Band Camp

Well as most of you probably know, I went to West Texas A&M University Band Camp. It lasted from July 12-24. Whenever I showed up with the Witchers, we went and signed in and received an envelope that said if we either paid all the fees and if we needed a picture. Mine said Paid Need Picture. So I went into the auditorium where they had 2 enterings for the paid doors and the not paid doors. I ,of course, went through the paid doors and went down to the stage and got my picture taken and put on a nametag for me. They had it all done in about 5 min. Then we went and got our teeshirt. They had this whole thing set up to where if you didn't know where to go all you had to do was look at the wall for a sign and it told you what you needed to do after you did such and such. Anyways, after you got your teeshirt you go and get a locker assigned to you for your instrument. Unfortuneatly, there were no more bassoon lockers left. So what they told me to do was go and find a locker in the building somewhere. I had to find a locker where I could fit both my bassoon and my sax. I ended up finding one and it didn't take long to find one. Remember we still haven't left where you sign in at. After you sign in you go to your dorm. There were diferent dorms for boys and girls and a lot of them. Whenever you get to your dorm you go up to the front desk and get the key to your dorm that you will be staying in for 2 weeks. So whenever you can get into your dorm you take all of your stuff down to it and civilize. After that your pretty much free to do anything. And of course I went down and ate dinner. The caf was open at 4:30-6:30 for dinner. I wasn't exactly used to eating at 5:30 p.m. A lot of nights I wasn't able to eat dinner because I didn't keep an eye on the time. Anyways something that we actually did at 7:00 was have a dorm meeting with the whole Dorm. There were individual dorms A, B, C... ect. I was in dorm O. Apparently my roomate and I didn't hear the announcement that there was a dorm meeting every night at 10:30 p.m. AKA, Curfew. So in the middle of the night like at 12:15 a.m. the Jarret Hall (my dorm) leader people came into our room and turned on the lights and said,"Where were you at 10:30!"And they kept on going on and on about how there was a dorm meeting as 10:30 every night. So in concequence my roomate and I didn't sleep very well that night at all. He woke up at 2:00 and went back to sleep and kept waking up every hour. I woke up at 4:15 and went back to sleep and woke up at 4:30. This process kept going until about 5:00. I still ended up waking up early. Another funny story that happened that night was everybody had to bring there own box fan my roomate and I did. So I had mine set up to where it was on the desk in front of my bed and in the middle of the night my roomate heard a loud BANG! and looked up, because it was loud enought to wake him up, and saw that my fan had fallen down and landed on my legs. He saw me get up zombie like and picked up the fan and set it back up. I honestly don't remember any of this happening. Apparently it had turned off and a couple hours later I woke up and noticed this and looked over at my roomate and thought, "Why did you do that?" My roomate remembers that also. I remember that part. This is just the first night. I had to go to an audition at 8:15 a.m. That wasn't all that bad. After the audition everyone was placed into 1 of the 5 following bands: Honors Band, nope, Symphonic Band, nope, Concert Band, nope, Maroon Band, yep, and the White Band. Honors being highest the White Band being lowest. I knew a lot of people that made the Symphonic Band and a couple in the Honors Band. After we were placed into one of the bands, we went to a rehearsal at 3:00-4:00. Afterwards we had an assembly at 4:00. We then had another rehearsal at 7:00-8:00. Then we went to wherever and at 10:30 we had our dorm meeting. At 11:00 it was lights out. My schedule then continued the rest of the time ,besides Saturday and Sunday, as follows:

7:45 a.m. Drumajoring

8:35 - 9:50 a.m. Band Rehearsal

10:10 - 11:00 a.m. Individual Sectionals

11:20 - 12:10 a.m. Sectionals (woodwinds, brass, percussion)

12:10 - 1:45 p.m. Jazz Improvisation



Here in a little bit I might be able to tell you the things that happened within these periods. But right now I think that you know the basic of what I did. Hope you enjoyed the first part of Band Camp.


Blu