An Explanation?

Many look to me for an explanation as to why the band is not scoring well this year. I really don't have all the answers and that may seem strange coming from me because I usually have most of them but not this time. But perhaps here are a few:

1. We had a great week of rehearsals but yesterday you would not have been able to tell that by the performance. We get one chance and it just seemed as though the band thought we could just "restart" or "do it over". Unfortunately sometimes in the real world you only get one chance. Can you image a heart surgeon saying, "Well I messed that one up! I'll try again on you!" The changes and additions on Saturday just were not executed.

2. The overall attitude of unimportance could be a factor. I was really surprised to hear from one of my assistants that the kids were talking and cutting up in the stands at awards. So much so that another band asked them to be quiet.

3. The show may just be too hard. I will take the blame for that one. Although the show is very effective, you will not get the overall effect points until it is clean and it is not. The show is difficult both musically and visually and although it is getting better it is just not better consistently. We seem to need " restarts" and "do overs" and, oh I hate this one, the kids seem to need to be "coached" in effort. If I spend my time teaching effort instead of band, we have a problem.

4. We are out gunned. If you bring a bb gun to the shoot out at the OK corral you might shoot out a few windows but you really aren't going to do much other damage. It was very enlightening to listen to the other bands staff being called out as they took the field. Most bands had at least 3 or 4 directors and a whole list of other help. My staff was easy to keep up with yesterday as there was on 3 of us.

With these things being stated, I watched the video last night and it was not bad. The show continues to get better in all aspects. Perhaps the thing that truly needs the most work is number #2 above.