Day 21

Date: June 5, 2011
Time: 12:10am
Playing on iTunes: "Passionate Raindrops" by Stevie Wonder








THREE WEEKS IN!!! I cannot believe 3 weeks ago I moved in for the summer with the Cadets. Absolutely insane. This time has gone by so fast yet so much has happened. It it seriously like a dream and I've only just fallen asleep.


Today I helped change the drum heads for one of the racks in the pit. The racks are the instruments that house a plethora of different percussion sounds. Rack comes from the fact that you use a rack mounting system to mount everything so you only need one single unit instead of 50 different stands holding everything up. Yesterday they organized the racks so that they could house all of the different cymbals, drums, effects, and toys needed to get all the different sounds in the show. The rack you see below is the rack on the left side of the pit (if looking at the pit). Mainly played by Justine and Bri. As you can see, there is A LOT of stuff on this rack. It took them all morning to figure out how to set it up. But all they needed to do now was clean the hardware on the drums and put new drum heads on them. So that's where I came in!

With all the different cymbals on the rack, there come different sounds. And below you can see what they call the Zildjian Spiral Trash cymbal. It's a regular 18" cymbal cut into a spiral in order to get a crazy trashy sound. It looks really cool too (kind of a pain in the ass to keep control of when moving though...).

Here are the drums when I finished tuning them. They have all brand new heads on them. They sound much better and they look much better. Also, you can see the DTX pad on the top left part of the picture below since it is an essential part of this percussion rack.

Half way through our afternoon block we were graciously greeted with...these...

LUCKILY, they went completely around us and we got maybe 5 minutes of light drizzle. These clouds, however, were absolutely mind boggling to look at. I don't even want to know what the weather was like in the bad parts of that storm. The weather is so much different out here than back home. All the clouds and weather patterns are so intense and way more defined. Back in Massachusetts, it's either rain or snow. Nothing special (aside from the recent tragic tornados). Out here, we get hail warnings, these crazy clouds all the time, bright blue skies all day, drenching rain, everything...except for snow...obviously. I cannot wait to get to Texas and California.

So the pit has started to take a liking to sunflower seeds, and it is because the pit tech, Jason, brought sunflower seeds one day. During our break, I had some and completely forgot how GREAT sunflower seeds were. So during the dinner break I went to the UPitt Johnstown Campus store across the way from my dorm and picked up some "seeds". And I've been sharing them with everyone and over the past week everyone has been picking up bags of sunflower seeds. And here's what my vibraphone side table looks like usually the whole day. I'll have a little pile of sunflower seeds to munch on ALL day. Probably not good for me, but I feel like the effort to eat them counteracts the calorie intake. As you can see below, I have the stash in my stick back along with my sunglasses. Got to make sure you keep all your snacks hidden so that when the big boss comes he doesn't know you're all eating candy. Hahaha

Thought of the Day: "Everything you ever do in your life, every decision you make no matter good or bad is a choice. Your choice. No one can tell you what to do."