College Essay/musical Experience

When marching band season rolls around, the taste of competition and the smell of hard work are always nearby. Entering my junior year of high school, I remember very clearly how excited I was for a new year of marching band. I had played percussion in the pit, which includes the mallets, timpani, and other non-marching percussion toys and instruments in the front of the field, for my entire high school career. Since then, I had fallen in love with those “bizarre” mallet instruments that I remember my fourth grade band director assigning to all of us percussionists who aspired to be “drummers”. However, it did not take long for my enthusiastic view of marching band and all its unappreciated excellence to be turned upside-down.

On our first day of camp, I was informed that our pit instructor, Chris Martin, would no longer be teaching at our high school, and that we were unable to obtain a replacement. With the other upperclassmen on the drumline, or the snares, bass drums and quads that march on the field, I was the oldest pit member, and the most knowledgeable in the way pit-percussion operated. With three new freshmen, one of whom had never played an instrument in his life, and two sophomores, everyone in the pit looked to me for guidance. With no professional pit instructor available, I was asked to teach the pit. Although the task felt overwhelming at the time, I accepted and made the best of my situation. On that first day of camp, I didn’t know how to start. My first thoughts were, “my god, what have I gotten myself into?” Eventually, I was able to clear my head, and I remembered back to my freshman year, when I was still a rookie. Thinking back on my own instruction, I began to teach the way Chris had taught me: we started with the basics and worked our way up.

We began with scales on the mallet instruments, and I taught everyone how to properly use the different gadgets within the pit. With the majority of the students being highly inexperienced, several issues such as confidence and technique were the focus of our lessons. After teaching everyone the basics, from where to hold a drumstick to the execution of a proper cymbal roll, the pit was ready to learn the music for the marching season and to prepare for competition.

For the past two years, I’ve been able to look back at that marching season and I can’t help