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.