High School Band Experiences/Stories? What you learned from them?

Snare

Member
I'm currently in 10th grade and curious about what kinds of stories, teachers, skills, fellow students, etc. other drummers dealt with/had before they left high school and joined a band or went professional. (I'll post my own story(ies) as well.)
 
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Well let’s see...

My school has a very musically talented group of students. Unfortunately we have a shrinking band and a disorganized band director (no offense meant to him, he's a great guy). But on Friday (April 30th) we had a Spring Concert and he waited until about last Tuesday (April 20th) to start preparing for it. For jazz band, both of our usual drummers (who are awesome) quit because of work or sports, so he had to find a new guy. In addition to that he waited until 3 days before the concert to start a fourth Concert Band song. And all of the drummers except for our section leader were put into a separate class from the concert band. So we had no idea what was going on. Basically crap hit the fan and we had 10 days to whip up a concert.

For the jazz band problem, one of guys in my percussion class, who's sort of a Rock/Punk/Metal type player volunteered to do jazz band and since I'm a decent set player (not so great with jazz) I went to the afterschool rehearsal to see how good he was. One of the songs given was "Pick up the Pieces" by the Average White Band, he couldn't even play the basic beat, so it wasn't looking good. Then about 48 hours before the concert, when he'd been working on the music for multiple days, the band director suddenly replaced him with our section leader, he got sorta angry and left.

For the Concert Band song, we managed to learn it in 3 days, but on the night of the concert all of the percussion instruments were mixed up, missing, or still attached to the drum set for the jazz band and people were playing parts they were never assigned to, so we had to settle for a sub-par performance. I was surprised afterwards when so many people were complimenting the concert, but oh well.

The lesson I learned here was "logistics".
 
Hey, im year 11, in england thats like the last year of school before you go off to college or something else. But any ways i was in year 9 and was playing drums for a band of older kids, so i thought it would all be fine and everything, but then we started our first song and it was a cover, and as we got to the break down our singer ran off stage, and i was like ahh? but we carried on playing and then i was suprised because the crowd, about 200-300 started singing the lyrics and i was like wow, thats pretty kwl. Just a nice story i thought i would share.
 
I just played in New York City on Friday for a club that consists of older, retired people.
This was for my school and we had band and chorus play. After both of those our jazz band played for the people. I played one song which was pretty upbeat and fun. After that we played "The Stripper" which is exactly the type of music you think it is. (If you don't know what the song is). So a 60+ year old man got up and started dancing with all of the high school girls that came.
Here is the song if you haven't heard it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TBrh259zig

This is a very bad drum version compared to how we do it at my school. But it's basically it.
 
Aha =] the last story reminded me of what happend on my schools music tour. We were playing in massive park thing in belguim or france, i cant remember but a local man that busks must have saw one of our flyers we were handing out and he turned up. He brought along his guitar to, which had a massive hole on its back, and during our setting up and sound check he stood in front of the microphone and began playing one of his songs, it was a weird moment, but very funny, when we had finished setting up and stuff, one of tech guys kiked him off stage. I thought that we had saw the end of him, but he sat in the front row, and when the first band went on he jumped on with his broken guitar and tried to jam with them, it was great cause he did a little dance whilst he was playing his guitar and then one of our tech guys kiked him off stage again, so then the busker guy grabbed one of our samba drums and sat through the rest of the bands tapping along in the front row. That was a funny day.
 
Probably the best weekend ive ever had at high school was when our wind ensemble went to Williamsburg, Virginia to compete in a band competition. Long story short we ended up winning 1st place in everything we were eligible to win.

But we also walked around Williamsburg in gorgeous weather, met some awesome people (and drummers!), and ran around our hotel with a LOUD boom box and 40 or so high school students dancing and singing to dance/pop/electronic music, it was quite the experience, not to mention the 8 hour bus ride there and back.

Now I'm in college and you dont get that anymore :(..
 
I felt that my high school band was like musical suffocation. It was an awful experience. If you feel that way then quit band and join up in college. College is so much better musically.
 
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