A ‘Borg and a Baritone #9: “Camp 6 – New Level!”

A different vibe was in the air on Sunday – did we just level up?

Greyhound tried its best to screw up the entire weekend.

More after the Break.

I should have known from the very beginning that Saturday would be… ‘trying’: I actually got some sleep! Except that I slept until 10 AM, *just* late enough to put a little bit of a crunch on time. That crunch went away when my trip to the laundromat took barely an hour, including TARC time.

I packed, disconnected my U-Verse box, killed a little time, then headed to the Greyhound station.

That’s where the trouble started.

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I got to the station around 3:00; my bus was scheduled to leave at 3:35. When I went to check in my under-the-bus bag, the clerk told me that my bus was late. 3 hours late. Instead of sitting in the station for 3+ hours (I normally do that on Sundays), I walked back to the nearest #4 TARC and went home. At about 5:30, I headed back to the Greyhound station, getting there around 6:05 for an estimated 6:30 departure.

The bus left at 7:50. I got into my hotel at 10:15 PM, about 45 minutes before I would have lost my reservation. No real down-time, no time to do homework. GRRR. On the bright side, it was the nicest, cleanest hotel I’ve been in , this season. Kudos the Kingsgate Hotel and Conference Center!!

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Sunday was much better, for the most part!

Warm-ups was led by Justin (Jesse was running a few minutes late). He introduced a few new stretching and warmup options. Combined with Jesse’s routines, I now have a loaded book of stretches and exercises to use at home.

We were in Full Brass for the first 2 hours. Besides the breathing and buzzing warmups, Jake (then Andrew) went over timing and tuning. I wasn’t playing nearly as flat as 2 weeks ago, but there’s still more work needed. We then went to work on our ballad, opener, and touched on our 3rd tune. It was weird, however – the last hour of Full Brass felt “hectic”; it felt like we were trying to cram 3 hours of rehearsal into 1 hour of time. That wouldn’t be the first time on Sunday that that happened.

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We then went into Visuals for an hour, give or take. We worked on transitioning between forward and backward steps. Everyone seemed just a tick slow; I don’t know if we were all tired from the morning but it took Calvin getting on us – nothing terribly “harsh”, just a “wake up, people!” announcement – before we started clicking. We ended on a positive note, which is always good.

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I did not leave my lunch in the hotel room, this time. 😉 Tried to get a little more HW done but could not understand the video that my professor posted. Awesome!

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After lunch, we went into Sectionals for a hour or so. The Baris/Euphs stayed with Andrew and worked on the new 3rd tune. It went OK, considering we were sight-reading. Once the rest of the brass came back, we all worked on the 3rd tune.

Have you played a video game that cranked up the difficulty before you fought a mini-boss? Well, Andrew turned the intensity up 3 difficulty levels, became the mini-boss, and proceeded to dissect the Brass section into quivering chunks. I’m not sure if we even got to a Check Point.

The finer details – not moving the valves in time, marking time, missed attacks, etc. – were hammered into us; if we missed one of them, we played that section over. I’m still a little irritated at myself for missing an entire bar of counting and blatting out a note during a 4-count, full Brass rest. We had to repeat that section. Bahh.

Those last 2 hours also felt like we were cramming hours worth of info into 1 or 2 hours. Maybe it was just “one of those days”?

The last 30 minutes of the day was Full Ensemble: Brass and Percussion. It was my first time hearing the opener with the Battery and the Front Ensemble (I missed the camp where the groups played together). I reeeeally like the Percussion parts; it’s easy to hear and feel how their parts lead into the Brass line’s entrances. Other than a couple of sloppy entrances by the Baris/Euphs (one of them was me – my note just did not ‘speak’ on time), it was a solid ending to the rehearsal!

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There are certain musical phrases and notes that I love hearing in marching band and drum corps shows. Mellophone 16th-note runs and ‘stings’ are some of them. Our 3rd tune might end up my favorite, for those reasons. We’ll see. 😉

Overall, I think I stayed at about the same level as last camp. I took a small step back with “focus” mistakes: missing 2 entrances, where there was no reason to miss one, other than not paying attention. I also took a small step back with my feet: last camp, I thought I might had torn my Plantar Plate before the camp; 2 days after this past camp, I am pretty sure it’s torn. I did not make it out of Warm-ups before the left foot tried to start a riot. Thankfully, I don’t have much left to do this week (that’s not work) that requires shoes or walking, so I’m going to tape the toes/ball of my foot and take it as easy as possible; it doesn’t mean I’ll become a hermit, it just means that shoes are optional until Saturday afternoon.

Despite that, I think I took a few small steps forward. I played closer to in-tune than the last few camps. I’ll continue to work on buzzing on my mouthpiece (with a tuner, when possible/allowed) to get a more consistent, in tune sound. I also didn’t have many elbow issues: the elbows stayed out, with only 1 time where I let the left elbow drop noticeably. I need to work on that a lot, especially when we get horns to check out. Maybe the biggest step forward: very little shoulder pain after the camp! Stiffness was expected but neither shoulder was sore, even with how long we had our horns up this time. Progress!

I thought the group overall responded well after that sluggish start. We (Brass) responded with a better effort after lunch, even with some mistakes. Andrew pressed us – hard – near the end of the day but there were no hanging heads, no pouting, and definitely no grumbling. We “survived the boss fight” and leveled up – now, what do we do with our “new stats” on the 24th? We’ll see!

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Going home.

UGH!!

Our rehearsals are over at 6; I usually get to the Greyhound Station by 6:30; my bus home leaves at 9:50.

I killed some time reading and listening to music, trying not to let a lot of fresh-out-of-practice soreness get to me. I looked at the Arrivals & Departures board:

10:24 departure.

Ok, not terrible but it will cost me the last TARC home, once I get to Louisville.

10:24 goes by. And 10:30. And 11:30. And 12:00.

At about 12:15, everyone waiting on the Louisville-Nashville-Atlanta bus got $50 vouchers for “inconveniences”. Cool!

12:30… 1:00… finally, at 1:15 shows up.

And takes forever to load.

We left Cincinnati at 1:40 and got into Louisville at 3:22. I booked Uber and got home at 3:55 AM, Monday morning.

I have a 5 AM alarm for work. I went to work on no sleep at home, maybe an hour on the bus. Although I got about 5-6 hours on Monday night, it is currently early Wednesday morning and I am still wobbly from lack of sleep. Thank you for screwing up a good of my weekend, Greyhound!!

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I have half of the tour costs paid off – thank you, Federal Refund! I hope to completely pay everything off by the 2nd march camp. As for the next camp, my bus trip will be paid for by vouchers; the hotel should also be fairly inexpensive. I want to work on fitness more, especially this week. For playing, I need to continue to buzz my mouthpiece, along with working on memorization. There are also videos of us marching that I can study; I definitely need to lock down the CT marching style.

See you on the 24th of February!