The field was sort of large - no where close to the size of a football field, but maybe about half that size. I, personally, was not excited; the ground had a lot of dips and holes. I just took a deep breath and prayed I wouldn't break my ankle.
One of the items on the list to pack was a copy of the music for Santana. Apparently we needed to know which measures to start on. I made my way to the back of the line with my trombone and my music, which was where the fence around the field stood. It was low enough to sit on, and we weren't moving or at attention yet, so I plopped myself down on the thin wood and looked over the music.
I hadn't yet noticed that Jayden was sitting on the opposite end of the fence until I could see Andrea and Jessica looking at me from the corner of my eye. I lifted my head to see Jessica grinning broadly at me. "What?" I asked.
"I ship it," Jessica said.
I looked to my right, just then realizing that Jayden was also sitting on the fence looking at his music. I narrowed my eyes. "Why?" I asked.
Andrea started laughing. "Kayden."
I spread my arms apart. "Seriously? We're just sitting here looking at music."
"I ship it!" Jessica repeated.
"But we're sitting, like, three feet apart!" I protested.
I was expecting Jessica or Andrea to say "I ship it" again, but just then, David blew the whistle for us to get ready. "Band parade rest!" he commanded.
Once we were all at parade rest, Kayla announced that we were going to learn the left, right, quarter, and about faces. Kayla took the front of the lines and David took the back of the lines.
A "face" is the basically turning your body in a certain way in a set number of beats. A left face was a turn to the left, a right face was a turn to the right, a quarter face was a half turn of a left or right face, and an about face is a full 180-degree turn. The about face was the first we went over, and probably the easiest, in my opinion. This face was unique; you had three beats to turn instead of two. On the first beat, you bring your right foot back to your left heel and stand it on your toes, then spin your body around to face the other direction on the second beat, and then, finally, bring your left foot forward to line up with your right.
All the other faces only took two counts to complete. For the left face, you would bring your right heel up and your left toe down and turn your body to the left on one beat, then bring your right foot in to line up with your right. The right face was the exact same process as the left face, except the feet's positions are reversed. We practiced these for a while until every got it down, and then Kayla blew the whistle again for us to prepare for attention.
The drum cadence (I later discovered the name was Apollo) began to play, and we followed the line over to the field. We had already sort been over the visuals for Final Countdown, so we didn't need much of a recap on that. We played the song, put our horns down, and then filed in to our starting spots for Santana.
We already knew the first few measures of the song, but once we were getting to the part where we would move into the shifting lines, David cut us off.
"So," he began, "look at your music. At measure 22, you should be in those lines that we put you in at practice. Then, you're going to lean diagonally with your left foot forward before stepping off to trade lines."
It was pretty confusing, but he told us to sing our parts before we played. We scattered from the starting position of the song to the lines, and went over the next group of measures.
That was probably my biggest complaint about band camp. Both of my spots for Santana and Fly Me To The Moon (the third song we were playing for the field show) where right smack in the middle of a huge puddle. I was so grateful that I had remembered to bring my old tennis shoes, because my good pair would have been soaked if I hadn't.
After the drum majors shouted "Go back to measure 22!" for the hundredth time, Jessica apparently got tired of hearing me complain, because she switched spots with me for the rest of camp.
What did I learn from this experience?
Twenty-two is my new least favorite number.
YOU ARE READING
25 or 6 to 4 {EDITING}
Teen Fiction[Based on a true story] Kaylee has no clue what happened. One second, she is sitting in middle school with her nose stuck in a book, and the next she's in the band room with a trombone between her legs. For years, it had always been her dream to jo...
