Day 110

August 12th

We did parade today and the fanfare team for Fortissimo came on the bus with us to watch the parade. I can now say that I am over the hump of learning how to play on the march and I can start being more picky with my playing. I am also not as distracted by the percussion when I am in the rank in front of them but this could be because there were cymbals behind me. In the afternoon we were allowed to wear respectable civis for the rehearsal on the parade square. Basically we were fixing up whatever went wrong at the dress rehearsal on the hill last night. After that I went painting one last time and finished my teapot!! Now they cover it in some kind of green paint and put it in the kiln. I can pick it up on Tuesday and I'll post a picture of it :) After a quick supper we were off for the hill once again. This time the show was for real and the canons were fired up for the 1812 overture. We play the I believe song from the Olympics and there is one point where the horns have a really loud dissonant note that is supposed to be the sound when the winning goal of the men's hockey game was scored. This loud note has to line up with the video that is playing on the huge screen above our heads. They show a clip from the winning goal and during the dress rehearsal the band was 30 seconds early. We can't shorten the video because it came from CBC, so we had to play is slower and last night it was only 3 seconds off which is a huge improvement and I think the audience could figure that out. We'll see how close it gets tomorrow! Also during the dress rehearsal there were a bunch of cables and cords running along the ground where we did our RCMP routine and one of the Tuba players almost tripped on it, but thankfully they were not there tonight! There were a lot more ppl out tonight too. One of the band members found the news clip that advertised Fortissimo and invited ppl to come watch. When we got back I hung out a bit trying to stay away to go out and watch the meteor shower, but I fell asleep watching football and stumbled to my room when Jeremy woke me up.