#if i told u this was just supposed to be a warmup would u believe me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

vintage-brass-tc · 2 years

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12/14/2021

It’s finals week! I won’t be seeing M that much at all, but I got to spend an extended class time with him today, so here’s what came out of that. (Not much — but it’s something I suppose)

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Before class, the assistant director, U, was babbling about something going on. Of course, as the information wasn’t too vital, I kept a good amount of my attention on M. As U rambled, M looked a little bored. Eventually, M dragged his eyes up out of his music stand and moved his eyes to his left until he stopped to look at me (I was almost right in front of him from where he was facing, so it wasn’t too far).

When we met eyes, instead of looking away right away, we both just gazed. His lips were in a straight line. He was thinking. I began to smile at his concentration and shyly averted my eyes to my right. When I had looked back, he was looking down at his music, away from me as well. I wasn’t particularly caught off guard by the action, but from loads of previous experience, I knew M was usually the one who would keep eye contact with people. He’s good at that.

I thought the sudden attention was cute. When I looked back towards U, I saw him looking right at me as well. I cast a quick glance at M once more, who seemed to be doing his own little thing now, then continued to listen. Same as before, his eyes were off me after mine were off of his. It made me wonder if he saw the entire silent interaction between M and I.

When the class began, M told us that we would do a warmup. He had instructed model groups to play firsthand, and the rest of the band would echo. It was the same exercise we had usually done at the beginning of class, but I suppose I wasn’t fully immersed in the moment because I had forgotten the first exercise we would always do in this scenario.

The model group began to play following M’s count-off, and it’s all fine and dandy until I slurred down from Concert F to Concert E (knowing full well I should have articulated in between the notes). I had thought we were playing a Remington exercise, but it was just a SUSTAINED CONCERT F. Back and forth, as we usually did.

When I messed up, I felt my heart drop , along with the volume of my tone. I IMMEDIATELY looked at M to see if he heard me, lifting my finger off the second valve as well to continue playing the F before our first turn ended.

M had furrowed his eyebrows slightly and stared in my direction upon hearing my note slip. Out of panic and desperation for him not to call me out, I widened my eyes a LOT to show him that I was just as appalled as he was that I messed up on something so simple. I was so nervous that I even began to tremble a bit; it took everything to sturdy myself and not shake my note in the process.

Within the first glance, he looked slightly annoyed at the unnecessary mistake, but after seeing my shocked expression, his eyes began to widen as well, in response. He matched my expression. He tried to remain serious in the process, but I believe I remember seeing a ghost of a smile crack on his lips as well. Before he could succumb to the smile, though, he turned away from me, knowing full well that I knew the instructions now.

Thank God — he never stopped the band and just kept going. I made sure to perform to the best of my ability after that…at least, for now. Jeez.

M got onto the tuba section a little bit today.

For one, as a whole, we never started our notes the same way during a piece. Since we all have different tone quality, too, that doesn’t quite help with this— and it makes our playing sound sloppy. U kept telling us to play our notes light like a string bass, and M had told us this as well.

It came to the point where he would cue us in during the specific measures he wanted us to focus on sounding good in. A fun thing about him as well is that he would make direct eye contact with me for a majority of the times the tuba section is called on. I think this was because he’d always tell me, ever since he first taught me, that I was amazing at the tuba, and that I sound more mature than everyone else. Honestly, though, I think it’s just flattery to keep me in the program. Feels nice coming from him though, haha. ❤️ Also, short one, but we got assigned a new piece yesterday, and I had not looked at it prior to the first day we tried to play it, which was today. Faulty mistake— we had sixteenth notes during this song, something I never expect to see in tuba parts. That was fairly interesting.

When we arrived to this section of the piece, only one of my peers played, along with the lows assigned that part as well. He began a second rep on that, probably to ensure that people like myself didn’t have a brain fart in the moment. When this was finished, he looked in my peer’s direction— the one who played it — maybe thinking that he didn’t.

He told anyone that has this part needs to work on improving it. Definitely did that tonight with a good old practice session. Hope he finds it well enough. We’ll find out next rehearsal!!

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This week is going to be tough, I don’t see M for the next two days— at least not in class— so that’ll be interesting. Chance is that he won’t, but I’m curious to find out if he will ever miss me in that time. Haha.

Hope everyone is having a good week! Please get some rest, especially for those like me with tests coming up just around the corner!

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