Top 10 most AWKWARD Band Moments - Part 4 

Which story was the fake one?

I remember my most awkward band story, in 8th grade I tried to ask out this girl in the 7th grade, but I didn’t really know her, I was just a little desperate. It was terrible too. Imaging the unfiltered thoughts of a lonely hormonal 14 year old. Fast forward, now in high school band, I barely made eye contact with her because I was embarrassed, and then I got to be percussion captain. I was super worried she’d be awkward since she was in my section, and now my subordinate. So, I tried to be responsible and not let it get in the way of leadership. Anyways, turns out she developed feelings for me that year, and now we’ve been together 6 months.

One time I was in band and when the trombones sat their instruments down it was like dominoes falling. We lost 11 instruments that day.

I played in a percussion choir and had a marimba solo for a contest. The choir was the first thing that day. When we were finished we loaded everything except for a marimba onto our trailer and locked it up. As it turns out, I forgot that I left my music on the vibes that were on the trailer. I didn't get it off for my solo, so I just walked into the performance room without my music and, somewhat ironically, I got a perfect score from the judge. Nobody found out my music was on the trailer until after the performance. The judge still had his own copy. Also, the one you were lying about if the fake story.

I dropped a stick in high school jazz ensemble during a solo. Luckily I was able to cover it up really well. Kept time perfectly while grabbing another stick. I was relieved that almost no one knew that I dropped it

one time my band teacher asked a percussionist to play their part quieter, and they responded with “well MY part is the only good part of this stupid song.” out loud. never heard a band more quiet

I have a story that just happened a few weeks ago. I was performing a song during our concert that required me to use a superball mallet on a tam-tam to make some spooky noises. When I went to play the second-to-last note, the head (ball) popped off and rolled of the stage. There was a woman in the front row of the concert hall that picked it up and put it back on the stage. It stayed there until the end of the concert. After the concert, I went and picked it up. Apparently, just about everyone I knew that was at the concert said that they saw it happen.

on a senior clinic trip, our band director was doing room check before we all went to bed for the night at the hotel. thing is, one of my roommates decided to go and take the most violent, toilet destroying, booty annihilating shit in all of mankind *right* in the middle of room check, it was a little more than just awkward.

I’m a freshman and we didn’t get one of the songs for our show until like a week and a half before the first football game we had to preform at.

I have a band story. In one of our last concerts, we were playing songs and stuff and nothing was going wrong. For context, our school’s stage has a giant projector that is usually used for presentations. Well, while we were playing a song, it just randomly started rolling down! (It’s controlled electronically from a room in the back) Us trying to play the song, no one stopped playing, until it got so low that people moved out of the way. No one knew how the projector screen was doing that, and it took us a good 5-10 minutes for us to fix it. We held off on that song until the end of our concert, and we played the next song. This happened very recently and there’s a video of it on RU-vid.

Not an awkward moment for me personally, but definitely for someone. Our marching band performance got delayed for about 20 minutes. But not for the normal technical reasons like bad weather or a power outage or a homeless person wondering onto the field. But because a previous band dropped a turd on the field. And not a figurative one either. A literal deuce on the field. I will never forget that.

Today during band rehearsal, one of my friends (who was on timpani) forgot what an 8th note is. Like she just straight up forgot and it was confusing her on one of the rhythms in the song. My band director had to then explain to her in front of the entire band what an 8th note is. It was awkward. No hate to her though she’s only been playing music for a little bit now compared to me and the rest of the band who’ve been playing music for years, but you would think it’s something you would know with any experience playing music.

My sophomore year, we were doing a full run of our show, and during the last set of the show one of the senior euphonium player’s pants fell down. I didn’t see it happen directly, but the entirety of low brass was dying for the next 10 minutes after that.

So this happened during a college concert band rehearsal earlier this fall… So it starts during our studio hour. For those who don’t know, that’s when all the music majors get together with everyone who plays the same instrument (for example, I’m a saxophone major, so myself, the rest of the saxophone majors, and our saxophone professor will all meet for an hour). During this time, we will either listen to what our peers are working on, ask our professor any questions pertaining to saxophone, or our professor will come up with something he wants to talk to us about. One week, our professor (I’ll call him R) discovered during his practice that molar alignment is pretty important. R told us this and had a few of the sax students help him demonstrate. This probably seems kinda stupid or weird to the rest of you, but working on it, the alignment actually helps with air direction, which in turn, helps with other stuff that contribute to sound. Talking about this became the majorly takeaway from Studio Hour that week. So when something “big” happens, we tend to meme on it a little bit. Fast forward to later that evening when we had Concert Band rehearsal. We work on our music as you normally do, nothing crazy there. So it gets to about 9:00pm (rehearsal was 8:00-9:15, but we usually only went to a little after 9:00), we’re starting to get tired and lose a little focus. We’re not wrapping up as we normally start doing, and we did end up going past 9:15. Suddenly, the whole molar thing pops into my head. I get the image in my head of that scene from SpongeBob SquarePants where Patrick is looking inside SpongeBob’s head by lighting a match and the wears him on his head. I look up that picture on Google, screenshot it, and caption it “R checking if your molars are aligned properly:” My friend next to me looks over as I’m making the meme and proceeds to lose her shit laughing. I then send the meme to our saxophone group chat, and that’s when all hell broke loose. After I sent it, bursts of laughter trying to be concealed then began to cascade down the saxophone section. This broke about half the section (total of about 15 in the section. Big concert band). This caused people to miss entrances and overall disrupt rehearsal. After we were dismissed, the director pulls me aside. He asked what was up with the section. So I tell him about the molar thing and the meme being sent, to which he asks me if I should have sent that during rehearsal, and I say no. It was this whole “disappointed dad” moment. Then I left the room and packed up my stuff. I was just kinda bummed and felt weird. I want to be on my director’s good side and just work towards being more mature, but I also like to try and make my friends happy and give them a nice laugh every now and again. The saxophones at least cheered me up a bit by letting me know that they found the meme funny and that they enjoyed it. The next morning, I sent my director and email apologizing for what happened. Said I was sorry for the disruption and I shouldn’t have been on my phone and I understand if there are any consequences, blah blah blah. He essentially just responded with (albeit, using more professionalism) “Hey man, shit happens. We make mistakes and thanks for owning up to it.” To be honest, most of the awkwardness came from the time after. I couldn’t tell if he was still upset with me for the rest of the semester.

Back when I was in 7th grade, we were doing our Spring concert and my buddy next to me dropped his drumstick in the middle of a rest. I have a recording of it and the stick drop was very audible, kinda surprised my band director didn't even seem to notice.

I was probably the only one to notice the background song at 4:39 and 12:04 was Abrams Pursuit by David holsinger. My school just preformed it for the spring assessment. I played chimes on it. 🤓🤓🤓

Good morning! This is video number 60 of me asking Eric to make a set of tenors out of differently sized or tuned snare drums.

I KNOW THE GUY ON THE TIMPANI IN STORY 2 HES OUR ASSISTANT BAND DIRECTOR

This sure is an awkward video to watch

At 4:50, the background music that is being played is the piece we played at our competitions, (I was snare 😎)

My most awkward moment happened in 7th grade. I play tuba and we were about to play a 230+ measure long song and as I put my tuba up my percussion friend just happened to be where my bell went and boom, we had a practically concussed percussionist that needed to play snare drum, bass drum, high hat, and suspended cymbal in this long song.

Once, in the middle of marching band rehearsal, we were marching in the street when all of a sudden we heard and saw an ambulance behind us. We all had to run off of the street.

high adventure, hot cross buns and i forgot the last one boot camp baby

Bro has Reebok heelies... Sick

We were working on a visual we had learned for our marching band show, and I was marching Sousaphone that year (My freshman year). We got to a part where I wasn't really confident with the visual, but I kept going, and then there was a part where we had to twist our leg. I did so, but during it, I had kept my foot firmly planted into the turf, and my knee came out of place. I fell over, denting the sousa bell. My director dismissed everyone from visual and told them to go to music, and I just lay there for about 10 minutes as they tried to get the school nurse out to the field. She later did come, took me to her office, treated it and sent me home with a pair of crutches (I haven't returned those crutches yet XD). I had to sit on the sideline during rehearsals for a while, and had to miss one competition until I was fit to march again. From that point on, I still wear knee braces to this day for every MB rehearsal.

One time, my marching band was marching back to the high school after a football game. I'm in drumline (Bass) and center snare starts tapping off, I quickly got my sticks down to play the cadence but I dropped my right stick. So I just play with my left hand. Half way through, for some stupid reason, I decided to switch the stick to my right hand since I'm right handed, but oh no, I dropped my other stick, let me get my- oh wait I don't have a drop stick. So later, the color guard tech and upperclassmen each gave me one of my sticks.

One time during marching band practice I tripped with a sousaphone on and bled all over the ground

I loved your story about the timpani. I would love to see you do either a reaction or transcription of the bluecoats timpani cam from 2022. It's a super cool cam with the foot cam and the note changes and stuff

I have a ton of awkward band stories from when I was in the 2d MAR DIV Band at Camp Swampy. Some of them are actually related to music. Here's a tame one: at the end of the '80s we had ended up with a bottom-heavy band rank-wise. We only had a handful of E4s and above. The vast majority of us were LCpls and PFCs. The drum major then was a real bastard and loved abusing the "Little End" as he called us. Don't get me wrong, he was super squared away in his marching and drilled the crap out of us to be the same way, but we hated him enough to turn our belligerence into what we called "steel chops". We could play 5 gigs a day at a consistent 110 dB with 135 dB transients internal to the band. The reason I know is because the Navy docs heard us, were concerned for hearing loss, and come by to test us. We culminated our tour together with a trip to London to play in the 100th Royal Tournament. We recorded our part of the "Music of..." at C.T.S. studios, I think, immediately after the Massed Bands of the Royal Marines. They took a moment to shuffle the mics and seats around for us and shrink the footprint from 250 members to 40. They made the mistake of leaving the gains set the same for us as they were for the Royal Marines. We were in Charlies for the recording, but the drum major wore his ACAs. While we went downstairs to form up in the studio, he grabbed a cup of coffee and went to observe in the control room. It was a fabulous control room with a brand new digital console that was an upgrade from recording the score for Batman the year before. The control room was surrounded by state of the art speakers and our drum major decided to stand right in front of one. We didn't know this, of course. We were only instructed to play something so they could check the gains. The band officer called up our opening fanfare so we blasted him with 135dB off the bat. The speakers in the control room promptly blew, including throwing the foam screen covering the front of the one the drum major was standing in front of causing him to spill his coffee all over himself. We marveled at the coffee stain he was sporting after we were finished recording. The only problem was this wasn't the same drum major who made us what we were. Gunny Findlater was long gone and this was Top Francese, as fine a Staff NCO as you'd ever want to serve with.

That’s my high school’s band room at 7:07

State champs this year, none of our electronics worked. An entire piano solo and choreo, and it was dead. silent. Biggest heart break of my life.

At my first ever marching competition, I was fiddling around with my hat(the big traditional one with the feathers) and it was just wasn't feeling comfortable. We march out to our spots and before the drum major salutes, we put our heads down. Sure enough, I feel the hat slowly, painfully starts to slip and finally it just falls off. After the salute, we return to an attention position and one of our staff runs on the field and plops the hat back on me. Sadly, at the end of our show, we slowly bow our heads and of course, it falls off again. For the rest of my time in high school, that thing was strapped on tight. Ugh...

i'm in percussion, and last year i think we knocked over our wind chimes about 30 times throughout the year. the stand we used was an actual piece of shit and i'm so glad that it's not in any of the songs for our concert this december lol

My only awkward band story was the first day in the Hambrick Jr. High band. Nobody told the teacher that this class was the newbies and he proceeded to hand out the music, like he apparently always did. The first song? “25 Or 6 To 4” by Chicago! (Nobody in the class, except maybe me, was at all familiar with Chicago’s sound, and at the time, I don’t think I’d really heard that particular song before.) When he found out, he turned so freaking white it wasn’t funny, rapidly got the music back, and got us “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock” by Bill Haley And His Comets! I was at least familiar with that one!

last year during our UIL performance i had to come in during the last part because I hadn't learned the 2nd part of our shows, but instead of getting to my dot i ended up forgetting where i was and I stood around for a few seconds until i remembered where my dot was. you can find this if you search up "Chapparal high school band"

I really love the facial expressions of Eric in the First skit (DCA - guy in the woods). It is so funny! And definitely True!

Story #2 sounds fabricated, while all other storys kinda sound legit xD

Context: I am a French horn player for concert season, a mellophone player for marching band, and I am an aux and cajon player for indoor percussion, we also are in concert class, so no drumline 1st story: I had a mellophone solo in the marching band show and the first competition I had forgot the 2nd half of it, so I just repeated parts from the start of the solo and then I had miscalculated something and there was about 3 measures or silence 2nd story: during indoor percussion last year, we had a part of the show were me and another member of the ensemble throw egg shakers across the gym and catch each others shaker and then play a part, the only time that I dropped the shaker was in Dayton, Ohio at world championships, I just pretended that I didn't drop it and just shook my hand as if it where there, we also missed going to finals by half a point, so that could have been the reason 3rd story: during a concert I had forgotten the rotary oil for my French horn at home so I thought to just use some that was in the band room, turns out we were fresh out of rotary oil so I had to just use valve oil (do not advise) and hope for the best, in the concert, my rotars got all jammed up and I couldn't play anything, and because of where I was seated, I was very visible to the audience, so I just sat there with my instrument to my mouth and watched the directer

EMC has heeleys? That is dope! I am just imagining him rolling around playing tenors.

i cant wait for the next video. I CANT

looks like you finally got a keyboard stand!

Yay storytime! Cicada story. Calling it. Also, you still need to tell us why The Brave Little Toaster is your favorite movie! Even as a kid I thought that was weird.

U should do a video of you playing subsonic the drum line cadence

My most awkward band moment was my first year of marching band, it was our last game and the flute section had a solo during our show and we had 2 piccolo and 2 flutes (I was one of the flutes) our one piccolo player was the senior drum major and she had to conduct during the solo, our other flute player’s flute broke and then our section leader’s piccolo stopped playing and then that leaves me with the stress of playing our show by myself with some pressure from the clarinets because they play a similar part to us. That’s not the worst part, my flute worked perfectly before the solo and after the solo, IT STOPPED MID SOLO. I wanted to go cry after the show.

My only somewhat awkward story in band camp we had themed days. My section leader says that tomorrow was ware purple. Everyone else but the saxophones were wearing red which is our schools color. Purple is our rivals school color.

It didn’t happen to me but my best friend. So we both play French horn, our director wasn’t there that day and the only instructions were to go practice with a friend. we start practicing and about 30-40 minutes later he notices that this French horn felt a bit weird. Very delayed reaction. But he then looks at it and realizes it was the directors horn. He was super grossed out but I was crying from laughing so hard. What sucks is that that wasn’t even the first time it happened 💀

5:18 nice shirt!🤣🤣

YUHH NEW VIDEO

Video 2 asking for the full Freebird Guitarsolo on the Megatenors

In junior year i played the finlandia on bass drum and at the concert i missed 12 measures of a roll

Hello EMC, I made flubs on my schools drumline, I wanted tenors but ill honor Steven as much as I can. Albertville high school aggie band. Also why was there no marching madness?

I'm a freshman and we learned the entire show like 5 weeks before COMP probably because we had a new band director who actually cared about band

Oh my god I remember this year when me and my friend tried out and made region band percussion and then we moved on to go do all state band percussion, and we were listening to the people in front of us play and we were like "jeez they're playing under tempo" and other things like that, and then it was my turn to audition, and. Jeez this is embarrassing. Lets just say I walked in the room being all confident and then when I got to the snare ending for, for the snare solo I was like "shoot i forgot the dynamics for this" and that threw me off for the whole audition. But you do got to admit all state is hard to get into but I am not even gonna say what place I got.

At homecoming coronation every year, my school has the drumline play some lot warmups and show segments from that year. Being on bottom bass through high school, I used a lot of velocity to hit my drum right? Well during our first piece, my right mallet snapped in half and flew into the front row of the audience. Luckily there was a girl that caught it and handed it back after that piece, but playing with one mallet is extremely awkward. The broken stick also dented my drum head bc I didn't realize it snapped until a little later, so for the rest of that season my right drum head was badly dented. I still have both halves of the snapped stick in my bedroom lol

As a former synth I can say with confidence your synth experiences are real

my awkward moment was when i was in eighth hrade i was performing at a middle school band festival with every middle school in my district, and right when our final piece finished, my cymbal strap came undone when it was dead silent and it made the loudest crash ever😭😭

When I marched DCI this past summer, had one incident of a zombie-like older druggie/drunk fall over at our prop truck after rehearsal, had several cars passing by heckle us on the campus we were rehearsing at and my favorite, a group of 5th grade basketball camp kids walking by calling us trash on campus.

do you remember the alamo? I remember that it has no basement.

I appreciate how most of the video has an annotation saying CGP Grey Strikes Down Vlogging Through History

I am a freshman in my High School Marching Band. We were rehearsing at a middle school for 2 weeks, and for a few days of those 2 weeks, we were rehearsing outside on the field. And everyone didn't admire outside rehearsal due to it being so damn hot out, but at least we had these ice cold cloths that we put on our heads to keep us cool/cold, but here's what happened to me. Many bugs out of nowhere kept on crawling on the Drumset that I was playing on AND were crawling on me. One of them was a pretty big spider, and I freaked out quietly so that no one would hear me scream or something. It was all damp and pretty muddy on the ground because of the sprinklers, and I am guessing it attracted bugs or something IDK!!!!!!!!!

So this one time I was back marching and I Fall and than someone fell on me

Contra player here! My 8th grade year, i was marching with my contra before practice, our feild doesnt get maintained very well, i was marching backwards, and there was a pothole. I fell back and bent the bell really bad... Dont ask how it bent the bell

I will have to rewatch these stories to make my final guess. HOWEVER!!! I do know that Story #8 is TRUE!!!! I had really hoped that someone had this on video, but unfortunately this was not to be! I think he posted this on his FaceBook page! (Cicadas)

Having gone to school in Rochester, there's no way the first story isn't true.

video 36 of asking EMC to make a video of him playing the Rock Band game series

the synth thing is so real tho lol its failed me on 3 competitions

The fake story is you uploading. Can't fool me twenty one times

Orange room?!?!

Synth problems am I right. My first competition in 2021, during finals, our parents didn’t plug in our sound system correctly. So the only thing that worked was our solo mic, and our 404 Sampler. Even worse, I closed the MacBook on MainStage while it was plugged in, so that ruined the connection between the keyboard and the computer. Me and the other synth player shared that one MacBook which was on my cart. We had a cool talkbox feature in that show too that the 1st synth player played. We had 3 synths, so the 3rd synth was playing just a Yamaha electronic piano while me and the 1st synth had MIDI controllers. It took an extra 1-2 minutes of silence to try to figure things out, though luckily, I don’t think we got penalized for time because of the changes of rules regarding the return of bands after COVID. I just faked playing. Though, some of my patches did work. It’s on video too…

Most awkward thing on band for me would have to be when I had an asthma attack marching in a parade and had to step out of the parade fucking up all of are fancy lines

Professor did you dirty

Don’t I have a couple awkward stories to tell, myself! First up, it was my freshman year in high school. My school’s football field gets borrowed by other schools in the district for games, and that year, our rivalry game was hosted by the rival school on our own field. We were on the visitors side of our own field, so our band director let us get food at the concession stand during 3rd quarter. We were expected to eat and return by the end of the quarter to play more stand tunes. I ended up running back to the stands plate in hand as my band is already playing. At the gate for the field (I played vibraphone), the keeper told me I wasn’t allowed to bring food for obvious reasons. Bright-minded freshman me decided to put my stuff on my band director’s golf cart, forgetting everything he told us beforehand. I’m halfway to my instrument when I hear a loud “HEY!” My band director was looking right at me from beside the golf cart, called me over, and proceeded to chew me out for leaving my cheeseburger on the golf cart. My parents got me Taco Bell that night and the incident became an inside joke within the band for a little while. TLDR 1: left cheeseburger on golf cart, pissed off band director, instant meme status Now here’s the second: it was September of the following year. It was homecoming season and the dance was coming up. It was the Thursday a week before the homecoming dance, and there was a girl I wanted to ask out. I spent the night before (and part of that Thursday) making a silly cheesy poster board. I was getting my wisdom teeth removed the next day, meaning I was missing school, and tickets for the dance would become more expensive the following week, so I thought “this is my chance! Now or never…” I had said cheesy sign and she came by with a couple of her friends. I went up, sign in hand, and asked her out while being a stuttering mess. My dumbass somehow forgot she was very introverted. Combined with my awkwardness, we were just standing there not sure what to do while being awfully uncomfortable. But wait, there’s more! The band director drove by behind her and I nervously made eye contact with him as he passed by. Man, did he stare daggers into my soul… TLDR 2: screwed up a homecoming proposal :(

Good morning ☀️

I play tambourine and sus. symbol and I missed a symbol roll during rehearsal and the band director called me out and talked about it for a solid 2 minutes…

I was first chair OMEA All State. I dropped two sticks in the concert. Same song. Sketches of a Tudor psalm. Wasn’t awkward. Just sucked. And was weird when there’s no FFP Crescendo roll

Synth problems... Homecoming night, we had our full show for the first time, and something happened to the synth. It wouldn't change between the instruments we had and was stuck on piano the whole time. My electric guitar solo was horrible because it was a completely different thing. Hopefully it doesn't happen at comp tomorrow...

He mentions how one of the stories is fake in every clip EXCEPT for story 6. That’s it boys…

I’m an Alto Saxophone player and I thought it would be funny if I burst into a room playing careless whisper, so my friend and I burst into a random classroom but apparently it was at the wrong time and day. The teacher was telling the class that she was quitting soon and that her husband left her for her best friend so.

one time some kid came to look at my friend's tuba and picked it up by the spit valve so yeah broken tuba we were the next performance

The most akward performance was the football game before golden triangle. As a synth player, the speakers that let me hear my part was unplugged and I got mad out of time, and I pick up something, perparing to throw it, and the percussion director gives me a look.

1979, La Spezia on the coast of Italy playing with the Willie Bobo band, it was late afternoon and the horseflies arrived. Our guitarist was wearing a bright white shirt, as was the drummer and sax player They were immediately covered in a black, roiling wall of horseflies. The rest of us were attacked, but the white fabric just brought them on in droves. Took a while for the crew to find citronella coils and drive them off, but I have to say our guys didn't (appear to) miss a beat.

The testicle story is crazy because that literally happened to me but he was just talking to me and it was 1 testicle instead of 3

The extra passenger in the sack is my vote. Two others have my second vote, but I’m sticking with Mr. Balls.

I think you said "fresh manure, indoor percussion."

My awkward band story was freshman year of Highschool and we have five people in battery and they are all juniors except me and my section leader calls a section all as usual burly he forgot that it was the day when everyone else was going to be at honors auditions and so I ran a whole sectional by myself and then the staff just sent me home because they didn’t think that having me do drill by myself would work all that well😅

I think it was story nine, and I could be wrong, but I feel like the front ensemble would be able to keep in time if they're at such a high level.

4th one. At least at my school, there was 0 percussion 5th grade

I don’t think 7 was fake, because MainStage just does that sometimes. A few weeks ago my ensemble’s synth just went a half-step higher, though thankfully it was just during rehearsal and we have a guy to fix that.

I love how the fake one is super obvious.

I think story number 9 is fake because that seems too smooth

BD changed closer drill the day before BOA my freshman year, everybody freaked out lol

omg I'm so early!!!

story 5 happened this year to me im a freshmen

That bug story has gotta be fake 🤣

5 seems to absurd. Freshman on snare and a new piece rhe day of is too risky but what do I know

how we doin

Why on earth did the tech have a baseball bat

The story you made up has to be story one

it says 0 comments, but 14 are showing. huh.

I bet all of them are real :)