Rant on Band Students at my School

I love attending band at my school. It faces me with more challenging music compared to what I would see in Music class. Our band last year went to two festivals, The Atlantic Band Festival in Halifax and The West Prince Music Festival at Westisle Composite High School. We played three beautiful pieces at the festivals: Ancient Voices - Micheal Sweeny, March of The Irish Guard - James D. Ployhar and A Childhood Hymn - David R. Holsinger. All three of these pieces come together beautifully when the time and effort is put into practicing and playing them, both of which our school's band last year did. In a middle school band, you will have some kids fool around and that's to be expected because there is always someone somewhere acting immaturely. However, when we are playing music and are going to festivals representing our school, this is completely unacceptable and most kids recognize that.

                  

This year, is a different story. Every Wednesday, I go to band and every Wednesday, there are quite a large number of kids not listening to the director and fooling around. These kids are the ones who blow into their instruments loudly in order to annoy someone else, the ones who are talking while the instructor is trying to help their section with a certain piece, the ones talking about things completely irrelevant to the music in between songs and most of all, the ones that are just there for the big trip to Halifax.

In our band, if you round out the ratios, there are about 10 ninth graders and 20 eighth graders. In actuality  there are 36 students in our band. When you have 20 students who are just entering band and have only been playing for one year and have most of them not practicing over 10 ninth graders with experience, all of whom are practicing their music, it doesn't equal out to a very good sounding piece.

I think everyone in my band would agree, if a student is just there for the trip and nothing more, they should not be invited back. I've discussed this multiple times with my band instructor, whom i am very close to, and even she agrees that the people who aren't practicing and are goofing off need to start and wisen up. I'm pretty sure everyone wants to go to the festivals and sound good, and that is only going to happen if everyone plays their part.

Keep calm and keep practicing,
xx. Spencer