Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. ~Berthold Auerbach
What musical instrument did you play? TEll me your memories of lessons, practice, and your music teacher. What other musical instruments did you want to learn to play?
I played trombone, bass trombone, and baritone for my middle school and high school band.
Originally, I wanted to learn how to play trumpet--Mom wanted a jazz band, and she all ready had Jarrod on saxophone and Amber on the flute. Royce tried trombone, but could only play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" poorly. But the band director at the time was Ms. Woods and she all ready had 22 trumpets in a band of only 40 or so, so she tried to get me to switch to trombone or baritone. I picked trombone because that's what my Uncle Robbie used to play and because my friend Christi was an awesome trombone girl too.
Band was some of the happiest times of my life--all the bad members were close knit, all friends. We won State Marching competition our first year marching and always got straight ones at competition for concert band (wind ensemble? There was only the one band most of my time there).
Private lessons and group lessons for trombones were pretty sporadic--we were all required to take them, but the school paid for them. None of them stayed for long though, since most were UNT students. Practice, Dad always made me go out to the garage. Dad was surprising because he actually played tenor sax really well when he was in high school. Go figure.
The best part of band were the trips though--we went to Disney World and Disney Land...I got to lead the Disney Land parade with the other trombones one year! The years we weren't going to Disney, we went to Corpus Christi for their musical festival. It was so wonderful in condos on the beaches....everyone burned horribly except me and Erika, since Erika always made sure I put on SPF 1,000,000,000 before going out into the sun and reapply at least every hour.
At Christmas, we always went and played a Christmas concert and small ensembles at Six Flags. It was so much fun--we got into the park for free, played for no more than 45 minutes, then spent the rest of the day riding rides. We even played in Bass Hall in DFW, which is this fantastic sound stage. We got into trouble for being too noisy, and so we told the annoyed patron that we were from the rival school, lol.
The marching uniforms and concert dresses and tuxes were brand new when we wore them, so we were very proud. The plumes weren't messed up yet, and they looked so sharp, and the pants were so waterproof you could dump your soda on them and it would just bead off. We weren't allowed to go to the concession stands during football games, but Ms Mikel--our band director--always had tons of Little Debbie snack cakes and sodas for us.
Concert band, we had to wear these hideous, shapeless black dresses with big poofy sleeves and bust covered in black sequins. The judges just ate that up, but they scratched our arms every time we slid our slides.
Other instruments I wanted to learn?? Guitar, bass guitar, piano, violin....there is no instrument it would be a mistake to learn. Though 4th grade recorder was a bit of a waste of my time :P
~Andie~
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