Monday, July 2, 2007
My First Band Practice in dunno how many years...MY FIRST BAND PRACTICE IN DUNNO HOW MANY YEARS...
Yup, went to see de band kids during their CCA...theirs was a military band, same as my sec sch tat time.. The main band teaher-in-charge brought me to see their band room. We passed by de band store room, and the smell of it reminded me of my good old days at band...it smelt somewhat of a mixture of rust tat appears on de instrument and the stuff used to grease de instrument's valve as well as de polishing liquid to make de instrument look shiny...Not exactly aromatic, neither was it a stench, but nevertheless, it still reminded me of de past... :)
And after that, de tcher introduced me to de band, saying tat i'm a new tcher who wil be joining em for 4 weeks, and tat i was previously oso frm band and was a french horn player..I was a little paiseh when he said tat to intro me...cuz i haven been touching my french horn ever since sec 4...lol..haha... The band was standing at attention like in marching, and they greeted me..can tell that they r quite disciplined. :)
Next, they splitted up to do sectionals...remembered last time when i was in band, during sectionals, de whole place wil be quite noisy..cuz everyone playing their own stuff haha...and after sectionals, i joined em again to hear em play...haven been hearing band music for quite some time already, so it was a good feeling to refresh myself hearing their music... they were practising a piece called "circle of life", and i wanted to listen to em playing de whole song, but their conductor kept on cutting n cutting n stopping halfway... :( everytime they started playing, i tink it lasted for 15 bars at most.. but can see tat de kids r working hard for their concert cumin up!! keep it up! jiayou! ^_^
Personally having experienced being in band for 9 years in total, i can say tat band actually helps quite alot in instilling discipline in me...it was in band where i learnt de bulk of my discipline, teamwork and unity, and of course, we had fun too! Especially during footdrill, we were really taught to be disciplined, and it trains us up to endure hardships esp during de times when we had to march under de hot sun or stand still for dunno how long to wait for the arrival of the VIP during Speech Day. At the same time, can learn abit of malay too.. :) Because of tat, my impression of band members is tat they r committed and disciplined ppl to de band, and wld seldom give serious discipline problems... hope my hypothesis is correct!! :)
And of course during SYF competitions, we learn to work as a team, as every member's contribution is juz as important in determining de results we get... In my 4 years of secondary education, i only managed to participate in SYF once, which was during sec 3...when i was sec 1, they said tat i was still not ready for SYF even though i had pri sch band experience... mainly bcuz in pri sch, i played de euphonium n trombone, but changed to french horn in sec sch cuz they need ppl n i din really like reading de trombone score which was in bass cleff..lol...And for tat SYF, we got a bronze, n naturally many of us were rather sad, cuz for de previous SYF, we got a silver and so, means tat de standard dropped...but hey, wats more important is tat we learnt to work together as a team in unity, and we gave our best. Just hav to work even much much harder next time and learn frm our mistakes. Besides tat, oso remembered tat we wld come slightly earlier before sch starts to do some additional practice for footdrill during tat time when we joined de Marching Band Assessment...it was actually only like 15mins earlier b4 sch started, and at first i was like tinking "only 15mins, cant do much.." but hey, 4 days of 15mins wld actually add up to an hour! and 2 weeks wld amount to 2.5 hours of extra practice! So, muz tink positively! In de end, we got a Grade 2, but we were hoping for a Grade 1...was kinda disappointed, but at least, we can truly say tat we've worked as hard as we cld for it..even de band teachers-in-charge oso told us dat de whole sch cld see us putting effort into this assessment when we come early for extra practices.
Hence, I feel tat for competitions like SYF or marching band assessments, we shd try not to focus solely on de end result or medal tat we hope to get...Instead, shd oso remember de learning process and de things learnt during de journey towards our goal. But most importantly, muz put in effort and be committed, and give your BEST on dat day of competition. I'm sure tat if u can truly tell yourself tat u've given your utmost best, u shd be satisfied wif whatever results u obtained. At least u can say, "I've given my best!" And this reminds me of a verse in the Bible and sth i learnt during church camp 2007...
"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith:" - 2 Timothy 4:7
Hope to be able to say that in every of my endeavours! :)
8:20 PM
Lyna