#48 Cover tunes.

I hate cover tunes.
That's one of the great things about classical music. You can't say that this guy did a recording, and this guy did another recording, and this guy did an acoustic version, and that band played it with kazoos, and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra actually did a version that people liked, and we can't remember who wrote it, but we hate him because his song plays on every radio station because people from every genre have COPIED HIM!
No.
In classical music, ONE person writes something, and then EVERBYBODY plays it, and EVERYBODY knows who it was that wrote it.
Wait a minute, you say. What about Flight of the Bumblebee? What about Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini? What about the La ci darem la mano variations?
Yes, those are songs composers have written off of other composers.
But they are not cover tunes.
A cover tune would be when you take a composition for orchestra, say, and transcribe it for...band.
That's wrong.
We're currently playing two songs by Bach in band right now. One is a very famous organ work known as "Jesu, joy of man's desiring." (Really? Why does everybody love that song?) Also, another known as "If Thou be near."
Over 1,100 works Bach wrote, and those are the two we got.
I know for a fact that we have at least one Prelude and Fugue of his in our vault.
But we play this.
Cover tunes are evil.

#47 I would mess with the students' minds. A lot.

Yesterday, my brother and I had to shovel the driveway.
So, we took the snow and buried the lamp post.
Actually, we didn't get all the way to the top. But we were mightily proud of our accomplishment.
Later in the day, I was talking to someone online and sent her the picture of our glorious mountain. She liked it.
Her sister did not.
She thought it was "horribly uncreative."
Well I don't know this person, but I wasn't going to let that pass. A conversation between we two ensued with the person I was actually talking to as the mediator. In that conversation, I got her to ramble confusedly, threaten me, use the word "whatever," and call me a creep and then leave.
It was nice talking to her. (And probably safer than doing it face to face.)
I do this to a lot of people on purpose, and I do it to a lot of people accidentally. There's going to be a lot of confusion in my classroom.
It's because I'm an eccentric.
My dad maintains that an eccentric can't know that they're an eccentric, and if they did know they wouldn't be an eccentric.
I beg to differ. I have a sneaking suspicion that I am eccentric and everybody is too afraid to tell me. I just can't differentiate between the normal things I do and the eccentric, which no longer sounds like a word.
Maybe that's why everything I say to a certain person I don't know very well confuses her. I just don't speak English well, which is a poor thing for a blogger.
Or maybe she just doesn't like me.

#46 The one guy who's really expressive with his body language.

Want to see something scary? Go to YouTube and type in "Lang Lang."
That guy has way too much energy to be a pianist. He should be a comedian/trapeze artist.
While it's ok for a soloist to be that way, or the lead violinist in a concerto, but people sitting in the orchestra should not be allowed to do that. (I'm the one that dances around. Not you.)
Why do people do this? At least three reasons...

1. It's the only way to draw attention to themselves.
It's an orchestra. It isn't about you third chair contrabassoons any more than it's about the first chair timpani. Maybe that's where we get the 'and' part of band; it's this guy AND that guy AND those people who don't really play their instruments AND the man with the funny facial hair. Therefore, nobody gets any attention individually.
In other words, NOBODY CAN HEAR YOU.
But they can see you.
Especially when you're pretending to have a seizure. (That really messes up your phrasing.)

2. They drink way too much coffee and are really hyper.
Drinking caffeine before a piano performance aids the performance. Maybe. It's a theory, anyway. I haven't tried very hard to prove it.
Before a band performance, not so much.
It doesn't take nearly as much energy to play the triangle as it does to play the piano. Since it's annoying to bounce your knee through the whole performance, they have to do SOMETHING to get rid of all that energy.

3. They're just getting into the music.
This is like the classical version of metal guitarists jumping the stage and headbanging, which, incidentally, can cause brain injury. If you went to that extreme during a symphony, you would not be highly respected in the classical music community. Nor would you be able to do it sitting down. However, doing weird circular movements with the upper half of your body which may resemble the mating dance of some birds is acceptable. Everything was way calmer when the music was written.

Those are my guesses on why people think it's necessary to break dance while sitting down. Why do you think they do it?

#45 Guitars.

I have a confession to make.
I don't like guitars.
Actually, that was more of a manifesto, albeit a short one.
More specifically, I don't like going to Christian events where everybody ends up sitting around a campfire in the dark while somebody takes out their guitar and we sing sow worshipy songs for hours on end.
Don't get me wrong. I'm sure those are decent people, but the whole time I'm thinking, "I could have done this at home instead of freezing outside while being blinded by a fire at the same moment. Can we stop singing and do something?"
Once again, don't get me wrong. Those slow worshipy songs have their place. I'll even go as far as to say that everybody sitting around that fire benefits and leaves with a 29% awesomer relationship with God.
But I don't.
I am here to assure you that there are at least 143,517 and 1/2 ways of worshipping God, and the one we've been talking about is not my preference.
What can I say? I'm not a sentimental person.
Bach dedicated all of his music to God. Most of it didn't go, "Savior, You can move the mountains, praise God, praise God, praiseGodpraiseGodpraiseGod, just just, Father, Father!" (I can only imagine how that sounds in German.) Believe me, I have listened to Bach, and I would much prefer that music over what we sing around campfires.
Some of it would give people nightmares.
The point is that there's nothing wrong with slow worshipy songs. That just shouldn't be what we're known for.
I think we as Christians should be the most intense people in the world. Then, after we show them our unbelieveable music/writing/sports/blog/origami/waitress/staple gun skills, we can just say, 'Soli Deo Gloria, man, Soli Deo Gloria.'
What does that have to do with bands?
Maybe I should just change the name of the blog to "What I would do if music existed. Which it does."

#44 Cell phones.

There is a shocking practice going on in our schools today.
It's called, "Texting in school even though it's against the school rules to text in school and that applies here because we're in school, and it's a school rule."
Or, TISETIATSRTTISATAHBWISAIASR for short.
When I see somebody using their cell phone (or iTouch or iPad or IBM server), I think, "Well, heavens to Betsy, that's against the rules. Somebody ought to confiscate that sophisticated piece of equipment that I don't own, and if I can live without it all day, they can live without while they're in school."
Or something like that.
It's probably more like, "Good NIGHT, how imperceptive can you be?! Take the phone away, teacher!!!"
In MY class, NOBODY would get away with having technology.
Not a phone.
Not a watch.
Not a pacemaker.
Well, maybe a pacemaker. But only if it's on the INSIDE of the body. I hope that issue never comes up in class, anyway. I'm not exactly teaching the Senior Center Band, here.
If I saw someone with a phone, I would take it away. Literally. Grab it out of their hands. Even if they're talking on it. I would just take the phone and continue the conversation. If they're texting, I would do the same thing. In between songs, I would pick up all the phones I've confiscated (there will be a lot of them) and just reply with, "Go away. i'm trying to listen to stryper."
Over and over and over.
As soon as word gets out that it's ME doing that, I'll have to change it. Maybe I'll say, "What? that doesn't make any sense, cause what i heard was go into town and get me a smoothie."
Weird.

#43 Chairs.

Today, when we walked into band ten minutes late because we forgot that it was Wednesday and the public school's classes are all twenty minutes shorter on Wednesday and yet for some reason they hadn't played anything, warmed up, nor had the teacher handed out any new music, there were those two clarinetists sitting on the floor.
Now I know what you're thinking. I was thinking the same thing.
They don't have good posture.
Now, you probably deduced from the phrase "those two clarinetists" that they don't ever have good posture, which is actually true. However, sitting on the floor produces even worse posture.
There's nothing worse than worse posture.
Where were the chairs? I don't know. Actually, they found two chairs and moved them, and where did they come from?
I can't remember. That was a long time ago. But they found them. A minute later, Brice couldn't sit down at the trap set.
Another drummer had stolen the stool and was sitting on it.
Good grief, people. I know this school is cheap, but we can't have enough chairs for a band program that doesn't have hardly anybody in the first case?
If I were a band teacher, and speaking of which, shouldn't that be if I was a band teacher? Is that 'were' a subjunctive? What does that word even mean, anyway?
Anyway...if I held the position of band teacher, there would be chairs, chairs, chairs everywhere. That way, I can tell people that they have a servant's heart, and then make them go stack chairs.