My Experience With... Being in Marching Band

From Tone Deaf Comics.

This pretty much sums up the way I feel about band, in general, but especially marching band. I remember walking around my college after an open house to meet with the marching band director. Even though it was a small school, I still had trouble finding the building.

It didn't help that I was wandering around in platforms. By the way, if you do decide to walk around a campus, please wear comfortable shoes.

By the time I'd gotten to the right building, I was afraid I would've been too late. I walked around the building looking for her office. Finally, a professor saw me and asked if I needed help.

"Yeah... I'm looking for, uh.... [looks at paper in her hand] Ms. Johns?"

"Oh! She's getting married this afternoon!"

GREEEEEEEAAAAAAAAT. Not only was she not even going to be there that day, the name on my flyer was completely wrong!

Thankfully, I met up with her about a month later and tried out for the Drum Line in the band. I also learned that day not to try out for a marching band in platforms. By the way, if you do decide to try out for a marching band... ah, you get the idea. In either case, I was in, and I was playing the top bass drum of the band.

Now, I could learn how to play the drum in question, but what I couldn't do was carry it very well. For one thing, the carriers used to hold the bass drum we used were ergonomically HORRIBLE for the back.

This is (more or less) how our bass drum carriers were.

Again, not good for the back, or my then-very-petite

frame and strength capability.

Now this is (more or less) the carriers we used

my second year there. Notice the support 

on the bottom, which takes some

(again some) of the weight off.

I wish we had these. They look cool AND easy on the back!

In any case here's a breakdown of my years and what I've played:

Year 1: Cymbals

Year 2: Bass Drum 1 (my parents weren't to happy about that, but I did what I had to do)

Year 3: Cymbals (Unofficial Official Subsection Leader / 1st Cymbal), Orchestral Pit (Shekere)

Year 4: Cymbals

Being a part of a marching band in any respect is amazing. For one thing, learning music is essential to development. For another thing, if you don't play any instrument, there's always auxiliary positions (colorguard, pom squad, baton twirlers, etc.) that you can be a part of, not to mention volunteering to help in any way possible.

There are not enough words to express my term here, and since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's about a quadrillion of them;

And yes, I did get the inevitable questions/comments:

• "This one time... at band camp..."
• "You're in band? Is it like American Pie?" [Uh, no. I've never even seen the movie and I know that's not even close.]
• "You're in drumline? Is that like the movie Drumline?" [NOOOOOO!!!!]

#bandgeekforlife

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