Teamwork

I played baseball and football as organized team sports as a kid.  That is, I played the games in my neighborhood when the other kids were willing to do so.  When the chance came to play the sports in school, I got permission from my parents, and got dropped off the Monday morning after our parish "Fall Festival" which was always held on the third weekend of August, and helped clean up after that.  There were adults taking down the festival booths, we helped them, picked up garbage that had not been put into the trash barrels, and worked hard.  Come lunch time we got leftovers from the previous day's Turkey Festival Dinner - no pie left, but plenty of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy,  

Then was the meeting which our coach held in the fifth-grade classroom, which had been my class room the previous year.  Coach explained what he expected, as far as showing up for practices and games, and ... well, there was the absolutely uncomfortable moment when he discussed protective gear, including  jockstrap and cup.  

Talk about an eye opener for me.  Protective gear that would prevent someone from hitting me in the squishy bits - I had four younger sisters who had figured out a few years before that striking me there would incapacitate me, and might be worth being sent to their rooms to await dad's return home, when who knows what might happen.  

So after getting my pants, shoulder pads, and helmet - I got the coolest helmet because I had, and still do have, a large head for a human, and with glasses, the normal two-bar mouth-level "cage" wasn't going to work, they gave me the helmet with three bars across the face, one vertical from the top of the opening to down below my chin.  I got into the car and began explaining to my father the need for a jockstrap and cup.  Dad had polio at the age of 3, so never was able to participate in sports.  His father, my grandfather, passed away before I was born, but that must have been difficult.  My grandfather was a minor-league baseball player, I found his picture at the Twins Stadium a few years ago when we were there.  By then, my father was gone, I couldn't ask him to confirm it, but some of my older cousins, who had known grandfather, had confirmed it.

So I learned sports teamwork.  But I can tell you that the real teamwork did not come into existence for me until I was in Band.  

Sure, teamwork is working together to accomplish a goal, but while sports is the obvious environment that occurs, school band programs are an even bigger example.  I know if people haven't had the experience, or have played sports at a higher level, it might not seem that way.  But it sure as heck is.

In grade school band, which I started in fifth grade, we experienced once-a-week rehearsals together, usually once-a-week band lessons where a teacher would come to our school and interact one-on-one with us.  We started out isolated, but became a group following the directions of the band conductor - an adult teacher, obviously, but that's where things got complicated.

I was in the percussion section.  That is, most people would look at it and say "oh, he's a drummer".  Part of it, certainly, but only a very small part of it.  There are only two instruments in that section that do not change pitch during a performance.  Those are the snare drum and bass drum.  Aside from a few items we called "small traps" every other instrument in percussion is played both by rhythm and note.  There are the obvious instruments, from bells to the xylophone, marimba, vibraphone, and chimes which are built to play different notes.  Technically, the piano is also a percussion instrument, as it generates sound from a hammer striking a string.  There are also the tympani, my personal favorite, which are frequently tuned to a song's specific key, but can also change pitch during the song.  We had a pair of tympani that were quite easy to change using footpedals.  

When you start playing in band, you keep one eye on your conductor for the tempo, another on the sheet music in front of you, and a third, occasionally, on your instrument.  Most people are not aware that when it comes to the bass drum, the simplest drum in the percussion section, can be seriously affected by where and how you strike the drum - and what implement you use.

If you've seen any music performed by a modern rock band, you may be familiar with the image of drum sticks.  Typically wooden sticks that are 14-16 inches long, some up to one inch in diameter, are used to hit most drums.  Bongos, though, are hit with fingertips.  The bass drum is usually hit with a softer felt "mallet".  The concert bass drum, which may be five feet or more in diameter, is typically on a stand which raises it up off the floor, and the person playing the drum usually keeps a knee against the drum to muffle some of the sound.  The other big difference is that rather than striking the drum with a "straight-in" strike, it is best played by striking it with an upward glancing blow about half-way between the center and edge of the drum.  This permits the drum to resonate with the "thump" that we're familiar with, because the drum head away from the knee will still resonate.  

Where we get to the teamwork is when we consider that nearly every student who has participated in organized school music since the dawn of time is at least one eye short of the number needed as noted above.  In my ten years of organized music participation, it was a constant that most students might keep the conductor's baton which showed the tempo in their peripheral vision, they were focusing on the music.  Which meant that most of the band got their tempo from the percussion section behind them.  It became the percussion section's responsibility to follow and maintain the tempo for the rest of the band.  

As we got older, better, and more proficient in our chosen instruments, we relied on one another even more.  While I am certain there are literally hundreds of tips I never learned for playing the flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, french horn, baritone, or tuba, there are about six times as many tips as there "small traps" in the percussion section.  For example, there is the "Cow Bell".  Basically a metal cone, often squared off, of varying length and size, which gets hit by a hard stick to make the sound.  There are many different tones you can create depending on where you hit the cowbell.  Then there are the "tuned instruments" that create different tones.  The bells, typically metal bars mounted in a case, are struck with hard mallets.  If you happen to strike on the edge of the bar, you can cause the mallet head to disintegrate.  You can also get strange sounds.

Then there's the "Gong".  Typically a large, round, almost flat piece of metal which is suspended by cord from a stand.  Most people who think "playing the gong" consists of "oh, hit it" are going to be wrong.  The primary sound of the gong is not what is produced by the strike, but by the vibrations which result from the impact.  Which means that, when a "gong" note is required, the gong needs to be "warmed up" which consists of tapping it lightly, regularly, to begin the vibrating.  After 3-5 seconds of "warming up" the gong player then strikes the gong - and the sound rises to be heard throughout the audience.

But there are no guarantees that everything will work out.  Once I reached high school, the ultimate goal was Concert Band.  Concert Band was the group from which members were pulled for accompaniment of the string sections for Orchestra, a separate group.  Members were also eligible to join Dance Band, a small group of musicians who would play many classic 40s-era and forward "dance music" - songs like Canadian Sunset, My Cherie Amour, and other big-band recognized music.  Pep band, the group that played for pep fests and at multiple athletic events, including every single home football game, also came from Concert Band.  Which meant that the Concert Band folks were counted on for performances multiple times a year, not just the two-or-three-times a year concerts.  

Concert band years started on day one - Concert band met daily, for an hour, and once a week the Orchestra would come into the band room to practice their music.  One other day a week, typically Friday, was when the band broke into "sectionals" - each group of instruments would split off and practice for various contests.

Being a member of the Percussion section had multiple benefits, the biggest of which was that we kept the band room, everyone else had to leave.  We were lucky enough to have a professor from St. Cloud State come to work with us.  Not only a professor, he was also a composer, and we got to use many of his compositions, which undoubtedly helped in our placing very highly in various sectional contests.  It was also a giant rush, every week, because he would work us on individual elements, but at ten minutes before the end of the class, he would wind us up for a two-in-a-row performance, and our fellow bandmates would come into the band room to store their music folders in the cabinet, and we'd get to "show off" - there was no other way to put it.  And rarely did a week go by that we didn't have a large group of our classmates standing, watching, listening, and appreciating us.

One group in my high school that wasn't exactly discriminating was our Marching Band.  We had a very long history of marching units, with a full all-female drum and bugle corps, in addition to a full marching band, over the years.  When I got to high school, the junior band, Varsity Band, members were all fully welcome to join the summer marching band.  Halfway through the season I joined to play "second bass" - I carried the smaller bass drum, the one you would hear a half-mile away.  It was about 30" in diameter.  The big drum, 42" in diameter, was a big load - but it was on my chest my second year.  And by then I had decided I knew what I wanted to play.  We had two sets of triples - three drums tuned for a high, middle, and low pitch.  They were the tympani of the marching band, and i got them between my sophomore and junior years - three years beating on those things.

Where the big bass drum weighed some forty pounds, the triples were fifty.  They also required a large mounting rig that started with four strap attachment points and a huge plate which rode against your hips.  The drum heads were usually set so they were at or slightly above my waist, and I had to both maintain my step with the rest of the band, but also keep from moving my hips too much or the drums would wiggle, throwing me off balance, causing me to step out of line.

When we started Marching Band season, the first few practices were pretty boring.  You listened to a metronome and walked - or more properly marched, heel-toe to heel-toe, with a precise step length.  Because when you were in marching band in a parade, some folks would look for their column, the line of people from front to back - your goal, unless you were the head of the column, to be invisible.  Not me, with drums that extended some 20" off my hips in either direction.  But you wanted to remain in line.  Which was the easy part.

When marching, you were to keep your head faced forward.  You weren't gawking around, you were marching.  And your step length was critical because you also needed to remain in-line with the other members next to you.  Oh, but since you can't turn your head to the side to confirm your line, you rely on diagonals.  You can flick your eyes to the forward left and forward right to confirm you were in your correct diagonal - which should insure you're also in line with your fellow band mates.  

Mind you, that all sounds simple, unless you're dealing with people that range from four-foot-ten to six-foot-three.  Some of those folks are going to have to work pretty hard to maintain the same step length - because it didn't change.  Shorter folks had to stretch, taller folks had to think.  

But what about teamwork?  In most parades, you will not hear them, but in most marching  band practices, the heartbeat of the band is known as a cadence.  The percussion section, which in your average marching band will consist of snare drums, triples, bass drums, cymbals, and bell players, keep the band in rhythm.  That is what the cadence does.  

When I was in high school, we had four cadences.  Imaginatively enough, our lead-off cadence was called One - a set of four cadences, by the time I got there, we only used One.  One was usually followed in the later years by The Bell Cadence.  We used two bell tunes that broke down the same way, one was a melody which was known more as a Scottish bagpipe tune, the other was one that sounds a lot like a Christmas song.  The same drum part worked, so the bells would pay the first portion, the drums would come in, then we would accompany the bells as they played their song again.  

Then came Jive.  It was probably one of my favorite, as it built from a pretty quiet start.  Just the bass drums, one beat per step.  They would do four to eight beats then the cymbals would add in with a sort of a rhythm accompaniment.  Then came the triples.  We would play an up-and-down rhythym for about four measures, then the snares would come in and build the excitement.  After sixteen bars, there would be the triple solos.  Then we'd all play again.  Which would bring us to our workout.  

The fourth cadence, which was one of a set called Blood, Sweat, and Tears, we kept Blood.  This was the most challenging cadence, because it was syncopated.  It was a riff on a sort of call and answer routine that the triples would initiate and be responded to by the snares.  The real challenge was in both the syncopation - you were often playing on off beats, which challenged some people's steps to remain consistent, and then the music.  The triples would have to finish each exchange with a sextuplet - six distinct beats in one beat - where the snares would respond with a roll.  Much easier for them then us heavy metal guys.

But that's all about teamwork.  In your average parade, there will be an area set aside for judging.  If you like listening to band music, find a spot near that judging stand.  All competitive bands will play their music through the judges stand, and receive their marks.  Bands are evaluated on the performance of the color guard and the guard unit, up front, the drum major or majorette, depending, and the band itself.  Music is one component, another is the look of the band - are they in the same uniforms, or are those that differ differing for a reason?  In my senior year, our standard marching band uniforms had been black shoes topped by white spats - a cover which hid the laces of the shoe and the joint where your ankle entered the shoe.  It also emphasized the steps, when you saw the black legs with the white flash at the end, all in unison.  Allegedly.

On top of the black wool pants, for four years, we wore a tee shirt covered by a black wool suit coat - our concert band uniform was the black pants, black suit coat, white shirt, and black bow tie.  The suit coat was topped by a wool overlay - gold on the black, gold and white on the front with big black C in an old english style font.  To make sure we were as physically hot as possible during the June and July parades, we wore tall plastic Shako hats.  If you're not familiar with it, just google any British unit trooping the colors - whether on horseback or foot, they'll be wearing a red jacket and a tall, black-fur-covered hat.  

During my senior year, we started a push. Yes, I was one of the pushers.  Our color guard had uniforms that started with white, mid-calf-height boots, black-and-white pleated skirts, and white open-collar shirts with a gold stripe bordered by narrow black stripes, which matched the black collar on the shirt.  

We saw a trend in the marching band field that had the percussion section matching the color guard.  Our color guard was fairly consistent in driving us nuts.  In a great many parades, we would be very highly ranked when it came to music and band scores - but our color guard scores would cost us first place.  

They topped their uniforms with black cowboy hats, with the left brim turned up, and a white feather in it.  The color guard used white gloves, while the musicians could not, as they affected our ability to hold and play our instruments.  Including drum sticks.  

We had suggested the drummers follow the trend, however put us in gold hats, rather than black, since we were the good guys who kept the band on tempo.  We also pushed for black and gold gauntlets that would let us flash a bit more with our drumming.  But those options did not fly.  

We got hats just like the color guard, and shirts.  We didn't get skirts (thank God, we'd all have gone back to the original uniform if that had happened), but we made it work.  

Then came ... well, another long-story-short trip.  I was in marching band for five summers.  My second summer we took a very long trip from St. Cloud to Detroit Lakes, a usual parade for us each summer.  We slept on the floor of an elementary school gym that night, and then left from Detroit Lakes to go to Edmonton, Alberta, for the Edmonton Klondike Days.  Aside from the 24 hour it took for us to get to Edmonton, there were two parades, a concert competition, and an indoor field show, held in the same building the Edmonton Oilers - and Wayne Gretzky - played.

The disturbing thing was that we had been informed to expect that the typical high temperature in Edmonton in late July was expected to be in the mid 70s - Farenheit - so most of us packed for that sort of weather.  And when we got there, it was in the 90s.  I do not know if this had anything to do with how our drum major missed the sign for the judging area, but we did not play our "show tune" in the judging area.  As we were from Minnesota and in an international competition playing the Minnesota March, well, we had hoped that would get us a few extra points.  It failed.

Three years later, I was a graduated senior who could play for the summer with the band, and we were headed to Canada again.  This time to Winnipeg, only about an eight-hour bus ride.  Rather than sleep in a school and get our meals in the cafeteria, we stayed in a hotel, meals were in group, which meant we had to be on time and in decent clothes to go to lunch or dinner with the rest of the band.  And we were able to practice in the abandoned shopping mall parking lot across the street from the hotel.  So that was cool.

But in Winnipeg, the parade was much easier.  We lined up in a parking ramp, marched down the main ramp, turned left once on the street, marched a block, then another left.  After two and a half miles, we turned right into the parking lot at the end of the parade where our buses would wait.  Our typical evening practice was usually about 90 minutes, with some stops for direction and to get the neighborhood kids out of the band, keep them from riding their bikes up the ranks.

I will admit that yes, I did sacrifice a cracked drumstick into the spokes of one of these idiot's bike wheels.  Unlike bike brakes, a solid hickory stick, slightly cracked, will stop a bike pretty much as effectively as a brick wall.  Momentum, though - well, lets just say that the young fellow landing on his face seemed to keep him out of the band for the next few years.

But a two mile parade was on the far end of what we normally did.  However, in the low eighties in Winnipeg (still pre-internet, but us old folks in the band reminded everyone of what Edmonton was like, which helped, I figure), we all made it to that parking lot in proper ranks - which, after we made our first right turn of the day, saw us break up because our band director was RUNNING across the parking lot with a four foot tall trophy over his head.  In an unusual move for us 'Merikans, the Canadian folk finished their judging when the last band passed through the stand, and then sent the results down to the end of the parade, rather than waiting for the bands to finish and come to the judging announcement.  And we had won.

Which was when us "old folks" came in handy.  I called my father.  I told him the news, then asked if there was any way they could get us a police escort into town.  Not because we were bad people, but we were pretty confident we'd just done something pretty cool.  My uncle was the assistant chief of police for the town we were from, so I thought that might help.  What was probably a bit more effective was the young tuba player friend of mine whose father was Stearns County Sheriff's Deputy.  

After about 7 1/2 hours on the bus, coming down the freeway from Canada, I was staring out the window, recognizing the territory just to the west of Avon, Minnesota, when two sheriff's cars with lights and sirens going roared past our bus, the first in line, then pulled in front of us, matching our speed.  The bus radio, which had been mostly useless for communication outside the three buses we were on, crackled to life, and one of the dispatchers whose voice I recognized because he'd been the same dispatcher/supervisor I'd heard for the thirteen previous years, from kindergarten through high school.  He informed the bus drivers to follow the police escort, we would pull off the road in St. Joe to organize the procession.  Procession?  I had a hell of a lot to learn.  

Then our band director, on our bus, got the driver to pass him the microphone after telling the other two buses to switch to another channel.  He then used the microphone to let the other two buses know that we would be pulling off the freeway in St. Joseph, the second and third buse would be the changing buses for the girls, the first would be for the boys.  We would change into band uniforms and get our instruments, because when we departed the parking lot, we would be part of a police-escorted procession to downtown St. Cloud, where we would march across downtown to our school, where the mayor and other folks - including our folks - would meet us.  

In deviant percussionist planning, every one of the drummers - snare, bass, and triples - had picked up mirrored sunglasses while in Winnipeg.  Some of us wore glasses every day, and mirrored sun glasses back then were not prescription.  But what the heck.  We traded our white feathers for small Canadian flags on sticks which we stuck in our hats.  I'd purchased a three-by-five foot Canadian flag which we tied to seats inside the bus and opened the window to let it fly out back.  

We got back into the bus and noticed the La Playette parking lot - a bar which I would later become much more familiar with as a college student - was getting really crowded.  There were people waving and pointing, then the police cars - both the Stearns County Sheriff and the St. Joe Police - started with the lights and sirens, and the buses pulled in slowly, behind them.  Then cars lined up.

Some of you may recognize the name St. Joseph.  Yes, it was the home town of Jacob Wetterling, the boy who would be abducted and killed in October of 1989, almost exactly a month before my wedding.  But these were much happier moments.

Back in the early 1980s in St. Joe, highway 23 ran through St. Joe, and was bordered on both sides by a frontage road. Both frontage roads were filled, bumper to bumper, with cars - with police escorts from multiple communities aiding in organizing everything.  We got out onto the freeway, and the sheriff's car in front of us took off, to be replaced by a second car, which pulled over into the middle, between both lanes,  We followed, and eventually we made our way right down 23, which turned into Division Street, running from West to East through St. Cloud.  We blew past stop lights, opposing and stopping traffic being blocked by more police.  One of the kids on the bus turned on a boom box to a local radio station which was broadcasting our progress across town, letting people know they could see us march across downtown in a few minutes. 

Then they probably literally dropped the needle onto the only record you would expect.  Released in October of 1977, a year before I would start high school, Queen's We Are The Champions is probably overused, but when it fits, it damned well fits.  The buses pulled into the parking lot which was across the street from the Cinema Arts movie theater, about two blocks from my father's childhood home.  We did what we do best, which was get off the bus, grab our equipment, and lined up.  The drummers in their black cowboy hats with the Canadian flags got a bit of a frown from our band director, who pointed at me - and I pointed at the mirrored sunglasses, just like he was wearing on a cloudy night.  The frown changed to a big fat cheesy grin and a shake of his head.  Then he blew his whistle, we snapped to attention.  

From that onward I do not remember much.  We played.  We played our hearts out, because for most of us it would be the last time in front of families and relatives.  The Winnipeg Trip had been expensive, and while we'd raised a lot of money, our marching band season, which usually ended with Detroit Lakes and two weeks later Glenwood Water Festival parades, was done.  Right there.  

But when you talk about teamwork, a major component of that is trust.  We had to trust that each member of the band did their job.  And while sometimes it did not always work, when it did, it was great.  And that was a wonderful way to end my marching band career, though I do wish it could have gone on for another twenty or thirty summers, at least.