Old stuff

I was going through some old pictures for a class the other day, and I found this video that I had someone take at the Sugar bowl in New Orleans. It's called Push, and for the two years I played the tenors, it was the bane of my existence. My hands and arms would always seize up at the tenor solo because of the fast sixtuplet notes. I had a hard time getting the sticks from drum 3 all the way on the right to drum 4 all the way on the left. I swear that I tried to relax my arms so that I could play lighter, and therefore faster, but my forearms would seize up. I would have to muscle my way through the crampy arm muscles, which meant I played harder, which meant a loss of control and so it was always really dirty.

However. This night in New Orleans, we hadn't played really heavily for a few weeks, but it was at the end of the season, I was strong, there was no pressure to perform, only to have fun, and it was really warm. So as you can see, I was able to spit out those notes, my hands were really loose which let the heights of the sticks go way up, but I had enough strength to get the ends of the sticks back down on the head to play the music in time. And it was clean.

Just looking at that video now, I feel good that I finally did conquer that freaking cadence after two years of trying, and that it got recorded so I can go back to see it.

Good Drum Corps

This is the Cavaliers amazing show from 2002. Awesome.





This is the James Bond show from 2004. The Cavaliers are so physical, is it any wonder that when you meet a Cavalier in real life, they are skinny as a rail? Could you imagine rehearsing this show for half a day? Whew.


The University of Utah has been trying out some new moves with their Appalachian Spring, and I say good job. Audience, we should applaud their efforts so we can see more cool stuff.

explanation of the pictures

The picture of the lincoln memeorial was as close as i could get to it. there was a concert going on. Then the next picture was just of the people on the mall for the concert at the Lincoln Memorial. The next picture was taken by a military guy who had been in the warming tent since 7 in the morning. we showed up at around 330 in the afternoon. Lynn just happened to be standing next to me when the guy took the picture. The next one is of the Virginia Military Institute. They brought all the students in the school, I think. The blurry picture is the last turn in the parade before we passed President Obama.

some photos

So I was trying to put the pictures in Chronological order. they kind of are. Each 5 picture post is in the right order, but the pictures in each post are backward. oh well.

BCS

Right now, I'm watching the Florida/Oklahoma game. it looks pretty familiar. Urban Meyer has a pretty distinctively unstoppable offense. Florida faltered for the first few minutes of the game, but then they sacked OK's quarterback and now they are looking pretty good. Its how all the "tough" games looked in U of U's 2004 season. The question near the end of those games was always, do we go for 75 points or just settle for a 30 point lead?
So the Sugar Bowl was really fun. Except I had pus building in my tooth the whole time. Every time I would eat or drink something it would flare up, and that was with a steady stream of Ibuprofen. I had a hard time getting to sleep.

So hear are a lot of pictures from New Orleans. I'm pretty sure they won't all fit in one post so we'll split them up. the thumb pictures are of the blisters we got on our thumbs from 2 and a half hours of drumming, after not playing at all for a few weeks.