Page 83 - 2019 Senior Will

to have existed in my darkest nightmares, and they play a marimba like it’s the harp of the gods. On top of that, they were all super cool and popular. Like, I thought that marching band was supposed to be full of nerds.(as of present day, the balance has shifted towards nerds) Anyway, by Jim’s good graces, I was the last person chosen, and I think I almost passed out from the adrenaline.
Unexpectedly, I seriously considered quitting during the first 3 days. First warmup of the season generously granted us four-mallet sixteenth-note green scale exercises, which even with all the might stored in my 18 year old body, I could not even come close to playing. Nothing quite like fingers dripping blood all over mallets at 9:30 in the morning. Fortunately, Jasmin taught me Stevens grip the next day, so I actually stood half a fighting chance.
Most importantly, that year was Phantom of the Opera, best UDMB show of all time objectively, and Malagueña as the encore. My first instrument in my first song in this band was that God-forsaken rainstick. I raised that yellow monstrosity above my head at the beginning of Malagueña, for all to gawk at but probably not hear. Unless of course we were between reps or moving equipment when it graced me with nonstop obnoxious shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Halfway through the season, while I was rolling the gong stand, it might have fallen off the gong stand and rolled down the hill and maybe got cracked pretty bad on one end (this was not on purpose). It still worked fine, so obviously I kept it to myself. Later, someone knocked it over while it was leaning against the synth cart, so they thought they broke it and we gave it a nice wrapping of black electrical tape on the end. So from then on, I had to make sure I always lifted the non-broken side to the heavens when I used it. Matts Greene and Grossman both fulfilled their parallelism during the senior show, so I made sure to get mine too.
For Phantom, I played the opening music box part on the bells completely exposed and very terrifying every time. It was accompanied by one marimba and a DTX sample of the first lines from the movie. In all my life, I’ll never forget the raw fear on Dawn’s face at our Allentown performance when she hit that DTX and no sound came out at all. We’ve done a sound check every performance since.
Furthermore, having a week and half of band camp before school started was a bodacious beginning to my college career. While the other freshmen had just arrived and were unnecessarily excited to enter higher education, I was already exhausted, weathered, and cynical. I also got to miss every horrible floor team-building activity. I had also already made some cool new college friends.
I don’t really remember what happened sophomore year, so I guess it wasn’t that important. Junior year, I had to borrow my dad’s drill to help Raman put a marimba back together after some tragic accident. I didn’t do band senior year because I figured I’d study abroad instead.
This year was pretty neat though. I honestly wanted to be section leader pretty bad in the beginning, but after not getting voted in, I realized how lucky I was in dodging that bullet. Responsibility’s cool, but there’s more things in life, and I remembered how much I prefer to be aloof and to not have to be involved with everything. In saying that, I’ve had the most fun with the pit this year by far. While the section’s half rookies, they’re personalities are really, um, “out-there”, which is great for wacky antics. I’m excited to see where those rascals will lead our great front ensemble. I had a good time with the rest of you too, by the way. I also managed to actually meet some people from other sections this year. I was kinda bummed out about missing my senior year of marching band, but I’m truly glad that I made this my final one.
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