Day 61

Date: July 15, 2011

Time: 12:39am (CST)
Playing on iTunes: "Mexican Grand Prix" by Mogwai


Location: Minneapolis, MN Day 3


First of all, let's just start off by checking this new state of the art practice room. Some people have told me they've seen these at their school, but this is just unbelievable!! It's a soundproof practice room that has built in microphones and speakers. You can change a setting to the speakers in the walls to make it echo as if you were in a hall or an arena!! Look!! (I apologize for the sideways video angle)

The corps was woken up at 8:30 due to the weather outside...or so they told us. It was pouring rain out, and so the corps just stayed inside for a while until the rain subsided. The pit split up between keyboards and electronics so we would be able to work on a bunch of different material that needed to be tweaked to perfection.

But before we had our sectional block, we shined the rest of the cymbals that we needed to shine. All of the guys just took the cymbals with us into the locker rooms and washed them under the shower head. Below is the "Bar Keepers Friend" that we use for the cymbals. I've never heard of this stuff before, but it seems to work great with the cymbals!! They're now polished and ready for the next show on Saturday!

One big thing with the pit during shows is getting on and off the field...as you can imagine we have a lot of equipment and not that many people. For all of our shows up until now, they have not been timed. But starting with this next show on Saturday, they will all be timed going on and off the field. Our goal is to make sure the time keeper does not take any points off our score for going over time. We have 5 minutes to get on the field and set up before we have to start the show. Tonight we did a practice run getting onto the field. Here's a few steps that are needed to take before we get on the field:

This is the "sound run" equipment that
extra staff that are able to help, move onto
the field for us.
Bells, speakers, more speakers, even more speakers...

Taylor tunes his timpani before the cart rolls on the field.

The keyboard line is set in order so we can just roll on the field
and not have to do any rearranging.

If anyone reading this is coming to any shows the rest of the summer, take a look at all the equipment needed to bring on the field. Not even just pit equipment...color guard, drum major, you name it. Just check out the process needed to go through to get everything set up. And when you get a good group, they'll set it up and be ready to go before you say "time's up!" That's our goal.


CPit 2011 Spotlight

Benjamin Ruiz is a 19-year old vibe player at the Cadets. He was born in Fort Worth, TX and now lives on campus at Texas A&M Commerce. He studies Music Education with Percussion as a concentration. Ever since Ben was a young boy, he always strived for greatest through musical accomplishments. Before the Cadets, he marched the San Antonio Revolution in 2008 - 2010. Ben is extremely ready for the upcoming season and cannot wait for finals. It is his dream to be a part of something great. This is his chance.


Thought of the Day: "Trust everyone around you, trust them like your brother and sister. Know they will do the right thing so that you can do the right thing and everything will work out. The outcome will be great, but it will only be great with trust. And that's what I saw in you guys last night." - Joe Roche (physical training, motivational, visual coach)

Joe Roche, motivational/visual coach, gives us a few
words of inspiration before we got ready for out day.