Squelch - The July Rehearsal

In the days leading up to the July rehearsal, it rained with much volume and determination. This meant that come the weekend, whilst it wasn't actively raining, the field was nonetheless a bit of a raging swamp.

As a result, I brought gumboots. We then proceeded to not go onto the field all day.

Saturday began (and ended) with a music rehearsal. As well as continuing to hone our Cirque du Soleil and ANZAC day music, we began (and continued) work on our tour music: Birdland and Beethoven's Fifth [themes therefrom], as well as that favourite from last year: I Want You Back. Birdland posed some difficulties for those of us in low brass due to the generally low range of the piece, combined with the fact that the score is quite small. Because
Fun Fact: when you're playing low notes on low brass, your vision goes blurry from the vibrations. Which makes reading small music quite difficult. Especially [as with the sousa part] when the majority of the score is ledger lines. Fun times.

On the plus side, Beethoven 5 involves the style marking 'Rage!'. One can't find fault in a piece which is just asking one to go nuts.

Then followed our learning of the Anzac Day drill, which comprised of a lot of walking backwards and forwards, with the odd passthrough. Not as impressive as this passthrough Katrina showed us, but still reasonably snazzy.

We also got to see for the first time the drill for the drum feature, replete with a foot kicking a ball through some goalposts. Apparently much fun was had in the writing of that particular drill.

Sunday involved going on the field. It was squelchy.

We began with an assembly wherein we were introduced to Alison's French exchange student, Jean; and Liam learned that Anthony could potentially incapacitate him. There was more music, and then onto the field to learn the drill from the drum feature.

All the drill learning done over the course of the weekend [and the speed with which it took place] prompted Katrina to comment on how easy it is to learn drill when your music is memorised. For those of you who either didn't pick up on that thinly veiled hint, or otherwise weren't there, that was her telling you to memorise your music. SO DO IT!

After the accomplishment of learning six minutes worth of drill in the space of two hours [and after bandying about the word 'schmick' - at least that's how I assume it would be spelt] there was the memorisation test. Congratulations go to Ben Gray (both of them), Ben Mills, Shane and Brendan (the cymbal player) for not getting anything wrong. Brendan also gets a special mention for being more entertaining than Shane. I don't think anyone saw that one coming.

The afternoon music rehearsal also saw the vocalist auditions for tour. As it turned out, no-one is going to be singing You are the Sunshine of my Life, but there will be singing in I Want You Back. Fun times for Paul and myself.

There was also the promise made of a recording of the drum feature so as to enable us to practice it at home. By now an mp3 file should be floating about the theoretical aether of your internet. Make use of it.

Our next rehearsal will be the weekend of the AFL performance. Make sure you know all your music, make sure you're uninjured, and above all else, make sure you know that the date has changed.

Stay keen, kids.