Band Trips in Middle School 

What songs are you playing in band rn?

EMC is definitely one of the percussionists of all time

Dude, I think you just mastered the art of telling band/band camp stories. Good story and the reenactments were a nice touch too.

@EMCproductions I highly recommend you check out the sheet music for "Pirates Cave". The Glockenspiel part is amazing!

Being from PA an hour away from Dorney it always boggles my mind when people are excited to go there lol

I remember doing this in Grade 6 when I lived in Jersey, and if it wasn't Dorney Park, it was Hershey Park that we went to for our Music in the Parks.

I love all of those roller coasters you mentioned in the video

Music in the park is a og fav, we go to Six Flags so it's fire

I've only been on one band trip so far due to being young, and it was for an honors band festival at Bridgewater State University. It was only 6 or 7 girls on a small bus so it wasn't too chaotic. We practiced for 3 hours on the actual stage in the auditorium. After lunch, we had to move all the percussion instruments up 2 flights (Thank goodness there were no bass drums , marimba,or any other huge percussion instruments) of stairs to the ballroom and practiced another 2 1/2 hours ihere. I got to play the symbols for 2 songs, the tambourine, the toms, and the triangle for 2 other songs. I made friends with two of the other percussionists and a bass clarinet player. We played Afterburn: Relaunch, Summon the Heros, and In the Shining of the Stars. I'm sad it's over, but I'm auditioning for Jr SEMSBA in February. Can't wait!!!

I went to music in the parks earlier this year. We won jazz and concert overall and got a superior rating in both. One of our soloists even got a reward.

My school has Music in the Parks at Silver Dollar City, and the most interesting parts happened on the bus rides to and from. On the way there, a kid pooped on the bus and on the way back, another guy opened one of the emergency exit doors. I regret picking bus 4 for me and my friend

southern viewer here we had this same thing, i was never a part of it but they would do a show in a theme park, then hung out in said theme park. It was Carolwinds if ur curious

in my state we do music in the parks too! i had to miss it from illness though :(

We have music in the parks here in Colorado but we go to Elitch gardens

In my school we have a very small band and in band I’m the only female percussionist but I’m also the drum major so things are odd. This year ( 9th grade) it was our Alabama competition. In my school girls and boys have to usually ride on separate busses but because I’m the drum major I had the ride the boys bus and it was fun and not fun at the same time because everyone wanted to sit by me this one kid sat by me all the way to Alabama and feel asleep on my shoulder and the worst part started drooling. We had finally arrived and we had to get a hotel. I slept in a room with six different girls and it was horrible one girl was mentally insane and she decided to go into the bathroom and leave the bathtub running until the water overflew the entire bathroom. Then I had to deal with it because I was kinda baby sitting a bunch of 7th graders. We had the competition the next day and it went really well we got our ratings and we made a one. I was so excited that I almost cried because Baldwyn is a very small band like I said. Thank you for who ever spent time to read this❤

I played air for band in my last concert and yes it is annoying that it only has one beat with cymbals

Let's go, I remember these days

I don't have any memories from middle school band, but in high school I have a couple. One was at my first football game of my freshman year (2014). Apparently the drum line wasn't watching the drum major/band director at some point during the game. The band director called out the entire drum line and chewed us out for not watching. In my junior year (2017), we were on the way to a playoff football game and one of the drum line bus broke down. We had to combine busses to go the rest of the way. The second bus ran over a nail or something, so we had to pull over to the side of the freeway. So most of the drum line didn't get to the game until about half time. For the first half the drum line had only one snare, one bass, and a few cymbal players.

ayy I used to play at music in the parks at dorney park!! my school went every year

haha, or you take them to D.C. to play in the Kennedy Center or Boston for a rehearsal at Boston Latin lol. Those songs stuff I picked in my early years before I learned better and found there is real quality music for middle school. Yes I am a little bit of a snob about what music middle school kids play

BRO I played Air For Band last year, or I didn't actually because they gave the two percussion parts to the junior percussionists, so during the concert I was backstage and tripped over a huge stack of chairs. I was fine and no one knew it was me so it was kinda funny

Our highschool did music in the parks last year and went to Hershey Park

Thank you so much for using Abrams pursuit for the back track!! The nostalgia 🥹🥹

The best part of the band trips was when someone started to play some grooves in the bus chair or with their sticks and then the whole percussion had created a masterpiece lmao it was so fun

"this one time at band camp" was funny because it was TRUE. In the 90's I marched in a drum corps based in Orlando and we played many shows at the Disney parks (and some of our staff were in future corps) so we'd get a free day to run around with our pals and such. BUT The best was to spend the day with a corps member whose friends worked there and could get us cuts in line wooo!

I Played Air For Band last year in my high school concert band lol

My high school hosts a music in the parks festival in Missouri

When my school went to get judge all of the other bass clarinet players didn’t show up so it was just me

My hs hosts music in the parks so sometimes we get to go to six flags for free

omg i did music in the parks. it was hershey but i go to dorney like all the time lol

Our band has 12 people with 7/8 combined 😅🥲

Abram's Pursuit. Nice!

I went to Dorney Park in my 8th grade year for Music in the Parks. I thought we were gonna play in the park but I guess that would’ve been weird. Anyway, we won a bunch of awards. I was in jazz band playing drumset and we won best jazz ensemble. I was so happy Edit: We’re playing Air For Band.

We do this down south too

5:50 hey you have superpowers/!?!?!?!?!?! yeah its called editing

When my middle school went to hershey park for music in the parks our school always got 1st place in every category (even the orchestra which sucks compared to the band program) the only ensemble that wont get 1st place is intermediate band

I played air for band last year!

our band and choir does music in the park, except we do cedar point.

dropping a brake drum on your foot because you rested it on one of those fucked up music stands is the most percussionist injury ever

I’m playing air for band this upcoming concert

Is there a way I can submit a cadence for you to fix?

good morning, i have pursued a interesting project where im 3d printing the shells for a full set of tenors. lemme know if this is something i should patent and sell. i know sound will be a concern to you, but the material im using has very similar sound properties to wood and is sometimes used for subwoofer cases

Ode to joy

my brother just went on one to universal and disney

Our middle school band got a 1(superior)++++

very interesting story! 🤩👍

What was the other song y'all played, because I love brake drum.

BRO I’m playing Air for band 😭

Video 3 of commenting for a collab between Steven Sassafrass VI and Clarence Boudreaux.

In chorus I get to do music in the parks this year, I live in that area :)

Love that you included Abram's Pursuit. Big Holsinger fan here. Also played Air For Band in middle school, not a fan.

This is the story about how my marching band banned soap on our trip. Yes, the staff banned soap. So in Junior High/Middle School, I was in a community marching band for Junior High students (grade 7-9). Each year the band takes us on a trip, and that year we went to Seattle, where we stayed at the University of Washington dorms. That means 200 kids aged 12-14, away from their parents in a foreign country for two weeks (I'm from Canada), most of them for the first time ever. They dorms were run more like a hotel, and the staff gave each room 2 bars of soap. Well, one of the boys on my floor realized, "Hey, if I hide my soap, the staff will give me two more bars, even if I didn't use it." So they started collecting bars of soap. And other boys started to collecting soap. And it turned into an all out Soap War. Boys formed alliances and cartels with girls on other floors to collect their soap. I think one boy claimed that by his estimations he would have over 500 bars of soap by the end of tour. It was absolutely intense. But then some people started taking it too seriously. Members would steal other member's room keys while they were in the shower to break into their rooms and steal their soap. One member (that no one really liked) claimed that a group of members broke into his room and threatened him with makeshift weapons for his soap. And the dorm staff talked to the chaperones about, "Hey, you guys are going through way too much soap." So they had to ban collecting bars of soap and told us we would get in serious trouble if they caught us with a copious amount of bars of soap. So that ended the Soap War, by declaration of the United Nations (i.e. the staff and chaperones). Some of the boys took their extra soap and arranged it on the floor of the hallway to spell "SORRY" (very Canadian haha). And that's the story about how middle schoolers were banned from having SOAP on a band trip.

Not “weird” per se, but around Christmas, our jazz band went to a concert. We played a couple pep tunes, some jazz, and some Christmas music, and I got to play all the marching drum solos on the drum set; just alternating between the kick drum and crash, toms, and snare. Most fun I ever had in middle school

I was in 8th grade when our band got to go to Disneyland. We had 3 performances: marching in a parade, a recording session in a studio behind ToonTown, and a concert band performance in one of the plazas. Everything was super fun, I marched bass in the parade and played Timpani in both the recording session and the concert. Here's the thing, this was the day I learned to keep a straight face when you mess up. We were playing a medley of themes from Hunchback of Notre Dame for the concert. It was pretty straightforward, a little challenging but nothing absurd. I'd been practicing for months. Chiefly because there was a Timpani solo in the last four bars of the piece. I had been nailing it at every rehearsal. Anyways, we begin playing the piece, it's going perfectly. We get to the solo and I'm hyped to do it. I get halfway through and click a rim so hard that the mallets fly out of my hands. Instead of just continuing through the best I can, I physically and aggressively reacted like I'd messed up, telegraphing to anyone who was paying attention to me. I've never seen my band director be more upset, it was mortifying. Anyways, he talks to me later and says to not worry, pep talks me and says that mistakes happen but the mark of a professional is keeping your cool even when they do. Never let the audience know you messed up. I took that to heart and learned a lot from it. THE WORST PART THOUGH! A parent had video tapped the performance. On the bus ride to the airport, we were watching the concert on the TV's in the bus. This parent....focused on me during the solo. So my entire band got to see me, a emotional 8th grade percussionist, flip out on stage when I messed up my solo. The whole bus laughed for like 10 minutes. It honestly felt like something out of a childhood nightmare. It got brought up for WEEKS afterwards. Until we played Havendance and I kicked so much butt on the Timpani part that people stopped mentioning it.

My school went to music in the parks at HersheyPark. Good times were had by all on those trips. Our performances went really well from what I remember. It was always exciting to hear that "superior" announcement

Hey that’s Abram’s Pursuit! Our band played that for a competition this past year and our band director always talks about his countless sleepless nights and immense hair loss brought about by trying to teach us it. Many other band directors told him not to play it but he thought it’d be best and it was as we got all superiors. Moral of the story, it’s a very good piece o’ sound!

Good morning! This is video number 18 of me asking Eric to make a set of tenors out of differently sized snare drums.

You can say that you played an entire concert perfectly

Eric's Super Powers! 5:25 "Oh Crap! I'm not supposed to do that in public!" *So hard to post a comment before watching the entire video* I have noticed in the last few videos that Eric is using height changes on his characters. Linda and Rebecca are so much taller than those little 8th grade kids! 😂😂🤣🤣

I don't know if anyone from my school is gonna see this comment, but I remember in 8th grade we were doing region band auditions in Texas and everything went well to where I got 1st chair in 1st band. Not to mention it was also my birthday so I was really hyped and pumped. So about 20 min goes by and me and this guy were messing around with a water bottle pretending it was a football. At the time I was really really stupid, so I ended up starting to play basketball with the water bottle. What I mean by that was I dunked the full water bottle....inside a tuba. Now again at the time my school had the tubas to where you can take the bell off, but this tuba was the persons personal tuba that he apparently got from his uncle or something. And I thought I was cool with the guy and everything, until that day. The water bottle got stuck in the tuba and this guy was furious. He was also a bit...crazy, so he pinned me against the wall and was actually about to beat my ass. Luckily, some people were around to help me, so I ran away and I just stayed hiding in the bathroom stall. I went out again and he was yelling and screaming outside of the High School and even causing a commotion in the HS. So our whole entire program was asked to leave the HS after everyone was done auditioning and my band director was absolutely furious. Luckily, nothing really happened to me after that. All that happened was I had to write a letter to the head of the contest and apologize for the commotion I had caused. And the next week I went to go perform the region band contest and I had some cool snare parts and even a jazzy vibe part. P.S. They got the water bottle out of the Tuba.

High school had a lot of crazy stories that could fill up a whole book, so I'll focus on middle school. We played some competitive pieces, but the big concert was what was called "mass band" where all middle and high school bands play pieces, all the instruments get shown off, and everyone plays a really easy 6th grade piece together, fun for the 6th graders, snooze for everyone else. Little background info, I did percussion for a year in 6th grade but then switched to euphonium because they were dicks and we had no euphs. Anyways, all the bands played their pieces (which I had a non glock/pad part for because I was good), and our section played the underground Mario theme, but then we had to play everything together. Most of it went good, but when we got to the last piece I was on drum pad, and thought it was a brilliant idea to go nuts on the last roll. I thought I was cool because I saw pit players keeping time, but theres a difference between "pit member moving to keep time" and "6th grader jumping around like an idiot". Luckily there was like 500 kids playing so the only person who noticed was my dad.

Keep the great content up

I went to Hershey world/park when my school did this!

We had this in Virginia but we went to Busch Gardens Williamsburg

My middle school was invited to play at the Midwest clinic in Chicago. Quite the trip for us 7-8 graders. Nothing happened with the girl I liked. :(

First

Good Morning You can leave now, its just a good morning.

Alright, here's a weird story, When I was in 6th grade band, we had a ton of these performances right? In total the class has like 14 people in the drumline, we hadn't been joined with the band yet, so we were just the drumline for now. Then in the middle of the school year we have a performance in the morning at 7:00 and nobody shows up! except me and a few other people, and it was quite awkward because I had to play tenors which I wasn't used to yet because I was a bass, but it turns out I really like tenor drumming! And its way more entertaining than bass drumming, because I actually use my hand eye coordination!

me when i hear abraham's pursuit for bg music and DIE because that was our closer in my school's show last year- and we did SUPER well at that show-

I remember my junior year of high school during pre uil, I had one of those crappy stands, the problem was I didn't find out until midway through the first song, when all my music fell off, because we couldn't stop between songs, I just looked to my left and played the music from my friend since we had the same part, all while all of my music was just on the floor with the judges staring at us.

Just took home 1st place in a marching competition at disney/universal

For one of my middle school band trips, we had two busses on the way out, but only one showed up to take us back. We all had to squeeze into the one bus. One of my friends had to sit on my lap, and the aisle was full of people standing.

my band did the same thing with playing in front tof judges and we also played air for band and honest to God I played cymbols for that song

in 6th grade we went to a bowling alley and some tiny clarinet kid climbed into a giant claw machine and was passing out balls to everyone, he ended up breaking it. i think we are still banned💀

One time during a trip we had a option to buy taco bell and I bought like 5 burritos like an idiot and the trip home well wasn't pleasant

6:10 just realized this was the competition I went to on Saturday and made finals in. Was honestly surprised to see it here lol

We did that in Texas back in middle school where we would go to a comp, then go to a water park.

On one of my band trips someone fell off of one of the drop towers and died. We got to see the ambulance going to get the body/see if they were still alive

Abram's Pursuit is a great piece! Awesome piece to have in the background lol

I felt it when he said there were only two people playing for percussion. My last year in marching band (meaning I was a senior) I was the only pit player for my marching band. Let's just say I am very good at a lot of instruments.

every tuba and baritone player playing band music: 3:30

I played digital prisms on baritone this year✋

My school is going to the Dorney park thing too! What a coincdence

Due to Covid, I was not able to go on the two band trips planned. 7th grade was supposed to be Silver Dollar City, and 8th grade was supposed to be a competition in Dallas followed by Great Wolf Lodge

as someone who lives in new jersey, this is relatable as i recently went to dorney park after a special trip to another school.

This definitely brought back some memories....my school did Music in the Parks, but I think it was at Hersheypark when we did it. Maybe Busch Gardens VA and/or King's Dominion?

0:29 omg same!

Can you do a BOA mid Atlantic review

Another story video, yay! We didn't do the parks thing in Virginia, and I honestly can't even remember if we did a theme park trip in band. I do, however, remember the year in high school when several trumpets just flat out didn't show for Festival, the yearly graded performance (Superior every year!), and our director was TICKED. He didn't move any of us off our parts, just told us to play as normal, and of course we were called out for it in the judging.

In middle school band we went to Cedar Point a few weeks after our competition. But the thing is besides joining with the 7th graders we also merged with the choir and orchestra. It was super fun though. And in marching band this year we’re going to Universal Studios Orlando. Super hyped for that trip.

I did this in 8th grade and there was a huge storm and all the rides were closed and we were all soaked

We have the exact same thing as music in the parks. But we go from Indiana to Kenosha Wisconsin to preform then go to six flags great America. It’s very fun. The ride home though was crazy as hell though

1:35 YES!!!! As a Symphonic Low Brass Section Leader (not really lmao), We played this at Regionals for Concert Band and might play it in our Spring Concert this year.

I remember Dorney park those were the days

Music in the parks is actually an insane experience, went on my first loop and corkscrew on that trip

My first kiss happened on the band bus in eighth grade. It was on the way home from the homecoming parade and the only reason it happened was because we were both Filipino and said hey that’s pretty cool

1:37 my band last year played air for band and this is a high school band lol

Lmao brought a new meaning to working *hard* for the band

we have 7-8-9 band class ;(

Lol, in middle school one of my friends dropped the cymbals onto the stage and inverted both of them, so we didn't have a cymbal part after that. Just remembered it after hearing about the brake drum