Band kids say the darnedest things*, so this year I decided to try to record all of the funny things we've said of done in the pit. Here they are:
"this is why we need lube" ~Lauren and Nicole 8/6 ( trying to pull apart a difficult cymbal stand)
" 1,2 ready, 6" ~Lauren 8/8 ( our beloved senior section leader trying to count us off in 6/8 time)
"oh, there's my nut!" ~Josh 8/8 ( finding the nut he dropped while assembling the new bass drum rack)
"I want to be a percussionist, they get to bang on things, really hard!!!!!" ~tenor sax player 8/9 ( a tenor sax friend just came up to us and said this, and then realized what she said)
"it's not the mallets, you dingus!!"
" you make me feel so good about myself, Bailey!!"~Lauren and Bailey, (m. 122-167 of opener) 8/27 ( our section leaders discussing a difficult part that features the pit and complicate, staggered entrances. Lauren was having trouble with her part and was complaining about her mallets)
I GOT THE RUNS!!!!!~ Allyson ( our 8th grader that got put on a marimba for a song with a difficult running sixteenth note line at 160 and was practicing before a football game. She finally was able to play it completely right at speed, and proceeded to proclaim this very loudly in full earshot on the incoming crowd at the ticket office. The pit nearly peed themselves laughing.)
Palm tree in 6/8 ( our interpretive dance to keep time during long rests for the opener. It was created in pit sectionals and we would perform while bored when the rest of the band was marching.)
"Stop seducing the bass drum, Josh!!!"~ Lauren ( section leader reprimanding a freshman pit member for suggestively stroking he bass drum to distract her while practicing her part.)
"don't hate: tolerate, congregate.....um, agragate? "
"agragate? Only in Iowa"~ Lauren and Nicole ( Lauren trying to rap)
"Yeah, shove that in there!" (Frequently exclaimed while trying to fit hat racks, percussion, big instruments and uniforms into a densely packed trailer)
*more forthcoming
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Funny Band Jokes
There is a group of 6th grade flute players, and they are in a competition to who can get the highest note.
"Look guys, I can play a high A!" (Screeeeeeech!)
"Well, I can get to high B" (Screeeech!, Any glass nearby busts)
"I can play piccolo!" (Panic ensues)
"Noo! DON'T DO IT!"
"PUT IT AWAY!"
"AAAAAAAAAHHH!!!"
this has actually happened to me before; I was in 8th grade though, and the one with the piccolo. He he he!
There is a man on a boat that is in a shipwreck. The boat crashes on a jungle island and the man is greeted by natives. In the distance, he hears the sound of drums. He asks what the drums are for and the chief answers, "The drums must not stop!" The man is forced to stay the night in the natives' village. All through the night, the drums kept on going so he was unable to sleep at all. He got up in the morning and went to the chief again, begging him to know why the drums couldn't stop. The chief answered, "Because when drum solo stop, sax solo start!"
One week after moving into his first apartment, Ed called his mother to complain about his neighbors: "One woman cries all day, another lies in bed moaning, and then there's this guy that keeps banging his head against the wall."
"You better keep away from them," she said.
"I do. I stay inside all day playing my tuba."
An orchestra is rehearsing a piece in which the tuba has a solo after 84 bars rest. At the point where the tuba should start the solo, nothing happens. So, the conductor stops and asks the tuba player why he didn't play. "I have 84 bars rest," says the tuba player. To which the conductor replies, "But we are past those 84 bars already." The tuba player, confused, asks "How should I know that?" The conductor replies, "You can count, can't you?" The tuba player looks at him and asks "Do you call that rest?"
Q: How many drum majors does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Only one, but then again, who's really watching?
One day in heaven, the Lord decided He would visit the earth and take a stroll. Walking down the road, He encountered a man who was crying. The Lord asked the man, “Why are you crying, my son?” The man said that he was blind and had never seen a sunset. The Lord touched the man who could then see… and he was happy.
As the Lord walked further, He met another man crying and asked, “Why are you crying, my son?” The man was born a cripple and was never able to walk. The Lord touched him and he could walk… and he was happy.
Farther down the road, the Lord met another man who was crying and asked, “Why are you crying, my son?” The man said, “Lord I’m a high school band director.”
… and the Lord sat down and cried with him.
"Look guys, I can play a high A!" (Screeeeeeech!)
"Well, I can get to high B" (Screeeech!, Any glass nearby busts)
"I can play piccolo!" (Panic ensues)
"Noo! DON'T DO IT!"
"PUT IT AWAY!"
"AAAAAAAAAHHH!!!"
this has actually happened to me before; I was in 8th grade though, and the one with the piccolo. He he he!
There is a man on a boat that is in a shipwreck. The boat crashes on a jungle island and the man is greeted by natives. In the distance, he hears the sound of drums. He asks what the drums are for and the chief answers, "The drums must not stop!" The man is forced to stay the night in the natives' village. All through the night, the drums kept on going so he was unable to sleep at all. He got up in the morning and went to the chief again, begging him to know why the drums couldn't stop. The chief answered, "Because when drum solo stop, sax solo start!"
One week after moving into his first apartment, Ed called his mother to complain about his neighbors: "One woman cries all day, another lies in bed moaning, and then there's this guy that keeps banging his head against the wall."
"You better keep away from them," she said.
"I do. I stay inside all day playing my tuba."
An orchestra is rehearsing a piece in which the tuba has a solo after 84 bars rest. At the point where the tuba should start the solo, nothing happens. So, the conductor stops and asks the tuba player why he didn't play. "I have 84 bars rest," says the tuba player. To which the conductor replies, "But we are past those 84 bars already." The tuba player, confused, asks "How should I know that?" The conductor replies, "You can count, can't you?" The tuba player looks at him and asks "Do you call that rest?"
Q: How many drum majors does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Only one, but then again, who's really watching?
One day in heaven, the Lord decided He would visit the earth and take a stroll. Walking down the road, He encountered a man who was crying. The Lord asked the man, “Why are you crying, my son?” The man said that he was blind and had never seen a sunset. The Lord touched the man who could then see… and he was happy.
As the Lord walked further, He met another man crying and asked, “Why are you crying, my son?” The man was born a cripple and was never able to walk. The Lord touched him and he could walk… and he was happy.
Farther down the road, the Lord met another man who was crying and asked, “Why are you crying, my son?” The man said, “Lord I’m a high school band director.”
… and the Lord sat down and cried with him.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
75 Signs You Might be a Theory Geek
1) you whistle in style brisé.
2) your favorite pickup line is, "What's your favorite augmented sixth chord?"
3) your second favorite pickup line is, "Would you like to raise my leading tone?"
4) you have ever played the how-many-episodes-is-too-many-episodes fugue game.
5) you have a poster of Allen Forte in your room.
6) you know who Allen Forte is.
7) you dream in four parts.
8) your biological clock follows a non-retrogradable isorhythm.
9) you can improvise 16th-century counterpoint with no trouble, but you frequently forget how to tie
your shoes.
10) you will look at a piece by Bach and say, "You know, I think he could have gotten a better effect this way . . ."
11) you expected something quite different out of The Matrix.
12) you can answer your phone with a tonal or a real answer.
13) you like to tease your friends and loved ones with deceptive cadences.
14) you know how large a major 23rd is without having to count.
15) you only drink fifths, and then you laugh at the pun.
16) you feel the need to end Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony with a picardy third.
17) your favorite characteristic of Brahms's music is the subcutaneous motivic play.
18) instead of counting sheep, you count sequences.
19) you find free counterpoint too liberal.
20) Moussorgsky's "Hopak" gives you nightmares.
21) you wonder what a Danish sixth would sound like.
22) you long for the good old days of movable G-clefs.
23) the Corelli Clash gives you goosebumps. Every time.
24) you can hear an enharmonic modulation coming a mile away.
25) you can hear Berg's lover's dog coming a mile away.
26) you have had to be forced to stop labeling motives.
27) you confuse fishsticks with ground bass.
28) you found No. 27 funny.
29) you have ever quoted Walter Piston.
30) you like to march to the rhythm of L'histoire du soldat.
31) your license plate says: PNTONL.
32) you have ever defended yourself with, "But Gesualdo did it!"
33) you have ever tried to do a Schenkerian analysis on "Three Blind Mice."
34) you have ever tried to do a Schenkerian analysis on 4'33''.
35) you have ever had a gebrauchsmusik party.
36) you have ever tried to hop onto the omnibus.
36) you like to wake up to a Petrushkated version of "Reveille."
38) you lament the decline of serialism.
39) you know what the ninth overtone of the harmonic series is off the top of your head.
40) you keep the writings of Boethius on the coffee table.
41) you have ever dressed up as counterpoint for Halloween.
42) you have ever written a musical palindrome and given it a witty title.
43) you can name ten of Palestrina's contemporaries.
44) you have ever found a typographical error in a score by Ives, Nancarrow, or Babbitt.
45) you have ever heard a wrong note in a performance of a composition by Ives, Nancarrow, or Babbitt.
46) you already sensed that if this list had been written by Bartók, this would be the funniest item.
47) you enjoy the tang of a tritone whenever you can.
48) you've let the rule of the octave determine how you go from one event of the day to the next.
49) you have ever played through your music as if the fingering markings were figured bass symbols.
50) you suspiciously check all the music you play for dangling sevenths.
51) you have devised your own tuning method.
52) you keep a notebook of useful diminutions.
53) you have composed variations on a theme by Anton Webern.
54) you know the difference between a Courante and a Corrente.
55) you have trained your dog to jump through a flaming circle of fifths.
56) you have ever used the word fortspinnung in polite conversation.
57) you feel cheated by evaded cadences.
58) you organize phone numbers based on their prime form.
59) you find it amusing to refer to you ear-training course sections as your "pitch classes."
60) every now and again you like to kick back and play a tune in hypophrygian mode.
61) you wonder why there aren't more types of seventh chords.
62) you wish you had twelve fingers.
63) you like polytonal music because, hey, the more keys the merrier.
64) you abbreviate your shopping list using figured bass symbols.
65) you always make sure to invert your counterpoint, just in case.
66) you have ever told a joke with a punchline of: because it was polyphonic!
67) you have ever named a pet, instrument, boat, gun or child after Zarlino.
68) you have an <0 data-blogger-escaped-1="1" data-blogger-escaped-4="4"> tattoo.
69) your lips may say, "perfect fourth," but in your heart it will always be "diatessaron."
70) you have ever said, "Yes, didn't Scriabin use that sonority in . . ."
71)you know dirty acronyms for the order of sharps.
72) you can name relatives of the "Grandmother Chord."
73) you're still wondering why I haven't included the "must-resolve-the- dominant-seventh-before-going-to-bed" indicator.
74) you can not only identify any one of Bach's 371 Harmonized Chorales by ear, but you also know what page it is on in the Riemenschneider edition and how many suspensions it has in the first four bars.
75) you got more than half of the jokes on this list.
2) your favorite pickup line is, "What's your favorite augmented sixth chord?"
3) your second favorite pickup line is, "Would you like to raise my leading tone?"
4) you have ever played the how-many-episodes-is-too-many-episodes fugue game.
5) you have a poster of Allen Forte in your room.
6) you know who Allen Forte is.
7) you dream in four parts.
8) your biological clock follows a non-retrogradable isorhythm.
9) you can improvise 16th-century counterpoint with no trouble, but you frequently forget how to tie
your shoes.
10) you will look at a piece by Bach and say, "You know, I think he could have gotten a better effect this way . . ."
11) you expected something quite different out of The Matrix.
12) you can answer your phone with a tonal or a real answer.
13) you like to tease your friends and loved ones with deceptive cadences.
14) you know how large a major 23rd is without having to count.
15) you only drink fifths, and then you laugh at the pun.
16) you feel the need to end Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony with a picardy third.
17) your favorite characteristic of Brahms's music is the subcutaneous motivic play.
18) instead of counting sheep, you count sequences.
19) you find free counterpoint too liberal.
20) Moussorgsky's "Hopak" gives you nightmares.
21) you wonder what a Danish sixth would sound like.
22) you long for the good old days of movable G-clefs.
23) the Corelli Clash gives you goosebumps. Every time.
24) you can hear an enharmonic modulation coming a mile away.
25) you can hear Berg's lover's dog coming a mile away.
26) you have had to be forced to stop labeling motives.
27) you confuse fishsticks with ground bass.
28) you found No. 27 funny.
29) you have ever quoted Walter Piston.
30) you like to march to the rhythm of L'histoire du soldat.
31) your license plate says: PNTONL.
32) you have ever defended yourself with, "But Gesualdo did it!"
33) you have ever tried to do a Schenkerian analysis on "Three Blind Mice."
34) you have ever tried to do a Schenkerian analysis on 4'33''.
35) you have ever had a gebrauchsmusik party.
36) you have ever tried to hop onto the omnibus.
36) you like to wake up to a Petrushkated version of "Reveille."
38) you lament the decline of serialism.
39) you know what the ninth overtone of the harmonic series is off the top of your head.
40) you keep the writings of Boethius on the coffee table.
41) you have ever dressed up as counterpoint for Halloween.
42) you have ever written a musical palindrome and given it a witty title.
43) you can name ten of Palestrina's contemporaries.
44) you have ever found a typographical error in a score by Ives, Nancarrow, or Babbitt.
45) you have ever heard a wrong note in a performance of a composition by Ives, Nancarrow, or Babbitt.
46) you already sensed that if this list had been written by Bartók, this would be the funniest item.
47) you enjoy the tang of a tritone whenever you can.
48) you've let the rule of the octave determine how you go from one event of the day to the next.
49) you have ever played through your music as if the fingering markings were figured bass symbols.
50) you suspiciously check all the music you play for dangling sevenths.
51) you have devised your own tuning method.
52) you keep a notebook of useful diminutions.
53) you have composed variations on a theme by Anton Webern.
54) you know the difference between a Courante and a Corrente.
55) you have trained your dog to jump through a flaming circle of fifths.
56) you have ever used the word fortspinnung in polite conversation.
57) you feel cheated by evaded cadences.
58) you organize phone numbers based on their prime form.
59) you find it amusing to refer to you ear-training course sections as your "pitch classes."
60) every now and again you like to kick back and play a tune in hypophrygian mode.
61) you wonder why there aren't more types of seventh chords.
62) you wish you had twelve fingers.
63) you like polytonal music because, hey, the more keys the merrier.
64) you abbreviate your shopping list using figured bass symbols.
65) you always make sure to invert your counterpoint, just in case.
66) you have ever told a joke with a punchline of: because it was polyphonic!
67) you have ever named a pet, instrument, boat, gun or child after Zarlino.
68) you have an <0 data-blogger-escaped-1="1" data-blogger-escaped-4="4"> tattoo.
69) your lips may say, "perfect fourth," but in your heart it will always be "diatessaron."
70) you have ever said, "Yes, didn't Scriabin use that sonority in . . ."
71)you know dirty acronyms for the order of sharps.
72) you can name relatives of the "Grandmother Chord."
73) you're still wondering why I haven't included the "must-resolve-the- dominant-seventh-before-going-to-bed" indicator.
74) you can not only identify any one of Bach's 371 Harmonized Chorales by ear, but you also know what page it is on in the Riemenschneider edition and how many suspensions it has in the first four bars.
75) you got more than half of the jokes on this list.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Cocoa and Carols
The Highlights did a great job!!!! You guys were (mostly) together with your choreography, which is really impressive given you are only 4th and 5th graders and you had choreography similar to what a middle school show choir might do to memorize. You also had a really great sound and it really projected in the big auditorium!!! Some of the other elementary groups had probably twice as many people as you did, but even then couldn't even match your guys' sound. Great Job, and I can't wait to watch your next show this winter or spring!
More Ways to tell if You are a Band Geek
You know you’re a band geek when…
You start to tap your foot to elevator music.
You make music jokes in a class when there are no other band members in that class.
You spend extra time in the band room and practice your scales faster and faster.
You have pictures of John Phillip Sousa on your locker.
Your band director is your contact person on your emergency card.
You have a different band shirt for everyday of the week.
You practice show step when walking around your house.
You walk in step with your friends.
All your friends and your friends' friends are band members. [Either that, a former band kid, orchestra, or bronies (guys who like MLP, many of whom are also band kids)]
Your band uniforms doubles as a Halloween costume.
The band room phone is like your pager.
You tap your foot to the radio.
Your favorite song is by someone who died 100 years ago.
You wear your marching shoes to school.
You keep a spare change of clothes in your band locker.[yep]
You wear your marching gloves with your prom dress.
You know what key N*Sync (whichever songs are popular in your generation) are sung in.
You sing Roll Over Beethoven as you walk to class. [ no, but we do hum and tap to the band music in other classes]
You eat lunch in the band room. [YES!!!!! well, actually we eat in the band hallway, because food is not allowed in the band room]
You consider band as a sport. [obviously, duh!]
You have your parents video tape the shows so you can march with them in the off season.
You wear your concert attire to homecoming.
You are friends with the incoming freshmen band members.[ YES!!!!]
Your reed budget is higher than your food budget.
When you cut class, you go to the band room.[ I haven’t ever cut class, although if I were to, I’d probably go to the band room…. Wait, *using the force* you never read this!!!!]
You vow revenge on the music black market.
You know all the cheerleaders cheers. [yes, we ALL do]
You don't go home on the day of a football game. [with pit and drumline having to load and unload the trailer, yes]
Your idea of a recliner is a black music posture chair.
When you graduate, you don't leave. [they never do, and I dont plan on it either]
Band director’s house and band room are on speed dial.
You're the only one who shows up for pep band.
You don't take "double tonguing" as a dirty joke.
You know "panache" is a feather.
You conduct in the shower.
You can tune a tenor sax.
You shed tears during Hail Liberty.
You sit in class and start to finger notes on your pencil. [ I have gotten a lot of weird stares from doing this]
You double tongue in the halls.
You get upset while driving because your windshield wipers aren't in time with the radio. [once, you notice it, it's amazing how annoying it can get!]
In a turning lane you notice that the blinkers are not synchronized. [and tap a rhythm to them, and accidentally hit the horn in the process]
You can relate to the term, "One time in band camp..."
You wear your concert attire, and look at yourself in the mirror and say "I'm good looking".
When you fight for a sports locker, and say "Band is too a sport!" along with the cheerleaders. [I don’t need to; we have our own lockers that are bigger than theirs. So big, in fact, that we have a tradition of locking freshman in them. You know as a freshman that you have been accepted into the band once you have been forced into a locker and it has been locked. Sadly, my upperclassmen forgot the combo to the lock they used and the band director wasn’t happy about having to go find his key to get me out of the baritone locker.]
Everything on this list describes you to a T.
Lesson #2: Staffs, Clefs, and Lines, Oh My!!!
Reading sheet music is like reading a foreign language. There are rules and patterns that must be followed for the music to sound pleasing to the ear and so the musician can interpret the music correctly in order to perform it.
Before we get to the music, we must first know how to write it correctly, and know how to organize it.
To learn about how to correctly label a note, head to: http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-is-c4.html.
Notes are also labeled ascending by letters A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, then repeating again and again (there is no “H” note)
After you refresh how to designate a particular note, let’s move onto the tools we use to write the music, the staff, ledger lines, and clefs.
There are four main types of clefs: treble, alto, tenor, and bass clef. However in modern music, only two are commonly used: treble and bass.
This is the tenor clef. This clef is rarely used in modern music. Occasionally trombone, bassoon, cello, or viola will read this clef. It is centered around C4 (red)
This is the bass clef, also known as the F-clef because it’s symbol is centered on the F line(red). Middle C cannot be represented on this staff without the use of ledger lines (see below)
As you can see, each staff has different lines or spaces assigned to the same note. But why is this?
Originally, everything was always written on one large, theoretical staff, a grand staff, normally with 11 horizontal lines (like above) but also had the four clefs, marking the different voice parts (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass) would read off of one grand staff with their four different parts. This was very confusing, and therefore the grand staff was split into two staffs, treble (upper) and bass(lower). Alto and tenor clef were for the most part set aside and all music was notated on the two staffs.
Q: What if you have a note that doesn’t fit on the staff? A: Extend the staff!!!
When you have a note that doesn’t fit on the staff you are using, you add ledger lines to extend the staff above or below depending on the not you are writing. You continue with your lettering and note placement. (middle C on the picture above is an example of a ledger line).
That concludes our lesson for today.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
" An Interesting Marching Band Story"
" An Interesting Marching Band Story"
Back in the day, our band was the party-central of the school.
So one time it was raining, and we were certain the half-time show was going to be canceled...so we started partying (drinking) early.
Only it wasn't canceled and we were told the show would go on.
We mostly got away with it - except for a few tiny problems...
At the most dramatic point, we were in an arc facing away from the audience, and right after the solo we were supposed to slowly turn around, and break the formation and run up to the sidelines and assume a straight line. You know the routine, you sight in off the shoulder beside you to make the line even....
But during the solo (a long one)...most of us inebriated ones forgot where in the routine we were, so about 8 of us didn't turn around....and we didn't run up to the sidelines either....there we were....8 random guys just standing with our backs to the audience.....and ever so slowly it dawned on us one by one that something was wrong.
So we tried to run up to the sidelines and join the line, but it was closed up and even....so in trying to get in line, some of us fell down and/or knocked some of the others down. Didn't matter anyway, because by then the line was quick-timing it back into a rotating pinwheel...but we were falling down in the rain and mud....so then we tried to run back and join the pinwheel, but ended up knocking more people down - because that pinwheel was moving, and we were way out of our usual positions...so we ran down the field again....at this point the tuba player fell down and broke the bell off the tuba, and he just sat there...holding the pieces.
By now the band was more interested in laughing at us than playing so the song started to fall apart. And the audience was laughing loud enough we could hear them from the field. Our drum majors were frantically running around grabbing us and pointing at where we were supposed to be. And you know what happens when the drum majors stop marking time....
Finally, there was one point where we all stood still and most of us had just enough time to get into the correct place - and play the last 4 bars to end the show.
That little disaster resulted in some serious trouble when we got back.
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