Marching Band Research Paper

Ever since I joined band in 4th grade, people have been talking about how excited they were to join marching band. At band day in 5th and 6th grade, everyone else shared how they couldn't wait until they were a 9th grader and could finally be able to perform and play in the stands like we saw the marching band do many times. In 7th and 8th grade, we had a watered down version of marching band that only played two parades. While I was glad to get snare drum both years, the exhilaration was never there, and I came very close to not joining marching band. But against my will, I ended up auditioning for drumline in April and I got the cymbals. After many summer practices and two torturous weeks of band camp, the whole machine band thing didn't exactly pay off yet. I was just hoping that it would all be worth it in the end. …show more content…
We practiced for an hour, put on the uniforms, piled into the buses, and unloaded at a high school foreign to me. The sun sank into the horizon as we sat in the stands and watched the other high school perform. At second quarter we did our own show, and it went flawlessly. But the thrill of marching band still didn't kick in to me. We made our way back to the stands, and the drum major held up a sign saying, "Land of a Thousand Dances." From the moment the band saw the sign waving in the air, the mood went from proud of a good performance to buzzing with excitement to play the first stands song. One of the snare drummer who I held my cymbals for (the snare drums play on our cymbals for the majority of the stands songs), turned to me with devious smile. The rest of the snare drums looked at each other as if they all had a secret that they were trying their hardest to keep from the cymbals. All the other cymbals looked at each other in confusion. We didn't have much time to figure out what was going to happen before the drum major started counting