Jeff’s Blog

Yesterday at 10:00am, myself and part of the band, choir, and orchestra left for the annual Estes Park Music Camp. When we got there, there was a fairly lame talent show in which people who thought they were funny got up over and over again, thinking they were entertaining. Some friends and I left to get food, and came back in time to get our room key and get into our rooms.

We then had our first rehearsal out of four, followed by dinner and another rehearsal. Then we had our evening free time, in which we played Apples to Apples in our room. We went to bed around midnight, and got up at six, thanks to one of the people in our room who woke us all up.

Then we had breakfast, a few more rehearsals and some more free time, and got home around 5:15pm today.

Yesterday was the State Finals competition for marching band. We qualified so well in Regionals that we didn’t have to go to Quarterfinals on Friday, and then yesterday morning at Semifinals, we placed 5^th (much better than 7^th last year). Unfortunately, we also placed 5^th that night at Finals, and we expected much better. There were some bands with unreasonably high scores, and it seems like foul play, but probably not. This season was great, starting back in June, then Band Camp, and then several competitions and this.

The Rockies won tonight in the 13th inning, 8-9! Holliday ran into home on a fly-out by Jamey Carroll with zero outs. It looked bad for Colorado when in the top of the 13th, the Padres got a two-run home run. But they pulled out a win, which means they’re going to the playoffs!!

Last night was our school’s Homecoming dance. I went with my girlfriend of almost six months, and we had a great time. It was much, much better than last year. Before the dance, a bunch of our friends got together at my girlfriend’s house for lasagna and ice cream. We ate and socialized, and then went to the school to dance.

The dance itself was three hours long. We got there a little late, but it went by much faster than we expected. It was mostly hip-hop and techno music, but there were two slow-dancing songs. The evening was amazingly fun, and now I’m looking forward to Winter Ball.

We found out our schedules for 2007-2008 a few days ago. Here’s mine:

On October 11th, about two weeks ago, we had regionals for marching band. We qualified for quarterfinals, which was no surprise.

Last Friday, though, we were quite a bit more excited about making it to semifinals. Then, yesterday at 5:45 in the morning, we left for the competition. We were the first band to perform. It was early and somewhat cold, but we still managed to get 7th place, qualifying us for finals! For the first time in our school’s history, we made it into finals.

During the day, we were anxiously waiting for the announcement, periodically buying food. We ate taco salad for lunch and got warm in the bus waiting for the finals competition. When it was time to go warm up, we got into uniform and were freezing for the next hour. My fingers were aching horribly, even with the fingerless gloves somewhat covering them. I personally improved in the second performance, but the band lost a point overall. However, we moved up a place, so once again, we made school history with 6th place in state finals!

Just now, our school had a Fall Music Festival. Basically, it was showing off to parents what the music department has been doing so far this year. Marching band opened with their whole show, just standing and playing. It was very impressive. Next, some singing groups performed, and after a brief intermission, Jazz 2 was on. They were decent, certainly worthy of performing. Then came Jazz 3.

We were better than we had ever been before in rehearsal, and personally, I made no mistakes. I hit all the syncopations right, always knew exactly where I was in the song. I was by no means perfect, but I was at a satisfactory level for myself. After we played Trumpets Out Front, a basic blues form song, we played Firing Line, our funk chart. They were both awesome. After the performance, our band director announced the names of the drummers, the bassists (and forgot one), and then said, “This is the first time we’ve ever had a freshman in Jazz 3,”, and introduced me to the audience. People were actually clapping for me as an individual for once, which was amazing.

Tonight, I went to our high school’s football game with the entire marching band. We warmed up for a while, and played music in the stands such as fight songs and other popular stuff. Finally, halftime came. We took the field.

The band marched and played horribly at last week’s game, so everyone was a little (more) nervous. However, it all worked out alright, which is excellent since we have a competition Saturday.

As far as the football game went, our high school was behind for the whole first half, scored two touchdowns in the second half, but on the second one, they tried for two points. They didn’t get it, so the score was 13-14 with six seconds to go. They kicked a field goal, and it was good! We won, we marched well, and now we’re looking forward to the rest of marching season.