Marching Band Extended Action

We walked out of the band room to head to the street to start marching. Everyone carried their instruments out. My baritone saxophone’s weight started tugging at my neck and upper back as I walked to the road where everyone else stood. We get out to the road and wait for our drum major Gabe to come and help us get lined up. He walks out twisting his baton as he walks fast toward us. He stands in front of us and blows his whistle.

Everyone quiets down and waits for him to say who goes in the front row. He calls the trumpets to go in the front row. The flutes line up in the second row and the clarinets follow. The saxophones line up on the third and fourth row. The drums including the bass, snare, and quad get the next two rows. The tuba and I get the back row with the trombones. We quiet down and get at ease. At ease starts with having our feet shoulder width apart.

Gabe calls, “Band Attend!” and our relay Tyrell calls back the same thing. After Tyrell says ,“Band Attend!” a snare clicks and Gabe twits his whistle. As Gabe twits his whistle we move our right foot to our left foot and put them at a forty-five degree angle. Gabe has instructed us to look at the person in front of us at all times. Gabe pivots on his left foot and faces the same way that we do. He twirls the baton in his hand while blowing the whistle. He stops the baton pointing ahead of him. He twits the whistle four times and each time we lift the back of our feet. The first one we lift our right then our left then right then we on the last one we lift our left foot off the ground and start marching. We call this the Snap Start.

The snare clicks on beat for a while telling us when the bottom left foot hit the ground so we continue on beat. Gabe calls the cadence and the drums play for a while. It feels cool to feel the drum beat under my feet. We get to the Emery High parking lot and Gabe calls us to play Raiders March. He holds his baton up and whistles while holding up one finger. We started passing the Emery High parking lot as he called this. The drums stop their cadence and do a roll off to Raiders. On the first and second beat we keep our instruments down then the third and fourth we put our instruments up to our mouth but not directly to our mouth so we don’t give our self a bloody lip.

In the process of doing that I got my instrument up and started playing and only got to the 5^th measure and I couldn’t keep the baritone saxophone from bouncing on my leg. I felt something warm around my mouth and I tasted something funny, and I knew it couldn’t be my reed. I took my mouth piece out of my mouth and it had turned red from the blood. The reed looked red also.  My brackets had gone into my bottom and top lip leaving 5 holes. I stopped playing and put my instrument into at ease position.