Band

Band?! Did you say BAND?! I LOVE BAND!!! I'll tell you all about it. 

Band is fun. We make noise and make more noise and make even more noise and have fun with it. I like making noise, so band is just the thing for me! Plus, good things happen when you join the band...like YOU GET TO GO TO HAWAII! And march during the summer. And get into home football games free because you're there for pep band. Below I'll tell you about each type of band and why it's fun. Hopefully I can scrounge up some pictures, too...

SCHOOL BAND:

School band is fun. On my official class schedule I believe it says "Symphonic Band", but I don't know the specifics. Anyway, we mainly play marches and other pieces of music for concert bands. But luckily we don't play just classical music because that's boring. Plus, there's never homework in band! The only homework (and it's not even assigned) is practicing. And you only have to do that if you want to, because the people that practice always end up in the higher ensembles. Mainly, we sit around and work on the music. No music theory. No advanced stuff. That comes later. 

My trumpet. (photo by me)

MARCHING BAND:

At my school, this is [unfortunately] a summer program. We only practice during the school year for a few weeks to prepare our homecoming half-time show. After that, the marching season ends. But while the season IS still going, it's basically all of us band nerds (there were 10 trumpets this year!) and we spend our summer getting up early to come to rehearsal in the morning. This is actually a good thing because if we did it any later, it would be BROILING HOT. Even by the time we're done, around 10:00 a.m, it's just starting to get unbearable. Other than rehearsal, we do about 10 parades from early June to Labor Day. At this year's Labor Day parade, (the very last one of the season) our band director read us our invitation letter to Hawaii next year! That was the very first we had heard of the trip, and we got excited about it right away. Even though some of that's worn off, I'll never forget what it felt like to figure out we were going to Honolulu for a PARADE!

Us standing at attention just before the halftime show this year.

PEP BAND:
Pep band is fun! Though not as fun as marching band, it's right up there with marching in parades and across football fields. At every home football game, we take up a third of the home bleachers and play "stadium jams" and little bits of popular songs, the school song, and we open the game with the national anthem. The only bad thing about pep band is that it gets colder the later it is in the football season. But it's fun. We share food and laugh and joke around and play fun music. It's all good. (Someone remind me to get a picture of pep band or something before the football season ends. I never think to take pictures at times like those.)

MY OTHER BAND-RELATED HOBBIES:
I used to like designing fashion. Now that I'm in band, this means uniforms. Here are some of my attempts.

This set of uniforms for a fictional band was the first set I ever did.

I actually like this one quite a bit...

Fail- the gold buttons overshot the green stripe. I'll have to redesign this one. 

Also, I, unlike many people, actually like practicing my band music, so when I have time I'll do that. Otherwise I'll be doing homework. Or something. 
I also designed a custom motor coach for bands. I talked about it in the post The Bandwagon. 

I probably have other band-related hobbies that I can't think of at the moment. If I ever remember them I'll edit this page then.