"Pomp and Circumstance"

     Tonight the concert band played at the Class of 2011's graduation ceremony. And lets just say that a.) my chops almost fell off during "Pomp and Circumstance" and b.) tonight I realized that I'm probably not going to see any of the other awesome band people (besides my closer friends) till July! It's weird how things seem to go on even when it feels like time should stop, for example the band won't be the same without the eight seniors moving on. At the same time new seniors will rise up in their places and life will go on at school without them, just like their lives will go on without us. To all of you seniors out there, especially those in band, just know that we're going to miss you!!

     Now I hope that everyone knows what "Pomp and Circumstance" is. If you don't or need a refresher it is basically it is every musician's worst nightmare. MAYBE some people actually LIKE it, but for those of you out there that do I think you are insane (in a good way)! "Pomp and Circumstance" is the song played at graduations either when the students come up to get their diplomas or when they come in to be seated (at my school we play when the students come in to be seated). This was our second largest class and according to my band instructor we were only going to have to play it through six times. Ha HA. VERY FUNNY Mr. F. !!! Afterwards he said that he'd been expecting it to be long, but not THAT long. We repeated the song fifteen times, or if you are being technical, we repeated different parts of the song that repeat fifteen times. Or something like that. Oh, and it gets stuck in your head for ETERNITY. I am not even kidding. Last year at graduation we played the song extremely badly partially due to the acoustics but mostly due to just failing miserably and not practicing much to any beforehand. Plus I'm pretty sure last year's class was the largest class to graduate from my school.

    And for the ENTIRE summer I would randomly start humming "Pomp and Circumstance" to myself at epic moments, or just humming it without thinking about it somewhere random like in the car on the way to my cousin's bowling competition and my mom would give me a dirty look and I'd be like "What?"

    "You keep humming it," she'd say. Five minutes later she'd be giving me another glare and I'd be like "Oh shoot, I was humming it again wasn't I? I can't get the stinking song stuck out of my head!!"      So be warned... If you listen to it, it might just get stuck in your head and start ruining your life and all of your epic moments.

     Still don't know what I'm talking about? Here's a video to show you. The song starts at 3:11 stops at 4:02. Resumes at 5:54 to end. Don't watch it!

WARNING: Strong possibility of getting song stuck in your head!

CAUTION: It may be stuck on repeat for hours to months at a time!

DON'T DO IT!

I'M WARNING YOU!!

STOP!!!

     Well, either you watched it or you didn't. If you chose not to, it was probably in your best interest. For those of you who did watch it, under ordinary circumstances, or at least in my bands circumstances, it will not sound that good. When I was in middle school we went to the Magical Music Days at Disney World workshop and played this piece to the clip of the video around 5:54 to the end of the one above, except with us as the recording. It sounded horrendous, but it was fun to record (kind of, I mean we all really wanted to go to the park so we weren't THAT excited about the whole recording thing).

     The other band kids and I got to enjoy that tonight- fifteen times. Hope you enjoy your own little piece of graduation spirit whether it's from this post, this video, or your own graduation events! HAPPY "Pomp and Circumstance"-ing!!!!