Hey everyone, welcome back!
I heard from my mother that my Granddad Andy really missed reading this when I left for Blue Knights last semester, so this post (and all of the others, really) are dedicated to him.
This summer was probably one of the best things that has happened in all of my 18 years of my life so far, and the experience of DCI and the Blue Knights organization will probably turn out to be one of the best and most influential experiences of my entire life. I would just like to start with that.
It did seem a little tedious in the beginning. All days seemed like they took forever... I had to drive to and from rehearsal for weeks at a time, I learned my part pretty quickly and then spent a lot of time sitting around while the keyboards cleaned, and I probably had a different attitude then than I did now. Because I should have known that it was only going to get worse.
Tour started and it was a little rough at first. Food truck grub was decent at best in the beginning, I didn't get much sleep and rehearsal in the heat was awful. But, fortunately, I got lucky and adapted pretty quickly. Eventually, I was pretty content with peanut butter and jelly every once in a while, I got up as soon as the drum majors woke us up, and I realized that my job wasn't nearly as hard as carrying 5th bass or a tuba.
We performed at some pretty awesome places, including the Alamodome, the Georgia Dome, the Stanford Cardinal Stadium, Olympic Stadium in Salt Lake City, Mile High and Lucas Oil, and the only thing cooler than playing in the stadium was to see all of the people fill them up, and realizing that all of those people were there to support us, and to see how awesome we were. I was never nervous for a performance, and I never felt like I should have been.
Let's see. My book was pretty hard, I had a lot of fun. I don't know if any other corps would write a book like our Pit Instructor, Dan, would. And I know for a fact that I won't ever flourish in a Scottish Pipe Band that can shake a stick at our drumline. As an ensemble, we were something special, and it will only get better next year.
This activity prepared me for my real life in a lot more ways than I expected coming into it. I knew I would come out a better player, sure. But as a result of getting up on time everyday, I'll probably get up on time for all of my 8 am's (ugh). As a result of eating whatever I was given, I'll feel a little better about not eating Mom and Dad's home cooking everyday. And as a result of being around the same people everyday, I absorbed some of their best qualities and hopefully I've become a better person.
If I have the opportunity to come back next year and play for the Blue Knights, I most certainly will. The only looming issue is a financial one, and it will probably bug me until after all of the camps. As much as I love having money, I always, always feel terrible asking for it, especially if it's unlikely that it won't be repaid.
And that's what I did this summer in my world of music. Sure, I guess I worked on orchestra excerpts for like two hours and listened to crappy pop music, but the real story was drum corps, and it was the bomb.
Granddad, this semester, I'm playing in South Indian Ensemble, hanging out with a bunch of people that know what they're talking about and have a lot of cool stories and ideas. And I promise I'll tell you all about everything that I can remember.
M
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