Day 10. Torture

The day isn't even over yet. It's dinner time. For all you kids back at immaculata that said. Oh Karl you're so lucky! You get to miss the Memorial Day parade!  You were floating on clouds. Keep reading. 

This morning. The visual block lasted 4 hours until noon. For the first hour and a half we had basics. It was so hard to stay focused and keep my eyes open. My body felt like it had lost the will to move. I just wanted to lay down. 

After basics, the visual staff decided that we should go set to set through every page of the show we know. By now it was 10:30 and 75 degrees out with a boiling sun and no wind. We spent two and a half hours going from set to set and then chunks of our so far 151 pages of drill. This was agonizing. The sun kept beating down and we kept getting yelled at. Everyone's lips are chapped and blistered. They just kept getting worse. 

Then it was over. Lunch was great. But it only lasted for a half hour. 

We set up the brass circle at 1. We knew it would be bad. But we didn't know it would be torturous. At this point it was 82+ degrees out. The sun was beating down, reflecting off our shiny silver horns into our eyes. Our lips were chapped. And we had to play. 

We warmed up for about 50 minutes. And then Matt Harloff told us to line up at the end zone of the field. This is when the beatings started. Beatings are long tiring reps of marching and playing full out that are supposed to make us stronger. 

For you little memorial parade day kids marching at 120. You were living the life. 

Matt said, "okay we are going to do the end chunk of the opener all the way down the field 4 times. Once forward, once backwards, once forwards slide, and once backwards slide." 

The tempo is 188. And it's double forte constant destroy your lips loud. Each rep lasted 100 yards. Then we had to sprint back to the other and and do the rep again. After that our legs felt like jello. 

After 4 reps of that. Matt said, "okay now do the same thing with the closer until I say stop." 

 4 more reps. 100 yards. Full volume. Tempo 180. 85 degrees outside. Already jello legs. 

After we did that and we all wanted to shoot him, he said, "okay now we are going to march at 227 like the trumpets do in the pre show. All the way down the field. And you have to play 16 count whole notes. Oh and make sure there's no feet in the sound! Take a full 8 to 5!"

It's rather inhuman to march at 227 beats per minute. But we are crown brass. We are the best. We did it. Forwards for 100 yards. And backwards for 100 yards. Playing. 

After that we went into sectionals. The trumpets, of course, worked on marching and playing the 227 bpm part in the opener. Our lips were dead after the trumpet sectional. 

I thought it was over when we packed up. But we just moved back to the field with the rest of the brass line and did more torture reps. Matt harloff demanded full volume. We were all shot. Every rep that we did again we couldn't meet Matt's expectations. And he just made us repeat it again and again. Our lips were blistering and bleeding. But he wanted full volume. So we delivered what we could. 

We got stronger today.