Hello lovelies, I hope you've been doing great in my absence!
Marching band season is upon us and I've never been this excited since my first season in 2011! It must have something to do with me being drum major this season instead of being in colorguard. Being a drum major is something I've always dreamed of doing and now I actually get to live out my dream until I graduate high school!
People always say that marching band kids are weird, but honestly, not all of us are. In my band, we've got football players and cheerleaders and basketball players and that's not something most bands have. Some of the aforementioned people are weird, but they're still pretty cool.
In band (for those that don't know) you've got 4 big parts to your band. You've got the percussion, your colorguard, your winds, and you've got your drum major(s). The biggest section in my band is the guard with 18 members. The percussion is next to the guard with 15-ish members (this includes the pit and the battery). Then there's winds (I'm thinking in their individual instruments, not as a whole) with maybe 3-6 people per section. Then there's the drum majors, and there are only two of us (head drum major swag holla!). Our band is a decent size with usually +/-70 kids.
People say that being a drum major is hard work because you've got to get people to listen to you and you've got to be the boss, which isn't entirely true. Yeah you've got to have people listen to you and yeah you have to tell people when they're wrong but you don't have to make it hard. My band listens to me and respects me because that's how I treat them. My momma always says that "to get respect, you've got to give respect," and that's been my motto since I've been drum major.
[i left this blog post unpublished and came back on August 2nd to continue]
So our band camp just ended, and honestly this was so stressful. Not only was my band uncooperative, they were immature and caused a lot of drama. Even though the end of camp performance was sucessful, the behind the scenes was awful.
My co-drum major wouldn't agree with anything I said, and didn't be the leader he is supposed to be. He also didn't enforce anything on anyone, making me have to seem like the bad guy (which I'm not). He smoked in front of our students at our fair, which is completely wrong. We are the role models for this band and we don't need to bring our bad habits to their eyes. He didn't try to help anyone when they needed help and didn't do the job that is specifically for the drum major(s) in our band.
The members wouldn't listen, they wouldn't work hard, and they made me lose almost all of the pride I have in our program. In my audition for drum major, I spoke of how proud I was of the band and how much faith I had in this show and in our members. Meeting all of the new members and seeing the attitude in the veteran members made me realize that this season might not turn out to what I'd hoped.
I'm still excited for this upcoming season, but I'm not too sure how well we will do based on camp.
xoxo
