blue.  

This was a good weekend.  Next weekend, I go back to Music City Drum and Bugle Corps for auditions.  Last summer, our show was "Let's Dance" that featured songs like "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady, "American Bandstand" from back in the day, as well as "Jai Ho" from Slumdog Millionaire, "Singing in the Rain", Jackson 5's "Dancing Machine", "Dancing Queen", and many others.  This year, the show is entitled: "Phantom of the Grand Ole Opera".  A play on words for Opryland's Grand Ole Opry as well as "Phantom of the Opera".  As the title suggests, we'll feature music from "Phantom of the Opera" as well as from stars like Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, and others.  250+ people have signed up for this next camp, being a veteran member, it will be interesting to see how this corps will improve.

Band of Blue at Louisiana

 This week, a lot went on that was related to my old high school and the MTSU Percussion studio.  My old high school band went to the Bands of America Grand National Championships this Friday in Indianapolis; their performance time was 7:45 PM.  Instead of last year, when we went on late at 10:45 Thursday night.  They ended up doing well, they didn't make semi-finals though, however Father Ryan High School did make Semi-Finals, and they placed in Second for Class AA, first place Class AA being Merrian Catholic High School, known for having the most championships.  However, this year's winners was the Broken Arrow High School Marching Band, from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.  Here is a link to a montage made by BOA, Ravenwood is on the last eight seconds of it.


Indianapolis hosted another major event along with BOA.  It was host to the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (P.A.S.I.C).  A majority of the Percussion Studio at MTSU went to the convention that lasted for three or four days (thursday through Sunday.).  Experiencing masterclasses, competing among other things happened in this time span.   A quartet as well as a soloist competed in the Collegiate competition at P.A.S.I.C.  I don't know how they did, but they did great performances at the recitals and masterclasses here.  I didn't go to P.A.S.I.C this year, however, there was a football game going on that the band was going to. 

 Despite most of the percussion being gone to P.A.S.I.C, the only noticeable difference in the drumline was the quad-line, there were only two of us at the Friday Band of Blue practice.  Nine of the 11 snares and 13 of the 14 cymbals were also at the practice, only the multis and the Bass drums had full sections.  Since we had Wednesday off, we did our practice on Friday.  We worked on the Veteran's Salute show for all of the practice time.  After that, those of us who were going to Monroe, Louisiana met up at the front of the stadium to meet about what is going to happen.  Less than half of the band was selected to go on this trip, and that was about 150+ out of 380+.  After practice, the battery that was going, the six snares, three multis, all seven basses (need all seven for the music), seven cymbals, and one (me) quad-player (the other one had to go to an exam), put our drums in the cases so that at 11:00 p.m. that night we will be able to load the buses; and we did just that.  After we got loaded, we began the 10-11 hour bus ride down to Monroe, Louisiana.  I slept all the way until we stopped for breakfast.  It was a rest area sort of town, so me and some other people walked down to Kroger and picked up some food. The buses then went down to the stadium where the game was going to take place.  We got dressed, lined up, and we marched to the cadence towards the stadium.  It was definitely something to play the solos in the cadence by myself, as well as the stands tunes and the "MTSU is hot" cheer.   The first half, the ULM Warhawks scored 30+ points on us. At half-time, their band went on and played for the student section.  We also played our show, but we played it from the stands. The game ended with ULM 42, MTSU-14.  We then marched back to the buses with the cadence.  As we marched back, we went to the lot where the busses were at, and the front of the line began walk in a circle.  It went on for a while, until the circle got too condensed.  We then changed and left ULM to go to the hotel. We were to drop off our stuff at the room and go back on the bus to have some Cajun food.  It wasn't a long ride to the Cajun restaurant.  It was reserved for us that night and they had a buffet laid out for us.  Not even half of our band filled up the entire restaurant.  The food was really good, starting with the fried fish, followed by the shrimp and chicken tenders.  with the sides of fries and Hash-Browns.  We then left for the hotel after dinner.  The next morning we had Sonic for breakfast on our way back to Murfreesboro.  After a few hours, we made a lunch stop in Memphis for about an hour at a mall, it was similar to the mall here in Murfreesboro.  We only stayed for about 45 minutes and went straight back to MTSU.  On the way we watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2 along with other movies.  The only other movies of the series I'd see was the Chamber of Secrets and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I didn't read the recent book, however I did read the second book.  Other movies we watched on the trip was the Hangover, Anchorman, Tangled, and the Big Lebowsky.   Once we got back to MTSU, it was 7:45 at night, I put everything up and made my way to the dorm.  It was a fun trip, also my first time going to Louisiana.  Now we have another home game where we will be doing the Veteran's Salute show next Saturday. 

Week of Clash of the Tennesseans MTSU vs UT, Knoxville.

The Band of Blue shouldn't be too hard to find.

The only thing that really stood out this past week was a Sunbelt Team going up against an SEC team, from the same state.  MTSU was UT's homecoming opponent.  The last time UT played MTSU was in 2002.  I've known about this since day one of school, even before then.  THis past week, in the Band of Blue, we were working mostly on the Vet's Salute show, as well as the pep-tunes for Saturday's game.  Saturday morning, I woke up at around 6:45, I didn't want to wait for three hours so I went ahead and went to the music building to practice.  I left my dorm and I saw fog everywhere.  It looked like something straight out of one of those haunted monster ghost movies (Probably the omen of us losing to UT). With that thought, I thought it was funny and cool.  The fog was really dense, I couldn't even make-out the buildings I usually see outside of Monohan.  Anyway, Being a music major, I could use my card to get in and practice. There were other people there as well.  I worked on two pieces, Over the Moon, and Cattelin, both by Daniel Berg.  I practiced for about two and a half hours, after that I decided to get ready to head out.  That morning, I also had a chance to watch someone tune steel pans; we were talking about how I had perfect pitch and what I heard when the pans were being tuned.  This guy had been doing it for a while and he knew what he was doing; it was a good experience to meet with him.  So after that, I went ahead and loaded the drums and my other stuff to the buses.  Eight buses for 380+ people lined up in the street between the stadium and the music building.  We left at 9:40 to begin the trip to Knoxville.  It was a good day for football, after the fog lifted, rain wasn't on the schedule, however, it was going to be cold later that night.  Our first official stop was at the West Mall (I don't remember the proper name of it, apparently there is an East Mall also).  There we had lunch, and a majority of the people had UT paraphernalia.  I wasn't wearing my MTSU Band shirt just yet, but a lot of other people were.  It was cool watching 300+ people enter one entrance with almost everyone wearing the same shirt that said "In your SOUL: Big, Loud, and Funky" on the back.  After the lunch, we left for the stadium, got on our uniforms and warmed up for about 20 minutes.  We then formed the parade block/formation and marched into the stadium, making an entrance.  We played the Cadence as well as "Hey Baby" once we were all on the street.   It took us a while to get into Neyland Stadium, we didn't have that much room for the number of people we had.  We still managed to get everyone a spot.  On the way in I saw on the other side of the stadium, UT's Pride of the Southland Marching Band already there getting ready.  Once we got settled Professor Cornish said, "Hey, how about we let them know we're here." And we played the fight song.  There was music already playing in the stadium.  The teams were warming up, and when more of UT's team showed up, the Pride Band played "Rocky-Top", their fight song.  We also heard the speakers turn down the already playing music, and heard the band playing through the speakers.  They were miked throughout the stadium speaker system, which was pretty neat, and that was for all of their pep tunes.  They then did their pre-game show and in the middle of faced us and played our fight-song, which was one of their traditions: Playing the opposing teams fight song as a sign of respect.  We then played our fight song.  We also pulled out two new songs for this game: "Cupid Shuffle" and "YMCA".  We didn't do half-time since it was homecoming for UT.  However, bringing the all of the winds and percussion did give a good representation for MTSU.  People watching the game on TV could hear the Band of Blue playing.  When we did "MTSU is hot" Drumline groove, which I did one of the solos for at the UT game (the link from  the Western Kentucky Game),  more and more people from the UT crowd did the hand motions each time we did it along with the MTSU crowd.  We did end up losing 24-0 against UT though, our defense did have its good moments, as well as our offense.  They had three touch downs with field goals, and one 3 point field goal.  At the end of the show, we did play part two of the show, "Soulsville", in the stands.  We then did the MTSU is hot cheer one last time after everyone left.  We then formed a parade block at the end of the game inside the Concourse, marching to the Cadence as we left.  That was one of the highlights of the night.  It was a good day for the Band of Blue despite the loss of the game, the day after, we got positive reviews from people on both sides, and from viewers at home who watched the game.

Tuesday during master class hour, we had a guest come in an explain how she wrote out drum charts.  She gave a backstory of how she was asked to go through 96 songs and play them as they were on the CD.  She then formulated a way to make writing out the charts easier and made it into a book.  Some of the other percussion students purchased the book.  This was a trial run for her since she was going to do the exact same thing for the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC) in Indianapolis, Indiana. 

Thursday prior, during the Student General Recital Hour, a lot of the percussion studio did performances that hour.  Two of the performances are also going to play for the PASIC Competition, one was a marimba soloist, and the other was a percussion quartet.  PASIC occurs from Thursday 10 to Saturday the 13th and most of the Percussion Studio is going to there, I won't be since I couldn't afford it; I'll be at the Louisiana-Monroe game with the pep-band instead.  That is also the weekend of the Bands of America Grand National Championships, where 90 select Bands from across the nation compete for the National Title.  My high school accepted the invitation last year, and we placed within the top 40.  The other bands from Tennessee were Dobyns-Bennet High School and Brentwood High School last year. Semi-finals consists of the top 25 while finals consists of the top 12, but that is next weekend.  This week ended with a great display of musicianship from the BAnd of Blue at UT.  This won't be the last time we play in a big stadium, we were made aware that on November 27th, we were invited to play half-time at LP Field, home of the Tennessee Titans.