First Rehearsal - 8/15/2006 in 2005 - 2007: High School

Today was the band kickoff party. We got the music for the opener, had a little bit of a rehearsal, and then hung out and ate pizza while the band parents fretted for hours over uniforms and things even less important than that.

I walked there. The walk gave me some time to reflect on what this meant, exactly. The first rehearsal. The official start of the season. It meant that as soon as I walked into the band room, I was an assistant drum major. Eric was the drum major. Dave was my section leader. The rookies were veterans, and there were new rookies. The seniors were gone, graduated, no longer in the band. And we were the seniors. For real now. It had sunk in by the time I got there.

Eric greeted me at the door. He asked to see my new trombone, and then he asked me rather excitedly if I would like to see his wooden dowel. I said sure. I followed him outside to his car, and he pulled a large wooden stick out of the front passenger's seat. He twirled it around for a while and threw it up into the air (without catching it.)

"Well, I'm still working on that part, but you get the idea." He continued to twirl it around as he talked to people.

Eventually, Mr. Thomas called us all together to practice. Not a great showing. We ended up with pretty much all of the nineteen drummers, two out of three colorguard and all three trumpets, but only three out of seven low brass, three out of six saxes, two out of eight clarinets, and four out of six flutes. We have... A bit of a strange balance this year. Nineteen freaking drummers. They make up almost half the band. I hope you'll be able to hear the horn line.

Adam, like three quarters of his section, did not show up. I'm not surprised.

Anyway, as Eric was passing out music, Mr. Thomas came over to me and Dave. "What I'm going to do with you guys," he said, "is have one of you on each part, because I need each part played well. No offense to Chris, but I don't want him on a part by himself." This is what I had expected to happen. With Joe gone (he quit to play football, the wimp) Chris becomes even more insignificant musically than he was before. So of course I was going to have to be on second trombone again. I understood. "So I'm going to have you play first, and you play second, and... I'll probably have Chris double with you on first, alright? It's just that I know you'll both be able to carry the parts." Completely expected. Except that he pointed to me when he said "first" and Dave when he said "second."

Wait, what?

Eric, who looked a little surprised as well, handed me trombone one and Dave trombone two. Mr. Thomas walked away. I was a little too busy processing what had happened to pay attention to the expression on Dave's face, but after a few seconds, he said, "I got demoted."

"Yeah, that's... I don't know..." I wasn't even especially happy. And Dave was obviously pretty disappointed. "I'll bet it's just because he wants two people on first and one on second, and he knows you can carry a part by yourself."

"Yeah, probably," he said.

Then another problem arose. I looked at my part. I looked at his part, since he was staring off into space instead of looking at it. "Dude," I said. "Remember that nightmare you told me about where you asked for a feature, but your part was just one 'B flat' written on a piece of paper?"

"Yeah?" He looked at his part. "Holy shit." We both essentially play one note for the entire opener. His is a B flat. "Holy shit, I have a B flat. This is..." he looked at it some more. "Shit. What if the whole show's going to be like this?"

"It won't be. There'll be something interesting."

"But what if there's not? I mean, there's always part of the show that's like this, but it's never been the opener before. What if it's just..."

"Well, maybe you should talk to him about it."

"And say what?"

"'Hey, Mr. Thomas, are there going to be other parts of the show that are more challenging than the opener?' Or possibly, 'Hey Mr. Thomas, can I have a feature?'"

"I can't ask for a feature."

"Why not?"

"I'm passive."

We had the rehearsal. Mr. Thomas conducted the whole time, and Eric stood in the background looking terribly awkward. I played my E flat. Dave played his B flat. He got the rhythym wrong. We hung out and ate pizza. Bonnie says the flute part's not at all challenging either.

The show itself promises to be very bizarre. The theme is "crazy" - all of the songs have the word crazy in the title. The woodwinds have a feature where they play, in unison, a Prince guitar solo. Weird Clarinetist reads a soliloquy. At one point, we all stop playing and Noah has a crazy arhythmic improv snare solo. (I think interesting things will automatically result whenever you give Noah a crazy, arhythmic, improv anything.) It will most definately be weird. Many people have expressed the concern that it will also be terrible.

I am a little afraid of this. I am trying to trust Mr. Thomas, but that has become a little harder as of late.

Well, we did walk up to and strike up a conversation with a rookie, which is definately something that we are supposed to do. I suppose that makes the evening a bit of a success. And I did ask Mr. Thomas if I was going to conduct at some point, and he said that yes, I was, that he "wasn't just telling me that to make me feel better," and kind of smiled and gave me that ego-boosting look he gives me. But overall, our first practice was a little concerning.