Adriane

some awesome music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcOhUjqFdKQ - played this my junior year, was so addictive and fun and I still have bits and pieces memorized :D
also this is the charlotte concert band's channel if you're interested! all the videos between the olympic spirit and crown imperial are from our first concert this year, in november.

so I mentioned a few weeks ago that I'm working up a repertoire of Christmas songs as a way of distraction for myself. I'm probably going to perform this repertoire in a little 'recital' for my parents (and maybe some friends) when Christmas is closer but my issue is what order should I put the music in, I think that's as important to a repertoire as the music itself!!

Here's my current order:
Linus and Lucy (C major)
Welcome Christmas (from How the Grinch Stole Christmas; C major)
Little Drummer Boy (F major)
O Holy Night (C major)
Pat-a-Pan (G minor)
Winter Wonderland (C major)
Sleigh Ride (G major)
Jingle Bell Rock (C major)
Carol of the Bells (E minor)
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy (E minor)
Silent Night (C major)
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen (D minor)
What Child is This/Greensleeves (E minor)
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (C major)

... i'm pretty bad at music organization so :/ I definitely want Linus and Lucy to be first and the music to be arranged in such a way that it kinda starts with some upbeat major stuff but gradually moves into minor/slow, reverent major stuff (but with enough variety that it's not "all the upbeat major stuff" and then "slow major/minor stuff"), and I think I want to end with Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas but idk. What do you think ?

so i don't believe i've ever showed you my Myers Park Band Director Respect Scale Equation

basically he's very transparent about who he likes and doesn't like and sometimes it's even easier to tell /why/ he likes or doesn't like certain people so I formulated an equation to show how much he likes people relative to other people. He himself thought it was amazing and posted it on the bulletin board outside the band room for a couple weeks.

anyway:
(g/100 (m/b + (p/y (c(9) + c(10) + c(11) + c(12))) * k * t * e * (d + 0.5)) - (i * 0.05) - (h * 0.05) + (a/100) + u

g = grade level
m = number of years participated in marching band
b = grade level you were in when you started marching band
p = number of years you've been in the concert band program
y = number of years you've been attending Myers Park
c(9), c(10), c(11), c(12) = explained below
k = 1.5 if you ever held a position of leadership in marching band; 1 otherwise
t = 1.1 if you ever took his AP Music Theory class; 1 otherwise
e = 1.1 if you were an eighth grade marcher; 1 otherwise
d = number of years you made all-district (or higher) while in high school. if 0 years, then d = 0.5.
i = number of times you've forgotten your instrument.
h = number of times the band director has taken your phone. (He hates cell phones.)
a = (total boxes of fundraising fruit sold over all the years you've been in the band)/(number of years you've been in the band)
u = number of parents involved in the band program * 0.1

For c(9), c(10), c(11) and c(12) this is roughly the average of the band classes you've been in over each of those grades. They are as follows:

Jazz band:
ninth grade (j(9)) = 2.5
j(10) = 2.5
j(11) = 2
j(12) = 2

Wind ensemble:
w(9) = 2.5
w(10) =2
w(11) = 2
w(12) = 2

Freshman band (which due to scheduling problems does not always have solely freshmen):
f(9) = 0.5
f(10) = 1
f(11) = 1
f(12) = 1

Symphonic band:
s(9) = 1
s(10) = 1
s(11) = 1.5
s(12) = 1.5

So you add up the values for the band classes you took in ninth grade and divide by the total number of band classes taken that year, and that is your c(9) value, and so on. If you specialize in an instrument that can't be played in jazz band, add 0.25 to each c value after you've already determined it.

And that's the equation :p

now i'm curious to know about your hair and makeup at the concert (from your fwee thread post)
also we totes need to hang out :p i feel like you'd be a lot of fun to hang out with!! like my ex except <i>even dorkier</i> WHAT IS THIS MADNESS
(dorks are <i>the best</i>)

do you need a Vulpix for your Pokedex in White or Black 2
cause I have one if you want it

We should exchange phone numbers :p just for having it yknow?

thought of you when reading these blog posts since you're a music nerd with hearing loss: 1 2 3

you and i should hang out sooner rather than later. i could use some comfort from someone i can cry with while listening to classical music :p

last night I dreamt that you and I and my boyfriend were all in a band together and for some reason all ended up sitting together (trumpet + alto/bari sax + alto clarinet????) and you were next to my boyfriend so you were talking a lot and i was just sitting there thinking "boyfriend doesnt know who ey is does he" so it was a bit awkward for me.
yeah that's about all that happened.
i swear i dont have dreams about you on a regular basis. i have dreams about butterfree just as often! idk my mind is weird

on a different note my boyfriend decided for a few minutes he wanted to march bass clarinet next year

And I'm not just saying that because common courtesy says it's the right thing to do!

Aww, thank you!

You're super spiffy, yourself! :D!

I'll have to listen when I'm not waiting for class to start xp i'll get back to you later

It does help that our band director (the tall trumpeter in the middle) is playing, though. Also there was one day where he split us up into sectionals and the trumpets rehearsed a couple of the difficult licks (especially that really crazy fast lick at ~1:46-2:02) very slowly and then gradually speeding up. For an hour. My right ring finger got to the point where it just would not go down at the speeds required of it because it was so tired.
oh god trumpet can be the worst-sounding instrument if not played correctly ._. my experiences with a wind ensemble where the two first trumpets never practiced and refused to listen when I tried to help them cemented that, haha. I'm actually really horrid at tuning myself by ear (I can tell when I'm off but not /how/ I'm off) so I have to just hope that my trumpet is right during initial tuning and then go from there.

Which one's you? :P
also that piece is real cool haha. I like ^^ it sounds really good (well as far as the recording goes) too haha

Here's my high school band doing Sing, Sing, Sing. Shit recording but it's the only one I could find that I was actually /in/ that wasn't marching band-related. (If only the last concert of 2011 was on Youtube, I get to perform an intentionally-bad solo for Tribute to Spike Jones and the in the concert DVD camera zooms in on me and everything :C) I'm the trumpeter at the far right with blonde hair although my face is kinda blocked by the trombonist sitting in front of me. I'm certainly not the one with the ridiculous solo (I hate his guts actually).
I've got some oldold videos from like 2009/2010 of me playing various video game tunes on trumpet/piano but my tone back then was absolutely horrid so I don't really want to go dig those up :C

just wear nothing. this is clearly the best solution.
... in all seriousness what were you thinking for it? there really isn't a whole lot of formal wear that doesn't outright scream male or female, is there? :/

Yeaaaaah no I ain't moving to NY for school haha

fff what. that is awesome lol

so is it because of falsetto that you ended up first tenor or what?

Queens does and it's a private school so out of state isn't a thing but it is overall more expensive haha. (Just move into my dorm and attend all my classes with me, that's all you need to do xp)

It's still totally marchable I don't know what you're talking about. Just put it on wheels and there you go.

ah. I've never been much of a singer and after failing to make elementary school's jazz choir two years in a row I just haven't cared. (Plus trumpet was so much better.) how is choir in comparison to band though?

I've actually thought a lot about music therapy! but more for grad school because yeah undergrad music therapy is not really offered at a lot of schools (one school in SC offers undergrad music therapy afaik). If moving was feasible, I totally would. At this point, though, I kind of just want a degree and maybe I'll try for another.

Marching bari sax is totally different from contra clarinet! The bell end of the bari curves way up whereas the clarinet (I had) is mostly the straight body. It doesn't even have a place to put a neck strap/harness, and it was almost as tall as me (and I'm tall). I didn't own a regular clarinet (the school didn't loan flutes or clarinets) and really tenor sax is closer in effect than regular clarinet, despite different fingerings.

And I hadn't sang in a choir since I sang soprano in an 8th grade choir when I was a 4th grader, haha. Though I did have a choral methods course (just me) with the choir director and he was impressed at how solid my falsetto was. Over the next couple years he kept sending me "JOIN CHOIR... JOIN CHOIR......." vibes.

We sightread that once but didn't actually play it haha

Well if my boyfriend can march bari sax you can totally march contra clarinet! :D nah but why couldn't you march regular clarinet?
also eee 2.5-3 stuff *cringe* I was playing grade 4 stuff my freshman year (Among the Clouds by Brian Balmages), wtf?

I am so jealous :c my musical talents lie in music theory and a really good ability to sightread, but otherwise in actual music performance I'm not that great. The only wind instrument I can play is trumpet and even then I'm not that great.

you should totes come to queens and be a music therapy major :D hell you could probably skip out of like half the necessary classes since you've already taken them haha (conducting for instance is a requirement and i remember you saying you did second suite in f for your final for that)! but we could totally hang out every day and discuss music and play kirby

do you have any singing experience or was it just like "LET'S TRY CHOIR" and that happened ?

It's not very prominent music, my friends and I just noticed because we're all band geeks and my boyfriend and I happened to be sitting nearby when we heard the Folk Song Suite rip-off.
Okay, what. Route 1 seriously it couldn't even be something more popular like the title screen theme or something? But either way that is amazing.

I won't speak about it too much cause you'll start feeling bad but marching band was one of the best experiences of my life, without it I wouldn't have all my friends and my boyfriend and high school wouldn't have been as awesome.
Though your school sounds like you played some real neat stuff, how did it suck?