I love how sleigh ride is basically a nationwide band meme. In my band, two of the trumpets stood up and slapped each other in time to the slapstick. Good times.
I had a winter concert before we went on break, and we made a giant ass slapstick and gift wrapped it. So during the concert I could unwrap it so the audience could see.
I played trumpet in school and I loved this. Good job for the rest of the bad staying together. Practicing a stunt like that is very different then in the concert for real.
I went to a PA program at my high school so sleigh ride was pretty serious in the choir version. Our fav vice principal was the only one allowed the honor of slap stick. She was on time every year. Until junior year, they wanted to let someone else do it. People in choir were skeptical but we waited. New admin lady was completely off beat and you could feel the hate from our 150 person chorus...
This feels so wrong to be moving around during a concert because I've always had to be locked in to one spot and got death stares if I did anything else
We have over 14 percussionists in our class, and my teacher decided to make EVERY SINGLE PERCUSSIONIST play. So, I got a lousy vibraphone part where I only got to play 1/8th of the time. In the smack dab middle of the song, I had to rest for 56 measures. Being a percussionist is so fun.
@@ashplayz2374 its not all chill when you miss 2 of your lessons due to the new schedule so your band teacher has to teach you in the middle of class in order to work and the whole half of the other room turns around to watch what you when they literally aren’t gonna play the percussion instruments anyways 😔
One heck of a coincidence, just came home from a concert (I’m a 3rd Trumpet) where the entire High school’s music department, including two band groups, two choir groups, and two orchestra groups, played Sleigh Ride at the end. Our percussionist who was on that part decided to gradually get bigger slapsticks to a point where they were practically twice her height
Forgot to add that first time we rehearsed with half of the band and orchestra a piece of the thing broke off and nearly hit one of us thirds or someone in the percussion section
Whats crazy about this to me is that as a non-percussionist but as someone who played the nightmare that is Sleigh Ride 4 years in a row on Clarinet I always got the impression the slapstick was the trickiest part of the song. It was easily one of the parts we spent the most time on making sure we got it exactly right. So the fact that he’s running around while using it is incredible to me. Bravo to you you mad slap stick playing maniac
its really just a matter of knowing when to come in, which, unless a school is playing sleigh ride a different sort of way, is very easy to memorize! source ive played the slapstick for sleigh ride about 3 years now
@@ZookieFyre I won’t lie, I’m only a mediocre Clarient player but I somehow got placed with first part on this song two years in a row and I have no idea why or how or what I was doing
I’m a fellow percussionist and I had the unforgettable experience of playing slapstick/whip crack for a symphony orchestra performance… as a string bass player. Putting my bass down and running behind a curtain and then suddenly popping up in the middle of nowhere was truly amazing. We should 100% do this at next year’s Christmas concert!
The craziest thing that our band ever did for a concert is the time we had a kazoo part so the entire band just whipped out kazoos and started playing them as if they were our actual instruments
Darn I wish we had thought of that as well, instead my slap stick guy was just going around all the kids playing. IT looked like alot of fun you guys had
My band teacher had us try to remember the tempo of the song so we could play without a proper conductor. So what happened during our winter concert was the conductor would auction off the baton to a member of the audience. Whoever was the highest bidder had the opportunity to conduct the song sleigh ride. I still have no idea where the money went.
Oh my gosh this was too funny!! I remember being a band kid, and almost every year we did sleigh ride. EVERYONE wanted to use the slapstick; we get so jealous of percussion students. This took it to a whole other level and it was hilarious 😆 Once a band kid, ALWAYS a band kid
Being given the slapstick part is like the highest honor in band. However, the saxophone interlude part of Jingle bells being the meow mix commercial jingle is a high second.
i was a percussionist in middle school and my band director made it a whole thing about the sleigh bells, and i was the lucky one to play them for that song. he brought me up to the front of the band and i stood in front of his podium facing the audience and he did a whole spiel about how i had dedicated my life to sleigh bells. no one except my mother got the joke btw, dead silence with a single loud laugh. then i, a shaky and sweaty sixth grader, played, and quickly retreated to the back as fast as possible after the song was over
I remember being put on the part of Slapstick for Sleigh Ride, and I thought it would be awful. Turns out it was quite the opposite… let’s just say using an old slapstick and telling the person playing it to go all out on it made us have to get a new slapstick immediately after lol.
Anytime you can use the words or get away with tomfoolery, figure of fun, shenanigans, or High jinks....you should go for it. Merry Christmas + HapPy New Year!
@@transitwatch6655 No joke, I gave up the sax for percussion. Best decision of my life. But it depends how old you are and your grade. 5-6th would be fine. Any older would be harder to adjust. But if you can and you truly want to, do it.
That’s quite the band workout. There’s so many options for this one to make it an even more fun experience. Everyone else playing did very well too. Also, that so very much looks like old school’s auditorium, including the setup, and even backstage.
during my bands sleigh ride, since the slapstick was so old and the student using it was complaining, my teacher gifted him two wooden planks with handles, all wrapped and they were huge. suuuper loouud.
Playing slapstick on this song was absolutely one of my favorite memories of band. I created a homemade slapstick in our school's engineering lab out of a wooden 2x2 and some door handles. Was an absolute blast.
I'm so excited for my school's christmas show this year. The seniors in the percussion section get to do this slapstick part, and I'm the only senior in percussion this year
I’ve played this song I think three times throughout middle school and high school. We played it my senior year at our winter concert and since there were about ten of us in the percussion section, we had three people playing slapstick. We only had I think two actual slapsticks and one of those was made by a student. The other ones were just two 4x4s we slapped together. I got stuck with the 4x4s. Because there were three of us we were each stationed at random on the stage and “take turns” (our teacher would point at one of us to play). I got the last beat and I hit the 4x4s together so hard they both cracked down the middle. Fun times
I was in charge of the slapsticks in band for this song. I screwed up the timing in practice and the director made the whole band stay over to play it again even tho the period ended lol
All band members, what was the creative sleigh ride slapstick skit done during your concert? For us, the student conductor took the slapstick and went through the stage with it and at the end, the director would take it away from them
it’s that time of year, folks. percussionist here, and the second our band director pulled out the slapstick and elegantly handed it to one of my fellow snare drummers, band has been non stop *CRACK* *CRACK* “can we play n-“ *CRACK*
I remember the story my band teacher gave when she was at Ball State University (Muncie, Indiana) playing this piece in the percussion section and a guy brought an actual whip for the slapstick part!
This made me laugh so hard lol Edit: 11 months later my band is playing this again and we started to add funny parts too it as well and this just makes me appreciate the time and effort people put into this music
This reminds me off my high school band. I wasn’t a part of it, I was in choir, but I miss our concerts. I remembered a few pranks they would do in concerts, sometimes even to the music teacher/conductor. Once, they Rickrolled the whole audience and some students were just dancing to it. It was pretty funny.
One year during my sister's annual winter band concert (it wasnt her group) they made the slapsticks larger each time they used them in the song until, for the last one, it was two pieces of wood larger than the kids holding them. Splinters flew off.
