[NekU]

This is a bit of a read and I'm just blowing off a little steam so dont flame or w.e.

Alright, so yesterday I was at MICCA festival(Marching band compettition between bands from different cities, I don't know the real acronym.). My band is from the inner suburban I guess city, while the rest are all from rich cities. Our band doesn't have all that rich expensive shit like gold plated instruments and whatnot, but that does not make us any less of musicians than them. Anyways, yesterday was finals and we in our division, were a bunch of cities, but the main one I'm talking about is ours, malden golden tornadoes, norwood, and shephardhill. Now, this year we have a piece from alaniss morisette, that was HAND written by our conductor whos life revolves around band, literally. All of the other schools have stocks, which are drills and sets pre-made that they just bought. Alright, so we performed blah blah, and at finals, our ratings came in. Malden got 4/5stars in General Effects, Color guard, Percussion, a 3 in music. Of course the two rich schools norwood and shephard hill got 5/5 in everything and overall. Today in concert band class we took a listen to the critique tapes from the 3 judges, TWO of which are/were conductors for norwood high. This was the most absolute bullshit i have ever heard in my entire life. The critique tape pissed off our conductor so much that he threw the tapes across the room after we listened to them. The judges are contradictory to each other and on the criqitue sheets they gave us were utter shit. One judge on the tape said that our piece was too hard for us to handle. The other judge said that the piece is too easy and consists of VERY low range, but throughout the whole tape he would say "Good phrasing, and excellent flutes!/trombones/ etc. And HE STILL GAVE US A THREE. Theres a video on the bottom.

Now, OUR piece is too easy? Take a listen and tell ME that playing sixteenth notes, double tonging, triple tonging, Playing up THREE octaves AND marching at 208bpm while keeping tone quality is TOO EASY. Now he might have meant emotional range, which is the musical level of how our music is played, BUT he was the visual judge which meant he would be commenting on a different area where there is already a judge, so he would be wrong. And thats just the wind instruments. The percussion is just insane, with paradiddles, diddles, eggbeaters, etc. And the funny part was, shephard hill had a piece that our concert band played last year, which is basically nothing harder than 8th notes.
Now, the judge who judged our piece and said that it was TOO hard gave us a 4++++++ on the sheet, which is a 5-, and to receive a 5- you need 4, with FIVE pluses, we got 6. NONE of the other bands competeing BESIDES the two rich cities got 5. Coincidence much? Its just because HE just didnt want us to receive a 5 knowing that a suburban or in their terms "ghetto" school can match up to their musical level even though we probally worked twice as hard, and still didnt get that five stars.


Last year, at MICCA festival in hopkintons or whatever, its a REALLY rich city, we went there to perform. And WE were the ONLY suburban city out there. When we got there and were setting up and shit, one of the band advisors from hopkingtons came up to us and asked "Did one of your guys steal our symbols?". Obviously no, and our director said "No, one of your guys must have misplaced it due to their own carelessness. I've taught at hopkintons before and your students are known to be extremely careless." 30 minutes later, our conductor went up to them and asked if they found their symbols and they said " Yeah .. we accidently misplaced it in the closet." and they walked off, without an apology or anything.


Now, back to the story. Norwood and shephard hill at the end of the night got 5 stars, while we got 4. Is any of this fair? I mean seriously just because we arent from a rich city that means we arent good musicians? or that it means we are ghetto?

*this is basically what happened. there are alot of minor details, but w.e.
**the video
http://www.facebook.com/video/video....6948909&ref=nf

[demonhand]

Go back next year and own them so hard that it'll cause a riot not to give you guys first place. If you actually pull that off, sell of the story for a movie deal. Win-win.

[NekU]

We can't, no matter what we do we'll always be grouped as the suburban kids or the "ghetto" kids, it doesnt matter what the hell we play.

damnit this sucks lol.

[AK47]

Did you say you had a video?

[NekU]

Oh shit haha .. i forgot about that part im sorry.

fixed.

[snoopy8]

So now I'm racist?




tl;dr