I started playing the clarinet when I was 10 years old. I have plenty of good memories that came out of being in middle school band: I’ve met my best friends, traveled and played really fun pieces. Though there were ups and downs I thought I had the most annoying band director possible, dropping my instrument and denying it in front of me and my parents, spitting in my face and never apologizing or marking our pages black if we couldn’t play the song instead of working with us as a band director is supposed to. But that’s not what turned me off of playing my instrument.
High school was a completely different ballpark. Freshmen year was amazing, my relationships with friends in the band grew, as well as the development of the new relationship, we traveled to the most magical place on earth to work with one of the most incredible artists in the Disney industry and I was able to better my craft with my sister. Until sophomore year came. When my sophomore year of high school came around everything went south; It was my first year in marching band. After the exciting year that I had playing exciting and challenging pieces and learning music theory in the wind ensemble, I knew that I was going to continue to have more exciting years and greater challenges with this particular band director.
Until the day he had to leave.
Granted, it wasn’t his fault. It was completely out of his control and had to do what was best for him. My first thoughts were confused and curious: who was going to teach us? I had never had the experience of losing a band director. We’ve had a serious of directors come into the arts for my high school and of course, they had to leave. Every last one of them.
Except one.
My Junior year of high school at the end of the marching band season, the word had spread that we were getting ANOTHER band director.
I gave him two weeks.
And he definitely started off wrong with me. It was the year I was marching on the bass drum and with a fellow bass mate and my best friend, which was on the cymbals, with made our own cadence. We had practiced that cadence every day until he showed. Just for him to tell us we couldn’t play it on our last game night.
Really dude? Didn’t you just get here?
A lot of people weren’t happy with the choice of the new band director, due to many aspects that weren’t necessary for choosing a sufficient candidate for his position. However, it was a feeling I had in my gut that there was something off.
I didn’t want to be the one person out of the class that was just putting him down because he was just another face. And eventually, I gave him a chance.
My senior year came along.
It was already hell without the burden of marching band or wind ensemble because I had other problems I had to deal with, like graduating on time and dealing with passing all my classes with decent grades to go to college.
And the marching band was hell. Somebody was always fighting, challenging their section leaders, there were people there just for the sake of numbers; never did their part, or show up to practice and if you were a section leader you had to deal with trying to teach these kids how to play these instruments they didn’t care any less of a damn about because their parents rented them from the school.
Teaching the freshmen was like teaching brick walls.
Just like anyone else that wanted to major in music in college, I needed my band director’s help and since he made it to another year, I figured why not trust him to steer me on the right path. This year I had decided that I wanted to attend UNCG to pursue my Bachelors of Music and in order to do that, of course, you had to audition. About an hour after marching band practice every day until December, possibly two days before the audition I practiced my ass off and worked with him until I felt confident that I could breeze through the audition.
The morning of the audition had to have been one of the worst days of my life. My band director had to print a copy of my audition piece because it wasn’t allowed to bring a whole book into your audition, you were being recorded so it wouldn’t have been the best look of you staring into a book while you play. The morning came and I never got a call to pick up my audition piece.
I had to cancel my audition because he wouldn’t pick up the phone.
I was so angry I cried. When he finally picked up his phone I gave him the blessing of his life. However, I was at fault as well, I should have had a copy already printed for myself, I shouldn’t have trusted anybody else to handle my music and should have prepared myself for my own audition.
The rest of the year was the same thing: people stopped caring about the band, they cared more about athletics or whatever else high schoolers were doing. As sad as it was, I let that rub off on me. I let the I don’t give a damn attitude rub off on me against a passion of mine because I depended on other people around me in the music department to have the same passions and uplift me on my journey to becoming something that was eventually going to waste my time.
Because I lost interest.
So no, I never played in the wind ensemble in college, because every time I picked up that clarinet or even looked at it I thought about all of those memories I had with being in the wind ensemble and marching band at my high school and out of all the memories I've had with band, the bad memories always managed to outweigh the good. The last thing I want in college is to be committed to something so big and try to tackle a major and minor in a completely different field. I have to admit, it is kind of depressing to go to a wind ensemble concert and not be the one performing.
Maybe one of these days I’ll pick my clarinet back up in my free time. Or maybe I'd just sell it to get the negative energy out of this house. We’ll see.
