Day 16

Date: May 30, 2011
Time: 11:26pm
Playing on iTunes: "Not the Same" by Ben Folds Five

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!!

I have a little caterpillar on my shoe

And HAPPY SHADE DAY!! The pit decided to take shelter since it was going to be brutal with heat today. Although, there was a lot of bugs, so in goes the sunscreen and out comes the bug spray. Good thing I came prepared!! (thanks Dad!) There's been bugs making my vibraphone their home. I'll be playing all morning block and see a bunch of dead bugs at the end...uh oh. My bad.




For lunch, we were given a Memorial Day cookout...burgers, dogs, chicken, tater tots, and apple sause...mmmmm...all of which I ate. After the lunch block we decided to have some fun in the trees...safely. First picture is of all the vibraphone players. Second picture is what we call "Woods in the woods". "Woods" referring to the people who play the keyboard instruments made out of wood, such as the marimbas and xylophone. Last is a picture of the back row of the pit, mainly electronics, synthesizer, timpani, percussion racks, accessories, and such.

Vibraphones

Woods in the woods

Back row

Before ensemble at night, we had a snack break in which they gave us fruit, veggies, ranch, bananas, ya know...healthy foods. But no, I decided to go to the second table and proceed to make a peanut butter and jelly chocolate chip pancake...sandwich. I will not post a picture because it is too disgusting to look at but I will tell you first hand that it was a GREAT tasting sandwich. Two pieces of chocolate chip pancakes with chunky Jif peanut butter and Smuckers grape jelly filling. Mmmmmmmmm.... Aside from that great snack, ensemble tonight was great. We're ALMOST done with the second chart (percussion feature). Everything is coming together pretty well. Although tonight's run through was not as good as last night's run through. But not need to worry, we're striving to get better every day.


I just realized that I need to keep up with my book "This Is Your Brain On Music" by Daniel Levitin. I have only got through about 8 pages. I just seem to fall asleep if I'm laying down and reading, probably should change my reading place. Well, I'll get to that. See ya tomorrow!!




Quote of the day: 


John 15:12-14

12 This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 

Day 15

Date: May 30, 2011
Time: 12:20am
Playing on iTunes: "I'll Be There" by Jackson 5











HOT!! HOT!! HOT!! Man it was hot today. Trying to keep from completely burning through my skin. Luckily I already burned once, and so far it hasn't be burning as bad now. I've been putting sun screen on very often so dad can't say that I'm not using my sun screen! It's just really hot and sunny so it's just a lot of hours in the sun. But it's great. I'll be VERY dark by the end of the summer. =)


After lunch block today, the pit got final fittings to make sure the amends done to our uniforms were the correct ones. And here's how my friend Taylor and I look:

One thing that the pit gets to do is drive around in the gator (tractor) and trailer behind it. Well...we don't actually ride around in it unless it's at the end of the day and we need to get to dinner. But otherwise, we use it strictly for moving equipment. There are some really tight spaces that we need to get the trailer through and usually I have to guide Taylor through them so he doesn't get stuck. Today some of the volunteers added little side mirrors and bright orange bendable poles (not sure what you'd call them) to show the width of the trailer so that Taylor can get through the tight areas by himself. You can see in the picture below. It worked great. First try Taylor got through the entrance of the stadium with an inch to spare on each side! The volunteers here are great. They do so much for us and we couldn't thank them enough. Volunteers here are greatly appreciated and we make sure they know it even though it's not enough for the amount of work they put in. The pit even has a song for the volunteers; I'll post a video of it at a later point. Hahaha

Dinner tonight was absolutely great. A classic homemade meal. Ham with pineapple, sides of potatoes and broccoli. Tasted amazing and especially after a long day of sweating and rehearsal. Everyone was talking about how this has been their best meal here for dinner since the beginning of spring training. I know the picture is a little bright because of my flash but hopefully you can get the gist of the plate. (As you can tell, I like to take pictures of food).

After dinner, I cut my friend Dan's (synthesizer player) hair. It's really funny because I shaved his sideburns and there is a tan line where his sideburns were! But check out my barbermanship...(is that a word?) Well you know what I mean. Check out how I did.

BEFORE

AFTER

Aside from everything that is happening, I am having the absolute time of my life. I wake up every morning excited to start the day. I've never felt this way before, and I love it. Doing the Cadets was a great choice and I will never forget one moment of this summer.




Quote of the day: "Take care of yourself and be safe. You have one life to live. Enjoy it and make smart decisions."

Day 14

Date: May 28, 2011

Time: 11:54pm

Playing on iTunes: "Nocturne #11 in G minor" by Frédéric Chopin

Yesterday we had a man by the name of Ian Grom come in and help out the pit for a few days. He is an extrodinaire with technology, synths, and special effects (sounds). He was asked to put together a pre-show for the corps. The pre-show is something he put together on a program on his computer and was transfered to our sampler. A button on the sampler will be pressed and this entire opening thing will play. I will post recording of it at a later point. This will play before we're about to start the show when everyone is getting set up and getting ready to perform the show so there is no awkward silence. We got to hear what he made himself and it was absolutely incredible. It was a gorgeous combination of strings and latin choruses singing beautiful harmony combined with our whirlies and wine glasses. This sets up the show beautifully and very smoothly.

Since we got a new synth, I had helped out a little bit getting different synth patches for the different parts of the show since the new synth player was not used to the keyboard yet. He eventually became used to how to use the keyboard and has been setting up the different settings himself since the off-season. When Ian Grom came in, he pretty much changed EVERYTHING that we had put in their since December since it didn't sound good. Guess I gotta do some listening and try out some more patches (sounds on the keyboard). But he did his job...everything sounds absolutely amazing now. 

Horn line warming up for rehearsal

During ensemble tonight, we ran through the entire first chart and half of the second chart (the drum feature), and at the end of the night, George Hopkins told us that we sounded ridiculous. That's all he kept saying, and he also told us that he's "never been this happy on memorial day weekend since [I] was 10." This is an incredible thing to hear because to be in a place like the corps is now only 2 weeks in, is absolutely astonishing. We're going to be great this year and everyone will perform their hearts out at every show. 100% all the time.

After dinner, we were shown a 40-minute presentation of the history of the Cadets. We're the oldest existing corps, dating back to 1934; our inception. A lot of the pictures and videos that were showed were really awesome, exemplifying the greatest and perfection this corps strives for every year. Even since 1934. It was great to see a lot of memorabilia from the corps over the years. There were jackets, pictures, plaques, certificates, etc. out on the tables for all of us to see. It was great.

Also, got my entire front torso sunburnt. =)

Quote of the day: "Never judge someone by their looks or actions, there is ALWAYS something great on the inside...no matter how deep you need to go." 

Day 13

Date: May 28, 2011
Time: 12:23am
Playing on iTunes: "Ender" by Finch








I have never been more wet in my entire life than I am right now. It's been relatively nice out all day, the pit set up for ensemble, and the rain just came down like crazy. The sun came out for a little while and we stood around like idiots wonder what to do since it was dry enough to uncover the instruments but still drizzling to the point where the instruments may get damaged. But we decided to just go for it and play. Why not go 100% if you're going to do something right?...unless it damages the instruments...I don't know. That's besides the point. We got through rehearsal semi damp. After rehearsal the pit gets to dinner about half hour late, and has to walk to the Hop meeting; food in hand. We get into the hop meeting and I don't think one article of clothing was dry at all (at least the building was nice and warm...).


As far as the events during the day, last night the guys in the pit went to Wal*Mart to get CPG (Cadets Pit Guys) shirts. Every year, the girls get CPC (Cadets Pit Chicks) shirts. They all match. So this year we decided to get CPG shirts. And to top it off, the guys all got matching Faded Glory boating shoes!! You can't see them in the picture below but there will soon be a corny picture of them, I'm sure of it. If you look below the guys' picture, you can see the picture of the pit and all of the girls are wearing the same shirt...that's their CPC shirt. I personally think our plain baby blue v-necks and boat shoes beat them but that's just me. =P

Back row (left to right): Me, Dan, Nate
Front row (left to right): Taylor, Sam, Andrew, Brendan, Ben

Girls (left to right): Kelsey, Maggie, Vanessa, Justine, Bri, Rebecca, Iris

The overall pace of spring training is really starting to kick in. Everyday I catch myself realize everything that is going on and think that, "Holy crap it's already day 13. I'm already half way done with spring training. A week from next Wednesday we're performing our first show. Wow...this is amazing." So in a little less than two weeks I'll be on the road performing and embarking on my journey across the US!




Quote of the day: "Don't let little things get to you because in the end, does it really change anything?"

Day 12

Date: May 27, 2011
Time: 12:29am
Playing on iTunes: "Two Coins" by Dispatch

As you may be able to see, our marimba cymbals have a little friend on top.
A little dog stuff animal. He's white

Well, we did our best. We came in 4th place overall after all the time we put in. As you can see from the picture, Chabad of Argentina Relief Appeal were victorious by a mere 38 votes over Petfinder.com. But the one important fact is that Petfinder did not come in first place. I'm not sure how Chabad got all the votes they did in the end, but they must have had a system that worked because they were pumping out hundreds of votes a minute in the last half hour. Well I have learned that even though we did not get the first place prize, we all tried hard and had fun doing it. Although some of us has be defriended, blocked, or just purely disliked by many people on Facebook, we all still had a blast doing this whole Chase business. No one complained about what place we go in which was a great thing that I realized. Everyone is here for the same reason. To work hard, have fun, and do their best no matter what the outcome.


As far as the rehearsal day went, we started off with PT (physical training) and this time we ran 2 1/2 miles. My gosh, I had no clue I could run that far! It was a great work out. After running, we had three full block of sectional rehearsal for the pit. We got some new presents today...a new synth case!! It's a perfect fit for the keyboard we have here. I have the same keyboard at home with a hard case so I understand if anyone says it is either heavy or large. We decided to have a little fun with the size of this road case by trying to fit people in it...let's see how we did...

After this fun little session, we went into subsectionals (sectional rehearsal within the pit itself) and some people in the pit had to go somewhere with the gator (John Deere) and trailer. And when they came back, they came back with a recliner that we had been eyeing down behind a dorm on campus. They brought it over, took it out of the trailer, and gave it to our instructor to sit down on. How comfy!

The monsoon that we got for about 20 minutes

Then an administrator from the office came to find me and gave me something and said, "Here's a present from the ladies at Starbucks." I was confused...it was my wallet!! My wallet had fallen out of my pants last night when at Starbucks for 6 hours. I never carry my wallet out here so I never check for it and I must have not checked for it last night when I left. That was a mistake! Well, someone knew that I would have freaked out without my wallet, so a Starbucks lady sent it back for me. Thank you so much! I do not know what would have happened if I did not have my wallet!

For dinner we were graciously given pizza and cake! It was someone in the tuba section's birthday and his parents paid for all of the pizza (I think around 60-65 boxes) and got the cake. It was absolutely delicious! Great dinner to end a great day.

"To Follow by faith alone is to follow blindly." - Benjamin Franklin

Day 11

Date: May 25, 2011

Time: 11:00pm

Playing on iTunes: otherwise known as "Forget You" by Cee Lo Green

Birthday girl, Vanessa, with her birthday cake glasses

Today was a VERY interesting day. Started off with a Cadets Pit going on a trip to Starbucks for our section leader, Vanessa's, birthday. We got the Cadets bus to bring the entire pit down there bright and early and I got my favorite drink there; a Double Chocolatey Chip Frappucino.

Iris at Starbucks

The entire Cadets pit!!

The schedule of the day was going to be a little bit different from a normal day...no ensemble. So the pit was going to have three full blocks to ourselves to work on music. After lunch we got back to the rehearsal site and broke up into sectionals to practice on our own for a while. After about 10 minutes I was taken away to get my uniform fitted. Took a few tries to get the right pants size but it looks GREAT! I cannot wait to finally wear the marroon, white, and gold on the field for the first time! Upon returning to the rehearsal site, we were about to start to practice a warmup chart and our instructor got a call from an administrator with the Cadets. Apparently there was an NFL player at the Starbucks down the street and they (admin team) got him to "tweet" (a form of notifying people about something via the social network Twitter) about YEA! and to vote for us in the Chase Community Giving Campaign. This was a great opportunity for us because we just started to get celebrities and athletes to tweet about us. So the pit was asked to break down, pack up, and go down to Starbuck's to show the support that YEA! has and that he should get people to vote for our organization. We were at Starbucks from 5:30p until 10p (close), then we got moved to the conference center on the Pitt Johnstown campus.

Earlier on in the day George Hopkins sent out this email:

CADETS STOP REHEARSALS!!!!

In an unprecedented move, the Cadets will stop all rehearsals at 5:30 pm today! 

That's right .... no more practicing.

Instead, the corps will be sitting in lobbies and coffee houses across Johnstown logging on to Facebook and assisting in the final 6 hours of the CHASE COMMUNITY CHALLENGE.

George Hopkins said " The Cadet kids have been a 10 for the last week but we need them tonight. We are close to second but close to fourth, and who knows what is going to happen.

There are some non profits on the mix here that seem to have the ability to pull votes quickly. So, in the spirit of working until the end, and making a difference, and doing all you can, the members and the instructional team are logging on tonight"

Please join with the Cadets.

Vote for the Cadets 

Vote for all of the Corps 

and send this to any and every friend you have. Our goal is to end with 18000 votes or more. if we can do that ... we will be ok! 

Go here for all of the corps http://www.march5.co/

Go here for Youth Education in the Arts --- http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/222052456-youth-education-in-the-arts

and please ... go now !!!! 

And now we're sitting here watching ourselves slip into 4th place. We're just barely holding on to receive at least $200,000. Not really sure how PetFinder.com can just overtake all of the organizations and get 7,000 votes ahead...I think their office is making a profile for each one of their millions of pets on file and just having those animals vote. Sounds reasonable, right? But hey, kudos to them for doing all the work to get all those votes. All I can say is that this last 6-hour Facebook block was very tiring, entertaining, and showed me how annoyed some people can get of constant prodding of voting and sharing.

Voting ends at midnight tonight. Until next time.

Quote of the day: "Step back from everything you have going on in your life and take some time for yourself. It's healthy."

Day 10

Date: May 24, 2011
Time: 9:23pm
Playing on iTunes: "On a Hymnsong of Philip Bliss" by David Holsinger








So, today's update is going to be some multimedia. I just went picture crazy today. FIRST OF ALL...I realize that high school kids are just learning how to drive (sort of) and maybe they want to try to protect their car by taking up a few spaces, but this is just out of control...

First off, you have this ugly brown car who can't figure out what straight is...then you have this grey speeding bullet (below right) that has no clue the difference between white line and black pavement. And then lastly you have this red Chevy Blazer (below left) that must have missed something... Well aside from that most of the cars in the parking lot were parked fairly well.




































Breakfast this morning was absolutely 'divine', as my friend Daniel from the pit told me. It consisted of hash browns and the Cadets homemade blueberry bars. I had 4. They were absolutely amazing. Toss a little layer of butter on the top, and vwualah! You've got an amazing tasting blueberry breakfast bar.

During the lunch block, the vibes needed to be altered a little bit. We needed to take out some unnecessary parts. It took a good 15 minutes per vibraphone, but what we do makes the vibraphones a little lighter and much louder (acoustically). I won't go into detail about what we had to do because it is hard to explain, but in a nutshell it is like taking the throw pillows off a bed, they look good and complete the comforter set, but they aren't necessary.

And here are just some more pictures of clouds. Since we're outside all the time, I've been appreciating nature more now that I'm not cooped up in the music building at school 14 hours a day. I'm becoming fascinated with how beautiful clouds are. So expect at least one cloud picture per day.

And tonight when we had our night meeting, this is what was going on behind us...

 Quote of the day: "Change is hard. 20% of reject it, 20% accept it, and 60% can be convinced either way. What are you gonna' do to change that 60%?" - George Hopkins

Day 9

Date: May 24, 2011
Time: 12:12am
Playing on iTunes: "Summer Rain" by Hiromi Urehara

The pit covering the instruments before it starts to rain.

Beautiful but windy day today. I feel like we're in Florida. It's 85 degrees and sunny out all day but we get random 3-minute spurts of thick, heavy, smelly rain. Which really sucked because we had no place to go inside since school was in session. So, as you can see below, we decided to take shelter under an overhang that was very crammed. A few people were not able to fit into the shot but you can tell that there was not any space to move.

This morning, the pit got to be a part of PT (physical training) with the rest of the corps. Luckily today was the day that a former marine was in charge of running PT. So naturally we ran 2 miles and then did a bunch of sprint and different cardio exercises. It felt great afterwards because I never have been worked physically in that way before. Right now I'm pretty sore but I'm ready to do PT again in a couple days. The pit gets in an 'every-other-day' rotation with PT. So come Wednesday, I'll be ready to go again
Later on in the morning we got some more rain. We made sure that everything was tarped and just waited out the storm for about 15 minutes then finally got to move into the band room after the classes were over. By that time there was only 1 hour to rehearse til lunch so our first block was very very short. Then after lunch we had another abbreviated block before ensemble rehearsal.




Ensemble rehearsal tonight was great because we reviewed what we did yesterday which was the first piece of the show. So that is getting better and better everyday. After running through that, we brought back the other pieces of the show and ran through them. First was the percussion feature. That piece is insane, there's so much going on with the drumline and the pit it is incredible. I cannot wait for all of you to see it because it's very very impressive! Once we finished running through that piece it was time for rehearsal to end. Dinner tonight was amazing. The gave us a pork roast with a side of buttery mashed (or baked) potatoes with a dessert of apple crisp. MMMMMMM!! Then we finished and started our Facebook block.

How the hornline lines up their instruments all the time.
"Always look good."

Unfortunately today PetFinder.com went on a rampage and went from 800 votes behind to 1400 votes ahead!! LOOK OUT! And after our 3-hour block tonight, we are still down about 1400 votes. Hopefully this is their last push because we really need to get votes to end up on top. YEA! has come up with ideas such as raffling off an iPad at Phillies' game, but you must vote to be part of the raffle. The game was rained out tonight so they'll have to wait til tomorrow, but hopefully that will get us many votes. Here's to trying our best...

Quote of the day: "Take a few seconds to appreciate your life and everything that's a part of it because before you know it, it will be gone."

Day 8

Date: May 22, 2011

Time: 11:10pm

Playing on iTunes: "Better Off Alone” by Alice Deejay

Spring training is really starting to kick in. The hours are flying by, yet at the end of the day you feel like the day you feel like 12 hours was 2 days. Definitely messing with my mind a little bit but I’m excited to go on tour in a couple more weeks. 

I am not in this video but there are 5 of my friends from UMass in this drumline that you see. It’s pretty incredible how many people from one school come to represent an organization such as this. There’s 5 in the drumline, 6 in the pit, 1 in the brassline, and 1 in the colorguard. That’s a total of 13 people from UMass out of a 150 person corps. That means that a little less than 1/10 of the corps is from UMass. I’m so proud of all of them with all the preparation they have put into auditioning for this corps, making it, and getting ready for the season. Not to mention all the hard work they put in 12-hours a day every day for the summer now and coming up.


This morning, the pit got up at 5:30a to take the 20-minute walk down to the 24-hour Super Wal*Mart so that we could all get things that we needed that we may have not gotten before spring training. Such as clothes, sunblock, paper, pencils, ponchos etc. Here's what I got for my "bag of essentials" that I put in my mallet bag (the bag that hold my mallets for my instrument). There's some bandaids for whenever I get a blister on my hands, sunscreen stick for my nose and those hard to reach places, a lighter for changing string on the instruments (the keys are held on by string), and chap stick...self explanatory.

Vibe sectional

Today in ensemble, the goal (as I mentioned before) was to finish the first piece with all the music and marching (drill) on the field. We did accomplish this and it sounds absolutely amazing! Although there were a few bumps along the way between the pit and the corps. There was a some miscommunication every so often about where we were starting and ending during different repetitions. I go very frustrated and became a little distracted because of my frustration but I know that tomorrow when we do another ensemble block we will all know where we are supposed to start and stop to maximize rehearsal time. I knew that going into this process that there was going to be some challenges and going to be some frustration, but the most important thing is how you calm yourself down and just do it without worry about little things.

And AGAIN, another 3-hour Facebook block tonight. We only have a few more nights of this. We’ve been in a constant battle against PetFinder.com. They seem to be gaining all their votes during the day, but we gain all of ours at night. So the battle is give and take, but since we’ve been in first the entire time, we’re still ahead of them. We started off over 1,000 ahead of 2nd place but now it’s down to around 150-200 votes. So as you can imagine, we’re in a grind to keep the lead and pull away from the competition. We all just know that if we win this, our season is going to be absolutely great so we really want to make sure we come out on top. That $500,000 is going to be very essential for this organization in the future. For all that money going into the public school music programs, all of those programs will donate and help out with our organization. George Hopkins estimates that for the $500,000 we give out to the public music programs, we will receive around $3,000,000 back in donations/sponsors. I’m not sure if this is true, but he seems to be a very smart and financially stable man so I’ll trust him with this, and I also feel that giving the $500,000 to those programs will be the most beneficial way to distribute that money. Here’s to high school music programs!


P.S. I'm absolutely amazed by the nature out here. Now that I'm outside all day everyday, I get to see the clouds and beautiful sky all day. I never really appreciated how beautiful clouds are, so be ready for lots more pictures of clouds.

Quote of the day: “Always finishing something you’ve started.”