General Discussion

High school band is pretty alright and marching season especially can generate some interesting and likely painful experiences, so does anyone else have marching band stories or just stories from fine arts electives in general? Some fun ones of mine include:
-I tripped over the prop during a performance, almost fell, just barely didn’t make it to my set, and got a nice bruise
-I got a colour guard flag dropped on my wrist during practice, luckily it didn’t hit my piccolo or my head
-aforementioned flag got dropped on two other people during other practices, however
-again, same flag was dropped on my head during our uil performance, luckily we have hats and the worst damage done was messing up my plume
-the lovely, beautiful, and warm triple degree weather of summer band practice in texas
-my band director uses a mic to give instructions and always starts practice with “check check good morning”
-before a competition, I dropped my piccolo around four feet onto concrete while trying to fix my hat (it was completely fine though)
-one of the other piccolos literally forgot to bring her piccolo to a performance, somehow the managed to find one

@dootflute
I’m going to high school next year and will be doing marching band. I play the flute in band and we’re currently doing spring training on Tuesdays. It’s painful but I’m sure it’ll be worth it.
Last time at spring training I was bringing a music stand to sectionals and I felt this thing stabbing me in the back... I thought it was my friend so I told her to stop but I kept getting poked. So I turned around and realized it was just the foot of my music stand. So basically I yelled at myself haha.

I'm a trombone. This was my first year of marching band. It was really fun. Aside from having to explain to literally everyone that, yes, marching band is competitive, and, no, I didn't join just to watch football.

Our show this year was spooky themed, appropriate because regional championships were 2 weeks before Halloween. I did almost slip during a halftime performance though. At the beginning of our show, we have to walk kind of like zombies over towards a Mellophone soloist. The one day it rained was the day we were performing on a grass field. I luckily managed to recover in time to not get mud all over my white & blue uniform, and I don't think anyone noticed, aside from the other trombone I almost stabbed with my slide.

Also, any of you doing memorial day parades too?

@dootflute don't get hurt.

oh boy, for our show last fall we had these star props,, they were basically a plastic pole with a big metal star on the top and a piece of wood to keep them on the ground. sound flimsy and dangerous? yes. that's exactly what they were. when we got to state, half of them fell down (nearly on our horribly freezing low brass and battery, just to add to the chaos of none of our tech working. I faked playing my piano part the entire time because the laptop was frozen.)
and then for the rest of the school year, our band director decided they'd look best a foot away from the orchestra lockers. we nearly had a few violins get attacked.

so uh. don't put flimsy metal stars as part of your half time/competition show.

but hey at least in pit during band camp you can just sit around because your part is so easy you already have it memorized

also if the upcoming freshman decide to complain about the hats or jackets, I will personally make them wear our old ones. they better be glad they have those dumb things