Band is the common factor that unites our past. Everyone in this program understands what it means to sacrifice. Together we have experienced night turn to morning, hundreds of hours rehearsing become a ten-minute performance, and working under unfair circumstances amount to seemingly nothing. I can say with great confidence that band has been the most challenging choice I have ever made. The difficulty with band is that you don’t choose it once. You choose it when you tell your family you’ll eat with them tomorrow night because it’s game night. You choose it when you fail your chemistry quiz because you had practice yesterday. You choose it when you painfully watch your friends quit because you know your real friends are choosing it too.
Band is an elective given in elementary schools through college schools around the world. Many schools come together and compete with one another. School bands also perform at football games, basketball games, and in parades. Most school marching bands are accompanied by a color guard, a group of performers, who add a visual interpretation to the music by using props, flags and rifles. A school marching band apparel includes a military type of style, the school's colors, along with the school's name and mascot. It is important to have band as an elective in schools because it helps kids display their emotions and maybe for some it is a hobby. Band directors have said that having band helps young emotional development, helps contribute to a more intellectual culture, builds teamwork and self confidence. It is hard to imagine being in this amazing class and coming upon these out of the box stereotypes and misconceptions of being a nerd, lazy or unathletic. These stereotypes and misconception mainly come from basically movies, shows and books things that are being aired. For example, a kid show, spongebob, kids from ages three to twelve are watching these shows maybe even teens and adults. A spongebob episode fifteen, season two is titled “band geeks”, putting this low degrading name on the group of kids performing at football games with instruments
Band is family. When your student walks onto campus, he or she is instantly adopted into the strongest society on campus. They will be spending their school days among the top achievers on campus, with fellow students who look out for one another and steer each other away from trouble instead of towards it. Teachers, staff, parents, and volunteers watch over all the kids as if they were their own.
I have had many special experiences while playing in band. Just in this semester alone, our band has played in two concerts and a CMEA festival. Our band has also been privileged to have a session with Mr. Smith. Overall, I would like to say that playing in concert band had been a great and learning experience.
Yarberry, G.A. (1979). An overview of the past, present and future of the band movementin America. Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, 14(2), 1-9.
Sweat dripping down my face and butterflies fluttering around my stomach as if it was the Garden of Eden, I took in a deep breathe and asked myself: "Why am I so nervous? After all, it is just the most exciting day of my life." When the judges announced for the Parsippany Hills High School Marching Band to commence its show, my mind blanked out and I was on the verge of losing sanity. Giant's Stadium engulfed me, and as I pointed my instrument up to the judges' stand, I gathered my thoughts and placed my mouth into the ice-cold mouthpiece of the contrabass. "Ready or not," I beamed, "here comes the best show you will ever behold." There is no word to describe the feeling I obtain through music. However, there is no word to describe the pain I suffer through in order to be the best in the band either. When I switched my instrument to tuba from flute in seventh grade, little did I know the difference it would make in the four years of high school I was soon to experience. I joined marching band in ninth grade as my ongoing love for music waxed. When my instructor placed the 30 lb. sousaphone on my shoulder on the first day, I lost my balance and would have fallen had my friends not made the effort to catch me. During practices, I always attempted to ease the discomfort as the sousaphone cut through my collar bone, but eventually my shoulder started to agonize and bleed under the pressure. My endurance and my effort to play the best show without complaining about the weight paid off when I received the award for "Rookie of the Year." For the next three seasons of band practice, the ache and toil continued. Whenever the band had practice, followed by a football game and then a competition, my brain would blur from fatigue and my body would scream in agony. Nevertheless, I pointed my toes high in the air as I marched on, passionate about the activity. As a result, my band instructor saw my drive toward music and I was named Quartermaster for my junior year, being trusted with organizing, distributing, and collecting uniforms for all seventy-five members of the band. The responsibility was tremendous. It took a bulk of my time, but the sentiment of knowing that I was an important part of band made it all worthwhile.
As a freshman in high school and band, I was nervous, and very unconfident. But band changed it all for me. I found that helping people out was much more rewarding than just being a good player or marcher. Leadership is the best skill I've learned from band, and it will
Where I learned how to become a leader through the leadership ensemble within the marching band. Where in my senior and fourth year of marching competitively, I became the Drum Major, and earned the Best Drum Major Award at the Roxbury Marching Band Classic Competition. From marching band I progressed into jazz music, where I became the lead alto saxophonist in the top jazz band at my school during my junior and senior year. I was also one of three saxophonists in the top band at my school. I picked up the clarinet, the flute, and the soprano saxophone on my way through high school, and have played all three as well in my performing ensembles. I played in the pit orchestra of the theater production of “All Shook Up”, and was the principal saxophonist at my high school. Too be short, I am very involved in all things music in the past and currently. Band and music have been a place for me to rely on, something that brings me joy when sad. Allows me to express myself through sounds and through instruments. It is truly a talent and a hobby that I hope to continue through college and through life because of the joy it brought me and creative outlet it was throughout my
George Helmholtz, as the head of the music department at Lincoln High School, is very determined with his regular students and the gifted musicians of the band. Each semester and year at school he dreams of “leading as fine a band as there was on the face of the earth. And each year it came true”. His certainty that it was true was because he believed there was no greater dream than his. His students were just as confident and in response, they played their hearts out for them. Even the students with “no talent played on guts alone” for Helmholtz.
I am a band parent. A proud band parent. I was in band many years ago. I had the privilege of being in the Spring/Westfield band program in Houston, Texas. The high school was divided into two separate schools my senior year, and I attended Westfield. The Spring and Westfield band programs both went on to win the ultimate marching band championship - Grand Nationals. I also attended college on a music scholarship. Many of my friends from college are band directors in Texas and other parts of the United States. I play clarinet in my church orchestra. I have been immersed in music for well over 35 years.
When you’re in a parade and you’re just marching along with the Kadence and you can hear the bass drum and you’re looking around and you see this little girl and she’s marveling at what happening right in front of her and her heart is beating along with the bass drums. She’s smiling and dancing around. That’s why you do it because at one point, that little girl was you. At one point your heart beat with the bass drum and all you could think was “Wow I want to be just like them.” Marching band is a whole lot of things, it’s crazy and exciting and fun. You meet new people everywhere you go. Your band grows from strangers to a big second family and every year it just gets better. Marching band is about taking chances and gaining confidence and unearthing the confidence you had in yourself that you never even knew about. Marching band inspires. It brings people together. It’s a place where we are bigger than just ourselves, where we are a team and a family and that is a bond that we will always have. X.P.T.L is a new virtual reality game in which players go through a full Marching Band experience. You start at an early age and you experience the bass drums and a sensor on your heart makes you feel the
Amid my early years of band my attendance and devotion was lackluster to say the least, though with a few minor tweeks and alteration to my motivations I believe I have improved for the better. My personal traits consist of being a very vocal and can-do individuals, who at the end of the day is a hard working individual. As a consequence to putting myself through an entire year of wrestling season, I found a sense of
What my band fam means to me is a group of well-rounded individuals who I can rely upon and who have come together because of a common love for music. Us twelve seniors come from different backgrounds, have different opinions, share different interests, besides the one interest that keeps us all close to one another, music. Without music, we may not have bonded with one another. We would be like any other ordinary student in the high school, only creating friends with those whom they share interests with. We are different however. The bond we have created is unlike any other in our high school. Our bond is formed through creating beautiful music with one another. Apart from becoming close to one another, we also share success, both musically
What is a band? According to Dictionary.com, a band is a group of instrumentalists playing music of a specialized type. Additionally, what does it take to be in a band? When I was little, me and my family used to go to a bunch of football games. Most of them were in Gautier, Pascagoula, and Moss Point because my aunts graduated from Moss point and my mother graduated from Gautier, but went to school in Pascagoula till her senior year. At every football game there was a band performance, and at halftime the band members would march out at attention, dressed in navy and gold with their feathers gently fluttering in the wind. After the drum majors instructed the band to step out on their step, flags soared into the air and the music blasted into the bleachers for about a five minutes. After the last note was cut off by a simple fist thrown into the air, every band member was silent and at attention until the first chair percussionist lead them off the field with a
Now, in two thousand seventeen, I am scheduled to see thirty bands. I will analyze the guitar players and even now the singers to understand what they do to make them sound good. It is crazy to think that one concert changed my life forever. One concert created my love of music and inspired me to start playing music on my own.
A simple definition of sacrifice is to give up something for the sake of something else, whether it is for another human life, for an idea, or even for a belief. “She was 17 years old. He stood glaring at her, his weapon before her face. ‘Do you believe in God?’ She paused. It was a life-or-death question. ‘Yes, I believe in God.’ ‘Why?’ asked her executioner. But he never gave her the chance to respond. The teenage girl lay dead at his feet.” (DC Talk 17) This example of a sacrifice really happened at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO, on April 20, 1999. In the story Iphigenia and in today’s society, justification can be found in favor of the sacrifice of life for the lives of others, for the sake of one’s country, and for one’s religious beliefs.