Alongside humanities, maker, science, and math (the normal subjects I post about), I am also in band. Funny story, at the beginning of the year when I was told to rank electives I out band as my last choice. However with me being in PLP and soccer academy, my time table was very limited and I had no other choice. The reason why I had put band last was because I played the flute in elementary school and didn’t enjoy it very much, especially in grade 7. When I was told I could only be in band I decided that I was going to start a new instrument. For me I thought percussion would be super fun so I asked my mom if I could do it and she said, “yes but on one condition. I won’t buy you a drum kit”. I then followed up by telling her that I wasn’t going to play drums anyways, I was planning on doing piano or mallet percussion. So I started the year on bells, the smallest mallet instrument. Since I had played piano in my past I was able to read music and I knew what each key was. I had to get used to using mallets instead of my fingers but I got pretty used to it and liked it a lot. I had a ton of fun playing The Hanging Tree, Mary Poppins songs, and The Simpson’s.

Then came the time to pack our bags and heard off to Zajac Ranch. This trip’s intent was for us to practice music and get to know each other a lot better. For me the biggest highlights were playing ping pong with Aedan, Jacky, and Grace, watching Aedan become Mrs Doubtfire and clean the food tables, and starting to learn the drums. Yes that’s right, I started to learn the drums. One day during one of the practice sessions we had up there I decided I wanted to just try drum kit for fun. I ended up really liking it and I had Eric, the TA, to teach me. By the end of the weekend I could play a classic rock beat which made me very proud of myself. However, I didn’t know how to break the news to my mom without her being sacasrticlly annoyed at me. Unfortunately for me since Eric is close friends with my brother, he had sent pictures and videos of me playing the drums to him. So I was surprised that when I arrived home off the bus my mom said, “Really, drums?” She was fine with it but kept her rule that she would not buy me a drum kit no matter what.

So I spent the rest of the band classes until Christmas playing mallet percussion but practicing my drumming in spare time. I also convinced my mom into being me my own pair of drumsticks. For our first concert I played our songs on mallet percussion with no exceptions. Here are a few photos of the first concert.

At the beginning of term two I primarily played mallet percussion but I started playing  other instruments, not just the bells. I was however given the song Moana, our biggest piece at the time, to play on the drums. I spent times after school working with Eric on the part until I got a good enough grasp at it to start playing it in class with the rest of the band. I got a lot better at every part and ended up adding drum fils into one section. The bit that gave me the most trouble was the beginning. I had to play sixteenth notes on the high hat, while playing a basic rock beat on bass drum and snare drum. Still to this day I struggle with that part but I can do it much better than I did in concert. I think overall our band improved from the first concert to the second one but the big improvement happened between our second concert and our final ones.

About 2 weeks before we went on spring break we started working on some jazz songs. For these, me and Luciano (the other new drummer) took turns deciding who would play which song on the drums. When we came back from Spring Break we practiced the song “Money” which has a 7/8 count, played “You got a Friend in me” which has a swing beat, and just got to practice a bunch of different types of drumming. The only song I ended up doing on mallet percussion was You got a friend in me, since Luciano played it on the drums. I also had one other song where I played the shaker and bongos. This term was the funnest by far since we got to play a bunch of songs we knew and I was mainly playing drums. We played songs such as Enter Sandman, Billie Jean, Viva La Vida, and You got a Friend in me. By the end of term I was telling my family that with my saved up money from umpiring baseball games I was going to buy myself a drum kit because they couldn’t stop me from doing that. However, after watching my performance at Cabaret, my parents decided to pay for half of it. This meant I could get a better, more expensive drum kit. Also, at the end of year concert there were awards being given out and I won the Outstanding Beginning Instrumentalist award. I was really proud of myself for coming so far with music in only one year. Anyways please enjoy some video and photo’s of my end of year concert and Cabaret.

I am so happy that I was accidentally put in band because it has really helped me find another passion. I never thought I would love drumming as much as I do and I never thought I would want to do band again next year. But I plan to continue with band until grade 12 and maybe keep it as a side hobby after secondary school. Because or Mr Barnes I have now fallen in love with music again and I couldn’t be more thankful.