no posts for a while...
well, the last two weeks have been rather busy ones, for summer that is. we've had family in from california and fort worth and florida because my cousin just got married and was having a reception here in texas. so i've just been hanging out with cousins a bunch and been kind of ignoring the computer.
monday is drum major camp!
i'm so excited, it's going to be awesome. tonight melanie hosted a dm party at her house for all the dms from brook, creek, and lake (for those of you who don't know, those are the three high schools in our district, all prefaced with "clear". cheesy, i know) and it was a blast. we were missing at least one from each school due to outoftown syndrome, but together there were seven of us there. just talked and had pizza, and then watched 50 first dates. it was great to get to know them before we all go to camp together. i already knew some of them, though. okay, well, i'm not going to ramble, and i probably won't post until after dma, but i will do so with pictures.
saturday, july 3rd, 2004 at 11:41 pm • permalink • comment
a life-changing experience
drum major academy was the most amazing experience ever. it was absolutely surreal. i got to meet george parks, who was awesome and inspiring and my new role model. the guy knew how to get everything out of life. and that's what i got out of dma... not only did i learn how to conduct and march, but i also learned important leadership and life lessons. i honestly think that the camp changed my life, and i have absolutely no doubt in my mind about being a music education major now. i can't sing the praises of the camp staff enough.
i mostly spent the week hanging out with the brook and creek drum majors (the other two schools in our district) and with melanie, the other dm from lake who went to the camp. starting at the top, clockwise: philip (brook), melanie (lake), mason (creek), zerah (creek), jeffrey (brook), lyndsey (brook), adrian (creek).
we were broken into thirty squads of six, which were like our families for the week. here's my squad from left to right: ashley, alyssa, adrian, ricky, me, paul.
every day we got up at 6:30, went to breakfast, and were out on the marching field by 8:00. in the mornings we worked outside, practicing and videotaping what we learned the day before. we would also learn how to quickly and efficiently get a group of people where they needed to be and teach them new marching techniques.
this is also when we had squad competitions, where you led your squad through a parade we called the dma macarena, and then call commands without penalties for 2 minutes. i got a penalty for accidentally running my squad into the audience, but it wasn't a big deal, because i did well enough that our squad got first place that day, and we got fifth every other day, when other people were commanding. :op lunch was at 11:30.
in the middle of the day, from 1:30 until 4:30, we worked inside because it was way too hot outside. we had three different modules. first i went to conducting, which was taught by a 25-year-old guy from colorado state, who is seriously the coolest person and best conductor i've ever seen. i could have stayed in his class every day, the whole week. this is him as we opened the door one night, right when he was about to knock. he's a little dazed and confused (that's his arm swinging all the way through and never hitting the door). it turned out to be a good trick to play on staff.
the second module was watching yourself on tape conducting and saluting. another of the staff, jamie (who is hilarious), would watch us too and make suggestions for what we could do better. he was very constructive and made the whole process a lot of fun. he's also very good friends with my band director (who was also at the camp) so i got some good ol' joe stories. ;o) jamie is also the person who would lead the stretches in the morning, and he was like our own personal richard simmons.
the third module was marching fundamentals, which was taught by donnie. he was very obviously gay (including tie-dyed shirt, earrings, gay voice, and the fact that he teaches classical dance for a living), not that it has anything to do with anything. he was also a good teacher, and liked messing with our minds. then dinner until 6:00.
in the evenings we worked outside until about 8:00. we would have march-offs, where george would call a series of commands and the last person who didn't mess up won. it was a lot of fun. that's also when we learned any new marching techniques to go home and practice to be ready in the morning. after about 8:00 we moved into the auditorium and learned all our new conducting stuff. people were usually studying like mad in there because there was usually a random test where he would call on people.
each night was something different in the auditorium. one day it was charya teaching about how to motivate your band. another it was parker teaching us advanced meter concepts. every last one was a blast though, and i got so much out of it.
around 11:00 it was off to bed. or, rather, back to the rooms to shower, study, and eat (because the food was terrible and even if you ate some, you were still starving at the end of the day. so we stocked up). you finally got to sleep around 12:30 or 1:00.
mealtimes, despite the bad food, were the best, because that's when we all got to get together and relax and enjoy each others' company. once you sat down and weren't out doing active things, you usually became tired, though, so pretty much everything was funny and we had a lot of laughing going on. at one point, philip was trying to tell a joke, but we refused to laugh because it was so bad, and he decided he was going to make new friends, so he went and introduced himself to every other table in the dining hall.
there were also some george parks impersonations going on, which usually consisted of his signature pose - pointing at the sky with a mace jammed into the ground. jeffrey and adrian got in on the action.
there's so many more stories to tell, but for the sake of this entry's length, i think i'll stop it here. i may come back and add an extended entry just with anecdotes later though.
the rest of my pictures can be viewed here.
* * *
in other news, i got my ap scores back today, and holy crap. i got:
ap us history - 4
ap computer science ab - 5
ap spanish language - 5
ap english language - 5
squeesquee. that means, that along with my ap world history 4 from last year, i've already gotten...
cs 305j
cs 307
rhe 306
his 315k
his 315l
his 306n
spn 506
spn 507
spn 312k
spn 312l
out of the way!! that's 34 hours and i'm not even a senior in high school yet. ::bounces excitedly::
monday, july 12th, 2004 at 6:04 pm • permalink • 1 comment
© 2001-2008 Andrew C. Ewert.
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this part-blog, part-phlog is an unreliably updated account of my adventures and misadventures. it has no real cohesive theme, but i'm apt at any moment to digress into rants on language, politics, film, and technology, or anything else that interests me at the time. for more about me and this blog, click here.
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