Happy almost-August!

I hope all of you are having wonderful summers!  I know many of you have summer jobs, take long vacations, or just sit around and watch TV and check Facebook—whatever you’re doing, I hope you’re having a great time!

Pre-camp rehearsals and Marching Uniform Fittings

If you haven’t looked at your calendar in a while, though, time for a reality check: pre-camp rehearsals are starting VERY SOON!  See the Home page here for exact dates and times.  In short, beginning August 4^th, we will be having evening rehearsals.  Not everybody will need to be there every night.  If finding a ride is a problem, get on the phone and start calling people and if you still can’t find a ride, please email me and we’ll get it taken care of.  EVERYONE who needs a ride will have one!

Uniforms are assigned on a FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE basis.  If you really want a uniform that fits well, be there as close to 5pm as possible.  If you, or your parents/guardians are available to help with the uniform assignments on any night (ESPECIALLY Wednesday), our wonderful uniform parent volunteer and student uniform managers would like to have your help! 

You will need all your music and a functioning instrument every single rehearsal.  Any person missing music or who will be using a school instrument that they do not have for any reason (I know some are being repaired as we speak) are asked to be at rehearsal 15 minutes early. 

Hopefully, you’ve been working on your music little by little all summer.  If not, time to start cramming.  Leaders—if you recall, before summer vacation, I told you that I expected all of you to show up to the very first rehearsal with music memorized and I am still holding you to that.  Non-leaders—I expect you to show up as prepared as humanly possible and to push your leaders!  Show them at the very first rehearsal that YOU are ready to go and they should be too!  Let’s try and make our “adjustment period” of getting back into playing shape as short as possible (I’m thinking about 10 minutes—you guys with me on that or what?)

Some things to make sure of before that first rehearsal:

Drumline folks—like mentioned before, YOU must provide your own sticks.  The school will NOT be providing any sticks for you.  That information is on the website under the “high school band” link.  If you can’t get to Marshall Music yourself or with a friend, email me and I’ll take care of it.

Recordings—if you haven’t been listening to recording online of the show music and would like to, follow these instructions:

Go to www.jwpepper.com

Search for “quidam” and this will bring up a bunch of music.  Our songs are Atmadja, Ninkou Latora, Quidam, and Incantation.

You will need Real Player to hear the files.  If you don’t already have Real Player, I’d recommend downloading this player since it doesn’t come with all the spyware: http://www.free-codecs.com/real_Alternative_download.htm

To hear the parade dance, go to www.jwpepper.com again do a search for “mice elf” and it will give you the parade tune.  Again, you’ll need Real Player.

I cannot stress enough the importance of practicing this music BEFORE rehearsals.  I don’t expect you to show up with everything perfect, but I expect you show up with all the right fingers and a pretty good understanding of the rhythms.

Every year, the Greyhound band sets a goal of being the best possible band we can be and that doesn’t start at band camp—it starts now.  Don’t show up and force someone else to pull you along—instead, why don’t you be the one pushing everyone else to catch up to you.  I promise that if you do that, there won’t be any limits we can’t reach together.

Enjoy your summer and relax in the time you have left, but understand that we have things coming up that require your attention now.

As always, please feel free to direct any questions you may have to my email at agumbrecht@erpsk12.org and I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

I can’t wait to see you all again and start making the 08/09 edition of the Greyhound Marching Band the best one ever!

Sincerely,

Adam Gumbrecht, Director of Bands, Eaton Rapids High School