Ladies & Gentlemen, the last season has begun!

Hello Hello! Guys I am a horrible blogger, and will freely admit it! But nonetheless lets get started with some awesomeness of the new (and last) season!

Yes it's true, this is my last marching season for I am a Senior. God, that's actually really scary, I'm a Senior now. Just a little insight to what is currently happening...I'm shuddering from horror that I'm in charge. Anyway school started August 11 for us, but as this is a band blog it truly started back on June 8th. At least with my band we start the second week of Summer Vacation. Of course we didn't actually start learning our charts till Band Camp, but we did get our music memorized and everything before that! Next week we have our first Home Football Game/Performance, then on Saturday we leave for Rosemont MN, a BOA competition. Fun stuff right!? WRONG! We still have yet to learn the ending to our show, charts 59-72 I believe. Ugh! Shuddering again! Anyway here's a little peek into our show. It's only the ending, but by September 18th I should have the actual performance of well humans. You'll understand when you watch the video!

MW 14 Part 3 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh82Oj5pl1I

So what do you think!? Oh and just so you know, when the show hits 2:10 it's still not up to tempo. The tempo its playing at is actually 170, and it needs to be around 196. Scary stuff right? Plus from 1:54-1:58 on our charts it say "DO NOT MISS-WILL GET INJURED IF YOU MISS". All of our reactions were pretty much this.

 Haha! Get my point? Anyway sorry for not posting in forever, and I'll give you my little "I'm going to do better" schpeel later!

P.S. This video was created for the end of the year review for our band. Check it out! Some of these people took amazing photos!

Millard West Marching Band 2013-2014 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkF2iQRDMAo&list=UU3xoNhRxQbuAByiMyu1lIXg

 

KEEP ON PLAYING MUSIC LOVERS,

~ Band Geek ♫♪♫ 

Another year to go...

Ciao people of the music world! Can I just admit to you guys that my skills of keeping up with this blog, utterly suck. Never mind my persistence, onto the things that are important. So to update you on all that has occurred, you're going to need to keep on reading!

A like last year I created a video dedicating it to that years marching season. So I decided to make another one just for all my band roadies! Here is the link, hope you enjoy it! It is a seven minute video, but take the time to watch it all...its actually really nice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkF2iQRDMAo

Onto other things, the school musical! I auditioned on my violin (yes I know I am a traitor) and got a spot in the pit orchestra with some fellow musicians. Our rehearsals have been something of indifferent. They're extremely funny, and they bring us all together/closer as friends. The director of the pit, is one of the band directors. Last week he made "fake twitter" posts about each section. For those in orchestra, you'll understand the photo below. Anyway for those of you who aren't stringers, it pretty much means... "Oh hey, yeah you have to go up another three octaves. Play those notes that everyone hates anyway". That would be the meaning of the photo. But all together the director made a photo for himself on a background of spongebob saying "For Ralph Burns!", it's an inside joke that goes off last years musical Thoroughly Modern Millie. Now that I think about it, I haven't told you want our performance is this year! We are in production of Hairspray, the Musical. Fun, right!? To be honest, there are a lot of jokes/sayings in this show that could be interpreted as a bit much for a high school production. But lets be serious, if Millard North could put on a production of RENT, then we shouldn't have a problem.

(If you were wondering what the profile picture is, I found a larger version of it)

 

Well this post has come to an end, again I will try to make a promise to be more active in this blog. I really do love talking about school life, and how music is so involved in my personal life!

So to keep with tradition....

 

 KEEP ON PLAYING MUSIC LOVERS,
~ Band Geek ♫♪♫ 

Happy New Years!

Happy New Years everybody! Hope your holiday's were as great as mine. Anyway wow October 6th was my last entry....October 6th!! I'm a horrible blogger, as you can tell. But nonetheless I've come here to fill you in everything music in my life.

To start off with I should finish the marching season...our band won Third Place, again. The scores for the first three places went like this.
1st - Bellevue East  -SCORE-  79.3
2nd - Bellevue West  -SCORE-  78.3
3rd - Millard West (ME)  -SCORE- 77.9

Did you guys see that! We were .4 freaking points away from second place! Oh it ticked us off so much, but in the end we knew that our show was an emotional flight of music. Plus in the Omaha Herald (cities newspaper) it stated a well written piece about our show. Here is just a bit from it.

"Millard West delivered an emotional crowd-pleaser titled “Imagine If” that delivered an urgent plea for peace. Kim Meradith, who was in the stands supporting her son in a different band, said the show moved her to tears. “It's not my school, but every time I watch it I start to cry,” Meradith said. Her son, Tyler, is a senior bass drum player in the Papillion-La Vista South band."
(http://www.omaha.com/article/20131027/NEWS/131028797)

This made me cry so freaking hard you have no idea. Plus they only knew a small bit of how emotional our show was to us students. For our State performance we all were given at least a name of hundreds of thousands children lost to a school shooting. Some of us took it upon ourselves to gather our own names of children. Each uniform has a pocket on the inside of our bib next to our heart, that's were we kept all our names. We played for them, for their families, for their schools...we played to tell them that the urgent plea for peace has finally come, that peace is here...in our hearts. Now that I've told you this I want you to watch our show...and really take in the emotional outcry we had. However the quality of the show is horrendous given the poor video taping of my best friends father's camera phone. But you still get the full effect of the music.

Here is the show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGuG6LwwBVw


KEEP ON PLAYING MUSIC LOVERS,
~ Band Geek ♫♪♫

Happiness is the Key to life...

Hey music fans! Oh my gosh I haven't written in FOREVER and it is my fault along with bands...haha! Anyway I have so much to tell you all!

Band season started awhile back for my band and I. Our first competition was in Chicago IL, and wow! We were performing with five B.O.A bands / Bands of America Champions! It was nuts!! And God weren't they amazing! Anyway that competition consisted of prelims and finals. We made 3rd place in our division and also made it to finals. Ten bands only moved on to finals (28 in total), after all of those performances we won 7th place overall, and you know what...I am totally loving that score! Because the Bands of America bands placed in the first five (what a coincidence) which left only one other spot ahead of us! Pretty dang good I must say!

Okay so after Chicago we hosted our own competition, the Wildcat Classic. Great work was shown there and well a very painful sunburn later on for me! Anyway Bellevue East one first, so congrats to them. Moving on, we then traveled to Bellevue East's competition and performed. We won 1st in prelims as well as finals, and took home all captions! Wonderful job to our band plus the others! I personally attended the prelims performance. After that well I had an attack. Pretty much what happened was, was that I had received (unwillingly) a severe pain throughout my upper stomach and back. Ugly crying was shown as well as my not so pretty painful face. And to keep in good health Mr. Keith sent me home on his orders so I did not compete that for finals. Just cheered for them from a distance!

Well after the "threats" to not have me on the field and all because of my pain I finally got results back of what was causing it, and well I have Gallstones. Uncommon to Teens and young adults, but yeah I'm a "special one" apparently. Lol! However I can continue the marching season so long as I don't have an attack on the field...so pray for me not to!

Okay okay okay, getting on with this EXTREMELY long post. I just returned from our most recent competition in Sioux Falls South Dakota's Festival of Bands. We attended the competition last year and received 4th place as well as Best Drum Majors. This year was a completely different story! For our prelims performance we blew away the crowd and judges! When it came time for awards we were placed first in our division, and ahead of the band who normally wins everything. And so we made finals and performed once again, blowing away the crowd even more with how much emotion we had packed into our show! That and we just wanted to keep moving cause it was FREZING (40 degree's plus snow!)!!! Anyway after our performance we watched Marshall (the band that wasn't to happy with us) and our host bands (the hosts performed in exhibition). All were really good but I was to nervous about where we would place! So then comes the listing of placements. They got all the way up to fourth place then stopped to announce caption awards. We won three out of the five given. Best Color Guard, Best Horn Line, & Best Drum Majors. Anyway they continued and well Marshall won fourth place (this is the band that normally wins EVERYTHING!), so they kept going and announced our band as First Place!!! First Place!!!!! We were estatic and Mr. Keith plus Mr. Bogatz were in tears! It wasn't even state and they were in tears! It was great and all of us were so proud! God, it was a great show. Now you here comes where you guys get to watch attentively to our show. I want to know what you guys think and what you all believe the message spreads!

(that was a long paragraph!) Anyway it is late and well time for me to get some "shut-eye" because I have early morning rehearsal tomorrow! Love you all and enjoy the show! (you'll love it when we die!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s3Sxy9DN30&feature=youtu.be


KEEP ON PLAYING MUSIC LOVERS,
~ Band Geek ♫♪♫

Already on the field?

Dang! I am really bad at trying to keep up with this blog! I'M SORRY!!! Oh well, I think you guys will like what I have to share. For the past two months my band has been working on our show, which by the way is pretty damn good! This is the "old" version of our show, it doesn't include the AMAZING drum break...but that's because we technically didn't have the percussion part till about 3 weeks ago! Anyway this is most of the show music.
http://www.fitzpatrickmusic.net/imagine.php (( just press play ))

But since last Monday we've officially made it through the opener of our show and started putting music to it as well! Mike, one of the great guys that comes and helps out our band video taped us on our first music & marching rehearsal. We stop earlier however and don't finish the complete opener. HOWEVER, he filmed us yesterday when we did complete the full opener...he just has to upload the footage! But without further adieu, this is part of my marching show for 2013.

The Millard West Wildcat Marching Band is proud to present....

"Imagine If..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArInRroMq_0&feature=youtu.be

P.S :: You guys REALLY need to comment on this and send in your own video's of your Marching Band! I'm desperate to see all of your guys' incredible shows!

KEEP ON PLAYING MUSIC LOVERS,
~ Band Geek ♫♪♫

Field Show. (( VIDEO DISCONTINUED ))

( Sorry everyone Christian actually made the video private and now is unable to view. )

Okay guys thanks to my bands First Snare Drummer Christian Yost, we now have the field version of our show! And actually it's really cool to see what goes on in the middle/beginning/end of a marching show.

Now may I present the MWHS Wildcat Marching Band 2012 show Blue,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PGF44yXzA4
{{ Euhhh show - Christian Yost }}


Alright now that you've seen our field show...from the field I expect to see yours as well!

KEEP ON PLAYING MUSIC LOVERS!!!
~ Band Geek ♫♪♫

New Band?

Hmm new band indeed good sir! And I am not at all happy about it. My band as you previously saw in other posts is a traditional band, one that holds music and it's musicians above any recordings and set designs. And I don't mean to be rude if your band does that, however I think that Marching band is meant for the students and the music they play...not the previously recorded quotes and odd backgrounds.

But this year we are changing it up a bit. We are going from traditional to BOA (more theatrical). We were able to listen to our music arrangement and it sounds awesome! I love it, however we've got the recorded quotes playing and we will be having back drops and I just don't know how much I will actually like it.

However, just for you I'll be giving an inside look. The show itself is called "Imagine if..." it's based off of the school shootings including Columbine, Millard South, and Sandy Hook. Yes it is a really depressing subject to be creating a Marching Band show off of, but it's touching in it's own manner. To make it "heartfelt" as Mr. Keith and Mr. Bogatz keep describing it our songs include those from John Lennon, Coldplay, a song from Batman Begins, and Inception. So like I said, I am excited for the musical arrangement of the show just not entirely the show itself.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h5JTdafu1c just without the singing... xD)

And as always...
KEEP ON PLAYING MUSIC LOVERS!!!
~Band Geek

P.S: So even though I can't sing to save my life I want to give this bit for my school's show choir. They made it Fame (in Chicago) and drove the 9 hour drive to get there. However some of my best friends are in this car ride, and got really bored and decided to make a home video. Their goal is to make this video VIRAL and get on the talk-show ELLEN. So help them out by 'Liking' their video and leaving an awesome comment!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vkBSUpOcuM