I have officially made it full circle in the realm of the marching arts. I started off as a clarinet player, learned mello & french horn for BK (drum corps) & LHB (marching band), participated in winterguard with Nolan, played trumpet for Aimachi and am now in the front ensemble in the Aimachi winterline. I feel kind of turned around sometimes because I'm used to hearing the pit tinkering away in the far distance. For me, they have always been the people you only see every once in awhile unloading their equipment from the truck and then they roll away, not to be seen again until full ensemble. You can always hear them though, their sounds carry on the wind to you and you look around wondering where they heck they could be. Maybe today they're standing in the shade under a tree, or in that ditch over there, or in the street, who knows. Then you come to full ensemble, and whoa! there they are. Or you see them rolling along in a train of keyboards and various percussion equipment, always with the smallest person on the biggest piece of equipment. I've only touched the pit equipment a few times. One was in New York at this school with a hill probably on a 30% grade down to the field. Another was when a thunderstorm hit in San Antonio and being the typical Texas storm EVERYTHING started to blow and roll away, so the Northerners freaked and everybody ran away screaming and terrified. One more involved another storm, that I believe was in Virginia during my first year of drum corps. The staff thought the storm would pass, so we left all of our equipment outside. Lo and behold, it rained so hard it could have been a typhoon. So, of course, we had to haul butt through the needles-and-pins rain and grab anything we could to bring it inside.
Anyhow, now I'm IN the pit. Although I prefer to move and march, this is a very nice change of scenery and fun experience. I like how the pit is a small family, that always moves and works together. It's interesting to see how this section rehearses compared to guard, trumpet, the battery, etc. since there is no marching involved. I had always wondered how they moved their sticks up to the board in time together and swayed back and forth together. Stupidly, I figured they were just trained that way. But since there aren't dots to learn or feet to work on, every small detail can be ironed out, down to how far to lunge to either side. It's also nice to have alot of time to practice and clean things up on your own. With say, mello, you usually learn and practice everything in tandem. Sixteenth notes are cleaned together, the new melody is learned together. With the pit, although you're physically in the same room as one another, you have time to stick in your ear buds, crank up the metronome and clean your notes solo. Then when there's sufficient time, everybody (minade) plays together and the group is cleaned as a whole. Pretty nice, I'd say.
To sum up and conclude, I'm excited to be apart of this new group and see how they work. It's kind of like how you always wonder how penguins can live and survive in the Antartic, but now you're there living with them and experiencing it firsthand....although this is not quite as extreme. :)
Over and out,
-F
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