Timbre

Movement One

Timbre: Movement One

Carmen

I woke up and looked around my apartment, my eyes settling on my alarm clock. 3:32. Great. I woke up before I had to. Groaning, I sat up and slowly dragged my hands from the top of my face to the my bed. Today was my first day of college. I was a music major, studying for my dream career, a band director. To say I was excited was an understatement.

Slipping on my bluetooth headphones and pressing play on my phone, I began to get ready. I settled on a ripped pair of high waisted dark wash jeans, a light gray v-cut tee shirt, and my purple high top Converse. I brushed my teeth and washed my face, dancing along to the beat of the drum. I nodded my head slightly while putting in my nose piercing and earrings, making sure my second holes and my industrial bar were put in carefully. All of the piercings were black, though my first piercings were faux gages in the shape of treble clefs.

I cocked my head to the side, glaring at my reflection. My hair was an absolute mess. Taming it as best as I could, I managed to pull my brown curly locks into a decent looking ponytail.

The remainder of my time was spent playing my guitar, laying down a few chord progressions I had stuck in my head. I wasn't the best song writer by any means. I took AP music theory my senior year of high school, passing with a solid A, but I never really used too much theory when I wrote, which was probably why all of my pieces sounded like shit.

Despite waking up early as hell, I still managed to just barely make it into choir on time. The teacher just shook his head, pointing to a seat that was empty. Looking down, I awkwardly shuffled my way to my seat, already dreading the class. I wasn't much of a choir fan. In fact, I hated choir. It just wasn't for me. However, as a music major, I was required to take a semester of it.

My gaze caught sight of the girl beside me through my peripheral vision. I watched her for a while out of the corner of my eye until the teacher spoke.

"So my name is Professor Gomez," the teacher introduced, writing his name on the whiteboard behind him. "Many, if not all of you are music majors, therefore I will push this class to its highest potential. What happens here will forever shape your future. If you want to do well in whatever field you choose to go into, the skills that you learn here will help aid you in your careers."

Professor Gomez began to bore me, so I studied the classroom, my gaze once again settling on the girl beside me. She was taking notes studiously in her marble composition notebook while the professor rambled on about how the class was going to be, his expectations, and all of the other snippets of information that I really couldn't give less of a shit about.

After what felt like much too long, the class ended and I was the first one to leave. I headed to the courtyard to get some fresh air before I had to go to Spanish. I got most of my world culture classes out of the way in high school, but I wanted to make sure that I was as fluent as possible in Spanish as I could be. I always felt that it'd be of better benefit to my future students if I could speak Spanish, especially with Texas having such a large Spanish speaking community.

After Spanish I headed to my third and last class of the day, band. Headphones on, I briskly made my way back to the fine arts building to the band hall. I smiled when I opened the door, the aroma and overall feel of the room making me feel at ease. I breathed in deeply, the scents of cork grease, slide grease, and valve oil filling my nostrils. The band hall was always a second home to me. Knowing that getting through choir actually meant that I was one class closer to going to band was what made it all worth it.

I sat down in the front row of chairs, waiting for the rest of the class to get settled so the band director could speak. After what felt like much too long, she finally stepped to the podium.