Participating in a Community Band

My mom encouraged all us kids to do music. So when I entered junior high, I joined the band.

The first thing we got to do when considering band was hear and preview the instruments. I knew I didn’t want to do trumpet or saxophone (both too cliche), but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to play.

Definitely not the flute or clarinet — too wimpy looking.

The tuba was cool but too big.

The baritone was nice but also on the big side.

The trombone is of course a cool instrument, but using the slide seemed pretty complicated. How do you know where to put it exactly? I preferred buttons.

Then my teacher showed us the French horn. He also said something along the lines of, “If Jesus played an instrument, he would probably play French horn.” (And I would later realize that my teacher was a French horn player).

You’re probably not allowed to say that about Jesus now-a-days. But back then I was like, “Yeah! I believe that! The French horn is awesome!”

So I became a French horn player.

Then I went to a band concert and watched the 8th grade jazz band play. It was probably my first time really seeing someone play a drum set in person.

I was like, “Ah man, forget the French horn…I want to play the drums!”

But I did not want to play the drums in the regular concert band. I just wanted to play the drum set in the jazz band. Playing percussion in the concert setting is not quite as fun for me as playing a tuned instrument. I’m sorry, but playing the triangle is not that great.

So I went on to play French horn in symphonic band and then the drums in Jazz band.

In high school, the first quarter of band was marching band and then it switch to the traditional symphonic setting. I decided to play percussion in the marching band drum line (I played bass drum and snare) because the drum line was the awesome-est. I was then going to switch back to the French horn for symphonic band — similar to how I did it in junior high.

Only my high school band teacher was too scary to talk to. When the time came to switch, I felt too nervous to ask her about switching to French horn. So I just stuck with my buddies from the drum line and ended up playing percussion in the symphonic portion of band.

Due to too many run-ins with the teacher, I dropped band after my sophomore year.

(An aside: I joined the choir my senior year and sang tenor. Funny enough, my choir teacher also said something along the lines of, “I Jesus sang, he would sing tenor.” So I guess I was very impressed by those types of comments back in the day).

Joining the Community Band

If you’ve never played in a concert band, there’s really no replicating it.

There’s just something amazing about playing music together in a group that you can’t replace.

I would occasionally have “Band dreams” — dreams about playing the drum line again or just being in the band. Sometimes they were bad band dreams — I would be in marching band an didn’t know my spots or the music.

But often they were just about missing the music.

When my son became junior high age, we encouraged him to do band, which he did. He chose the trumpet (which is fine!).

Since we now had an instrument in the house, I started playing around with it. Then I got to thinking, “I wonder if I could audition for a band around here.”

I went to google and that’s when I discovered that there are quite a few community bands in the area. And better still, they are non-audition bands!

So that’s how I ended up playing trumpet in a community band.

If you’d like to read more about Community Bands, read on: