This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.
Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.
There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes and on the rehearsal
field that you don't get to see during a drum corps performance. One
of the most quirky things we do, at least as individual sections, is
give nicknames to measures of music or pages in the drill that we
commonly start or stop at. There are a ton, but just for illustration,
here are some of the nicknames we use in Khachaturian's Second Symphony.
Khach begins with a percussion feature named Snake Bite. The name
comes from the fact that the pit had a HUGE black snake come through
the pit while we were rehearsing that section, and the name spread to
the battery too. In the same vein, the pit has an exercise based on
that section that we've named Black Anaconda.
For the pit, measure 38 of Khach is officially known as Giraffe. At
one point, we were told to go to one measure past 38, and someone
asked why we didn't just say 39? Our tech Mike explained that the
offcial rehearsal numbers often don't line up with the real measure
numbers, so we phrase everything in terms of rehearsal numbers.
"Measure 38 could be called Giraffe," he said, "and I'd still tell you
to stop at one past Giraffe". We all liked the name, and so it stuck.
Next up, measure 77 is known as Furry Woodland Creature, because we
saw one running by during rehearsal yesterday in Allentown.
A lot of these are only being used by the pit, but these two came from
the battery. I heard this story secondhand, so it might be inaccurate.
Apparently the battery kept missing a hold at page 51 in the drill, so
their tech Zach had them repeat over and over "the hold is after the
triplet diddle. The hold is after the triplet diddle. The hold is
after..." and so on. Apparently in the movie Fight Club, there's a
point where they repeat the name Robert Paulson a lot, so page 51 was
christened Robert Paulson, and page 50 became Tyler Durden, another
character from Fight Club.
So there you have it. Next time you're watching a drum corps rehearsal
and someone yells out "Play out at Snake Bite! Watch your spacing at
Tyler Durden!", you'll have some idea of what's going on. Of course,
these are just a few of the many names that we have, and this is
mainly just the pit. Every section in the corps has their own
nicknames like these, and it's still June, so there are surely many
still to come.
