Band rank

Over the past week, band has been having auditions for concert band. The was it works is everyone plays all the major scales they know(in as many octaves as possible), their chromatic scale(again...), a small piece of music that can be practiced, and finally a non-prepared sight reading exercise. I went into my audition not caring too much. I didn't practice a whole lot, and it showed. Out of twelve scales, I played four or five. I could have tried to play more, but decided against it. My chromatic scale was no better than my others. My prepared piece was okay, but there was nothing special about it. And then my sight reading went pretty well. I figured that I got into the middle of the three bands, as I did last year. I was hoping for the top, of course, but didn't want to get my hopes too high.

I did that audition early on Monday. Trumpets were playing on Monday and Tuesday. For the rest of the week, some friends and I, most of whom should have been getting ready for their auditions, left school and had some fun. The two band directors were listening to auditions, and could not even come out of their rooms or look into the hallway, for fear that the blind audition process might be faltered. This allowed us an easy escape. Too easy, perhaps, because we left every day.

And eventually the last day of auditions came to a close. I had totally forgotten about being placed into bands by that time, but other people were not. They reminded me that sometime this weekend, we would know who was in which band. I wasn't too excited, though, because I expected the post to be on Saturday.

So after school, I went home, and my parents and I headed down to Manchester to see my brother's haunted house(the one he was working at). It ended up being only about 5-10 minutes, but we got to see him briefly. Afterwords, we started back home. About ten minutes into the drive, my friend texted me saying that I got into the top band. This, of course, made me very excited. I asked him how he did. He said that he got first chair in the second band, and he was very happy with his position. He then talked to some people, I suspect, and texted me saying that maybe I didn't make it into wind symphony after all. He saw the middle band's people and saw that I wasn't on the list. Because of this, he suspected that I was higher than him, so he told me that. I could have been in the lower band, however. I asked him to look and make sure, because I had two hours until I could check at home. He said that he would. And then he didn't. And he kept not checking until about an hour later, when I had stopped caring. He said I had gotten second chair.

This amazed me. How could I get second chair? There is three trumpet players who I know for sure should have beaten me. I wondered who the one who beat me was. How could've I done that? Could he be wrong? He can't be wrong. I hope he isn't!

When I got home, I decided to check. It turns out that I got second trumpet part. There are three trumpet parts. Two players play part one, three players play two, and three players play three. I was the middle in second part, meaning that I was fourth trumpet overall. The three that should've beat me did not. Two did, but the third got placed a couple slots below me, to my surprise.

The competition is horribly fierce, and I hate that part of band. I know that after most people try to challenge up once, they lose their anger and settle into the spot they were originally given. I feel pretty safe where I am, but I know that a few people under my spot will try to challenge. And if they beat me, that's okay too.