Yesterday was QUITE an interesting day for me. I had Meet the Band Day at Millersville, pretty much like the band's first rehearsal. I had to be there at 8:30 to rent an instrument, so I left the house around 6:45 since it takes about an hour and a half to get there and I wanted to leave time to spare. WELL. After driving 30 minutes down the road I realized...I FORGOT ALL THE PAPERWORK AND THE CHECKS I HAVE TO HAND IN. So I called my mom, and we decided to meet halfway in this one town. I get there...waiting for her...I call her...and then find out that she's in the wrong spot. My poor directionally impaired mother...so I told her to stay where she was and I would come find her (I had the GPS). So I call her as I'm coming off the exit to let her know I'm there and she starts saying, "I see you! I see you!" I look over and she's parked on the side of the road next to the light immediately following the exit. She tells me to turn around and go back to the light (cause I had passed it) and so I do and when I get there, she's out of her car running across the street. Car still moving, I fling open the passenger door, she hangs me the paperwork, slams the door, and I take the exit onto 422 West to continue heading to Millersville. IT MUST HAVE LOOKED REALLY SHADY TO THE CAR BEHIND ME. Haha!
So now I'm like...ridiculously late. It's 7:48 and I need to be at Millersville in 45 minutes when my GPS is telling me it's gonna take me more than an hour to get there. I sped SO MUCH down that highway it was insane...but then it got to a point where it wasn't highway anymore, it was a town with stoplights, so then I couldn't do anything about it and I just had to sit and wait in my car with a ball of stress/anxiety sitting in my stomach.
I eventually made it to the campus, found Jefferson Hall, got my parking permit, parked, and ran inside at about 8:53. I got my instrument, went to the band room (where the meeting had already started), and stood awkwardly in the back for the next 15 minutes. Not my best entrance, but I was there.
After general info time, we got together with our section to meet our section leader and other members. My section leader's name is Izzy and he's AWESOME. He's just a lot of fun, really chill, and really nice. There are 7 other mellophones in the section (including me) so that means we have 8 which is FANTASTIC. One of them wasn't there yesterday (some family conflict) but I got to meet the other five players (who are also all freshmen). One girl I knew I absolutely didn't like the first time I saw her/she opened her mouth to talk...but whatever, I'll live. There was one guy and one girl that were really shy, so I didn't get to know them that well, but then Tyler and Jolene...have to be some of my favorite people I have ever met.
They both march Reading Buccaneers together and when I heard that I asked Jolene (who's name sounded really familiar) if she knew David Kile (cause he marched there summer of 2009) and she was like, "YES! He's awesome! He's such a good player!" and then I was like, "He's my boyfriend!" and she laughed and said, "I KNEW you looked familiar!" So that was pretty cool. :)
After sectional meetings, we got back together as a band (minus percussion, pit, and guard) and started playing. YIKES. We first played the Bb scale a whole bunch of times...which I can do but I flub out on the higher notes. Played the scale as quarters, then eighths (which I struggling with but was aight), then triplets, then sixteenths...yeah no, couldn't do those. THEN we got right into the show music which is INTENSE. Like...I think I would have had trouble sightreading some of the parts on SAXOPHONE. Yeesh...I played what I could, and picked up more notes each time we went through, but it was a real struggle for me.
I'm so not used to music being a struggle. It was very difficult for me mentally realizing that I just can't do some of this stuff...at least not yet. That's never happened to me and I really don't like it. I know I'm a beginner and that's to be expected but I've been working my butt off practicing EVERY DAY TWICE A DAY for the past couple weeks and I'm done with missing partials or not having a consistent tone. It's like...in the world of my lessons, I'm doing great cause I'm making a lot of progress and improving every week. But in the real world, I'm so far behind...it's very discouraging.
Overall....I played, I struggled, but I survived. And I did have fun, the people there are great and I absolutely love the director. This is just going to be an extremely challenging couple of months for me.
Sidenote: For those of you who are interested, here's a little excerpt of the show and what I have to play. Oh and remember that this is in 12/8, so when you see eighth notes...yeah, those are actually triplets.
