Day 7

Date: May 21, 2011
Time: 11:46pm
Playing on iTunes: "The Planets Suite: Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity" by Gustav Holst (performed by Royal Philharmonic Orchestra)

Today was an amazing day overall. Woke up to the sun and blue skies. Can't get any better than that. Every morning on my phone, I get a new bible verse sent to me (for a little inspiration) and today's verse really spoke to me because it relates great to what's going on this summer:


Proverbs 19:20 20 Listen to advice and accept instruction,that you may gain wisdom in the future.

The pit rehearsing in front of the high school.

And so I used that as inspiration for today as we rehearsed throughout the day. As the pit instructor said, today was going to be the first "real" day of spring training; meaning that instead of just reviewing music to put together with the corps, we were going to start working on technique in the morning blocks. So this morning was three hours dedicated to just technique which is great because even after playing a certain technique for 2 years, you learn a lot by breaking it down to the basics and starting from the beginning. Funny story, right before this morning block, I realized that I did not bring my technique book on tour with me which is the one book that I really wanted to bring so that in my free time at night (and on the bus). I could read and review the book to better understand the certain technique we use. So I decided to text my girlfriend, Bonnie Harper, and have her send me the book so that I would be able to have it this summer, and 5 minutes later we started working on technique for three hours. What a coincidence!


After the long morning block and lunch, the pit prepared for the ensemble rehearsal tonight and our goal was to put more of the first piece together with the corps doing the drill (marching) on the field. We're ALMOST done with the first piece (we will be tomorrow) and it looks and sounds amazing already. Gino (brass instructor) told us that we sound and look like a drum corps now which is a huge step from where we started a few days ago. So kudos to the entire drum corps for all the work they've put in so far.


We had a Hop meeting tonight, but it was a little different than usual. First off, I was really daring and decided to have a Mt. Dew for the first time in....well I don't know how long. But it tasted absolutely amazing. But that's besides the point. =P So he had us watch an episode of The Biggest Loser. If anyone has not seen that show it's about obese people losing weight and all the struggles they go through (i.e. a man who was 400lbs, went down to 246lbs in 20 weeks). George's question for us was "How can you relate what these people do and say to what we do in the corps?" After watching the episode, I got out of it that one thing that all the people who did the biggest loser said it's not the final number (lbs) that they reached, it's the lessons that they learned throughout the entire process. This taught me that it doesn't matter whether the Cadets get first place in the finals in August or not, it's the lessons I've learned along the way. I can't say what those are right now since I've only been in this for a week, but I know that I will come out of this experience a different person and have a different view on life. I'm very excited about this summer and just cannot wait til we perform for the first time.


Have a great night!




Quote of the day: "Always strive for more. If you think it's your best, you can always do better."