Post Practice Update:

Happy Wednesday everybody!

I always feel a little torn about wednesdays. I have to come down from tuesday night practice, but I get to spend the night working on scores, practicing my solo's and teaching.

Good rehearsal last night. Seems like the cold season is upon us, we were missing a few bodies. Kinda cool though to be missing a few and still have a bigger band then last year or the years before.

We kicked through the medley as seperate sections. Having played the same medley for two years I forgot how many growing pains come with this.

I gotta say 6 minutes is one helluva hand cuff. It just seems like you have to cut things to make it, or take out a whole section and play really short. Kinda feels like you have to sacrifice musicality.

But those are the rules, so be it. Lots of negotiation over tunes etc, and it's almost together. Frame is done, important tunes are in. Now there's the sacrificial lamb approach and we'll see what happens.

Then we have our clinic this weekend which will get Jake and John listening in and giving some advice.

We got the instruments out and played together for the first time this season. I could tell right away we made some huge headway last year. The drum corp was tight on a lot of things just because of experience, I even got to step out and let Cam play lead while I listened to our new spey. That puts us about 4 months ahead of last season. Very exciting.

We played through the new MSR working some trouble parts and making sure ensemble worked.

It's a real blessing having Chris Brown back. My good buddy, and new snare drummer, Dave Chorney did a fabulous job last season filling in, but Chris embodies ensemble and it makes so many things simple for me and the band having that steady bass in there.

Small wonder he's won so many awards for best bass.

All in all a great tuesday night practice prepping for an even better weekend workshop. I can't wait to see the fly-in players, it doesn't feel like band without them.

Stay tuned, I'll probably take tomorrow off, to prepare for some interviews I hope to do, then I'll be back at it friday to outline the upcoming weekend and post grade 3 practice wrap up.

Cheers everyone and happy practicing.

Sean