Practice Makes (Almost) Perfect: My Close Call with a Band Director's Wrath
I want to tell a story about the time I got embarrassed by my band director in college, but before I do, I have to give a little history. I've been playing trumpet since I was eight years old, and something that I observed is that on certain performance days, certain teachers are a lot more stressed out than usual.
I first noticed this right away when I was eight, and we had our concert, and my band director would turn red. He would holler at us. He had a temper. Fast forward to college. My college director didn't have a temper, but it was obvious that there was a lot more pressure on two dates in particular.
Whenever we traveled to St. Louis, which was hometown, he was a lot more intense, and the second time he was more intense is when we played on campus, and so the time I embarrassed myself, we had a performance on campus that day, and we had a rehearsal on campus every day, three o 'clock, and on this day was the performance also, so it ended up being a sound check in the performance site, and my director called one of the hardest songs in the book, one that we barely practice, if ever, and honestly, I had a very hard trumpet part, and I had a hard time executing on that part, and I practiced.
Yes, I did, but obviously I didn't practice enough, because what happened is my director came, counted off the tune, and then he came and stood behind the trombone section and was looking at the trombone part as the music passed by, but if you know anything about how a jazz band is set up, the trumpet section is behind the trombone section, and so on this day he counted off the tune, came, stood behind the trombone section, and a few bars in he stopped the band in the middle of the song, and he proceeded to yell at me.
He said, you thought I was coming back here to listen to the trombone section. I was coming back here to listen to you, and you don't know your part, and he told me, in so many words, not to come back until I knew my part for that evening's performance, and so at that point I think we had about, I don't know, maybe three hours before the showtime, so I practiced, I practiced, and I practiced for that time in between, and later that night when that song came up, I nailed it, and so what's the lesson here?
The lesson is there is always another level of preparation that one can enter. There's always another level of preparation that one can enter, so if you think you're trying your best, double check, make sure that you really are.
