Musicality

Yesterday was Small Group Contest for band and vocal. Now, seeing that I'm not in vocal, I'll just tell you about band.

The only thing I have to compare Band Small Group to is Speech contests. Speech, of course, is the more fun of the two because everyone is pretty weird and outgoing. They want to meet new people, play games, and have fun. Band, on the other hand, is full of people who got up way to early in the morning and have "I didn't sign up for this shit" written all over their faces. Still, there are some things that I liked a lot better about band contest compared to speech contest. First of all, you didn't have to wait 3 hours for your results. The results from my Woodwind Choir piece was up within twenty minutes. We got a I by the way. Secondly, you could video tape without permission from the state! What a radical idea! On the one hand, it saves someone from a bit of paperwork. On the other hand, everyone already does it.

Unlike last year where I just did Woodwind Choir, this year I also did a duet with my good friend who is a bass clarinetist. This duet was pretty special for two reasons- 1) I wrote it myself and 2) it was the ONLY contemporary piece of music played at contest ALL day. As my good friend told me, "Everyone's playing Bach and Beethoven. We're playing Haywood." After playing it perfectly for the past two weeks and never squeaking once, I managed to squeak a good five or six times. I was so nervous I was shaking and struggling to breath. But, I got through it and never really missed a note. We received a II from the judge which I was perfectly fine with. The last time I did any duet/solo type thing was three-ish years ago in the 7th grade. I got so nervous that I couldn't even play 50% of the music. It was terrible and I felt like complete crap. This year, I think speech really helped me preform better. I was a little more used to standing in front of people and preforming.

Later, I went to a community play and dinner. The dinner and play were fantastic. The sound system wasn't broadway, but it definitely was a step up from my high school's sound system. You could clearly hear everything. There was some feedback partly from the microphones being hit by skin and clothes, partially because the sound techie had everything turned up very high. This would have bothered the crap out of me, and if there weren't as many old people in the audience as there were, I would have turned the pick up down. Also, I would have dressed a little nicer. The acting was what you would suspect a community play to have, but it was very funny and entertaining. Two of my friends' bothers were in the play and they were hilarious. I'd never thought I would say this, but I might like to be in community plays when I'm older. They seem like tons of fun.

~Em