Marching Band is over.

I returned from WBA Grand Champs 2 days ago, and I've had a bit of time to reflect.

This post will be all about senior year in the front ensemble. It kind of makes sense to have this post wrap over everything about marching band, but that will take a lot of time to formulate. If you want, you can visit the band label for all posts related to band.

What a season.

I only did marching band in 9th, 10th, and 12th grade, and 10th grade was the online year, so I pretty much only have 2 legit marching band seasons.

Anyway, first of all, everyone in the pit section is just so iconic to me, and I'll remember it so vividly forever.

- Rathul, center marimba, chillest guy, funny to troll.

- Bog, og.

- Matthew, someone I truly feel content dapping up every time he turns around. I remember during friends and family, when he turned around with such a genuine smile and dapped us up after act 1. That was such a sincerely genuine moment. It feels so surreal thinking about it, it was such a happy moment.

- Paul Lee, cool person with a very unique personality taht I can't capture through words

- Skye, really funny even tho he speaks more words on discord than IRL. He lowkey owns rathul and bog and matthew even tho hes a 10th grader it's crazy. He literally has them on their knees when he steals their drumsticks its so funny watching these seniors break down trying to get their stuff back lmao

- Raghav, who loves and hates me, both for my antics. He's the future of front ensemble, and I always see him sweating in any given moment. It's admirable, he will be captain in 2 years.

- hispanic nico, who is such a funny guy. I don't know what to say, he's so easy to be around, and fun to troll. he has such a genuine nature to himself, with layers of humbleness, gratitude, and happiness.

- olivia, emotionally volatile, which really brings out the happy and sad moments of her. Very nice and genuine person, so nice honestly. Her laugh is very unique, and amusing in a good way.

- brighton, who hated me for entire band camp. I didn't know what to do, especially since he was placed right next to me. But he gradually just saw me for who I am, and not a competitor to him. We're geniune friends now, and seeing him gradually just realize that we're cool...was very fulfilling. I really hope he moves on to do great things in life, he's very passionate.

- desmond, who loves to complain, but righftfully so. His complaints and the way he phrases and speaks about them is so amusing and funny, especially when he gets into arguments with the section leaders lmao. We push clifford together, and I love trolling him a lot

- carson, who is such a genuinely happy person with a great vibe. he never gets visibly upset, he supports everything you say, and has an insanely unique personality.

- jared, who is someone that holds so much underneath the surface. He has a gentle side to him that I can see shine, and I really hope to see him grow and shine. He has a great attitude.

- Oliver, who slowly found his place here, daniel, who is still an NPC but I'm sure will grow out of it like a lot of people when they were a freshmen. Anya is such a nice person, who I kind of see as a mini-Olivia in some ways, but not all ways.

- Zero, who took the entire season, at Friends and Families, to tell me that we went to Red Dragonfly together. All this time he knew that I didn't recognize him, and didn't tell me. As I reflect on how our relationship was during that time, it's honestly just special to think about it. And now, I literally see every side of him and when he was young with red dragonfly wtih me.

- Tianna, who has a great attitude and has nothing dislikable about.

It's just so hard to say goodbye to this section, everyone is so iconic in my lens. Everyone is so unique in this section.

This post will be very scrappy. I don't want to properly transition.

Average Rehearsal

SO here's how the average rehearsal is in pit during mid-season to late-season.

4:25 - 4:40 = Leave for marching band practice, pit required to be there by 4:40. Realistically, the last couple of practices I got there by 4:54 since there wasn't motivation to get there early besides it being "the right thing to do."

4:40 - 4:54 = mess around. Realistically I never helped set up cuz most of the time it was already set up by some sweats or something. SO I would go into that particular practice room and see if there's any good snacks storing in there. I missed when they had that brown sugar boba flavored gummy thing. That thing was LEGENDARY. Other than that, I would probably peck and wait for someone to get mad at me, or go into the practice room to play on the piano.

4:54 - 5:10 = Go to attendance block. One thing that's crazy is how attendance block has transformed from 9th grade to 12th grade. In 9th grade as a mello, my section leaders SWEATED attendance block. We would have to be in standing by with our feet in the pizza angle. If we tried talking or turning around the slightest we'd be out of place and yelled at lmao. BUT NOWADAYS, literally everyone has airpods visibly on lmao. No one even hides it, everyone has airpods on. You can argue that listening to music before practice helps you settle in and lock in, so no one really cares anymore.

5:10 - 6:30 = This varies, sometimes it's until 6:00, but front ensemble is in the band room, with the AC on if it's hot, or with the heater on if it's cold. :D We usually just take like 45 minutes for warmups (7/8s in every major key, dirt in every major key, verts, durian, 2 mallet dirt, etc.). Then we run some show chunks. Lots of times we isolate a run, either in the ballad or letter T of act 3, and clean it out.

6:30 - 8:00 = I yell "TIME TO PUSH OUT MY VIBE" as I aimlessly stare into Desmond's soul and gesture towards pushing it out. If he doesn't stop me then I'll actually push it out, but usually he gets mad and I get the walls for clifford, a synth cart, and help him steer it on the field. We do full ensemble with the marching band, and running these short 8 count or 16 count chunks with the band is so USELESS and BORING as a front ensemble member I hate it so much. Especially during segments with cymbal rolls.

8:00 = If it's wednesday, I'll book it for the snacks. Otherwise, we push back in clifforrd and load, and I usually drive back home at around like 8:30.

Closing

I was gonna make a separate heading for champs, but I figured, why not just make another short blog post for champs ? It's more organized this way, so yeah. This was my senior year marching band. Marching band really meant a lot to me, and I remember watching the runs on YouTube in 11th grade and getting chills. I knew I couldn't miss it this year, and I'm so glad I rejoined, especially as a pit member.

I talked about this in my senior speech too. Here's what I said in my senior speech:

I just went over those bullet points. It's crazy cuz I remember being a freshmen in the back of the risers in the band room listening to the speeches. Now I'm a senior, looking down over all of the freshmen.

Anyway, here are some photos of this season. I will only add like 2-3 right now to test out if the photos will actually load, since in my "hospitalized for 5 days" post, all the images just didn't work when I published it for some reason. Very frustrating since that post had a lot of pictures.