Daily Rehearsal Woes

All right, digging into my copious rehearsal notes now. I thought about writing them down for years, don't know why I finally started to do it. I graduated last year, and just come to the school to participate in the music groups when I can, so maybe it's some crazy nostalgia thing. You know, the whole, you don't miss it until it's gone thing.

Anyway, so a few weeks ago, on the 2nd, the poor tympanist, who had showed up late that day, was struggling with a part. Doc had cued him for something, or forgot to cue him for something, and Doc told him, "Ultimately, it's always your fault, but in this case not really." 

We were all just as confused as you are.

Then, towards the end of the rehearsal, Doc was ready to start a new piece, but the trumpet section wouldn't stop talking. Normally Doc fusses at us for stuff like this, because we're supposed to be pretty professional by college (and many of us perform professionally already). But this time, he let the trumpets finish up, (turns out they'd been discussing an entrance in the previous piece) and then qualified it to the group: "It's alright. It's business. It's not like they're passing around a lunch menu or anything."

But as always, I've saved the best quote of the day for last, just to entice you to come back for another entry. We were working on a piece, and one of the whole band measures was this 6/4 chord that should've been lovely, but was pretty awful. For those who aren't musicians (or those that need a theory refresher), there are three basic inversions for any chord. We'll take a I chord in the key of C Major. The notes are C, E, and G. When played in that manner, with the C in the bass (on the bottom, so the lowest heard note), it's called root position. When the E is in the bass, it's called a first inversion. This is normally written as a I-6. When the G is in the bass, with the C on top, it's known as a second inversion. It's typically written as a I-6/4. The 6/4 chords are the most unstable.

Doc explained this to us by writing three triangles on the chalk board. The root position looks like this: ▲. It's stable, with the root solidly balancing the chord in the bass. The 1st inversion looks similar to the root position, but it's more square. But the 2nd inversion chord looks like this: ▼. It's very precarious.

Or rather, in Doc's words: "That's the frog with the third eye right there."

Whatever he meant by that. lol.

Hobey-ho!