The Carnival of Lona

Ah, school.

Let's look again at 2002. This would be around the time of Attack of the Clones. Senior year was drawing to a close. Classes had long since been deemed irrelevant and I was burning bridges with people I'd never thought I'd see again.

Let's recap the major milestones:
I didn't have a lot of band friends left. That kind of sucked, but my non-betraying friends were still good. (So, no great loss.)
I was broken up with my first girlfriend. We weren't speaking. (This turned out to be a good thing.)
The girl I liked at the time wasn't speaking to me. (This was actually a good thing.)
The girl that sort of liked me prior wasn't on speaking terms with me. (This ... was also a good thing.)

Yeah, I thought the epoch of this memory sucked more, but at this point was when the pendulum was swinging towards the awesome spectrum. I guess this is the story of the turning point: my best day of high school.

First class of the day for me was band. But this was after our UIL run and even after the Spring Concert. That meant we no longer had a reason to practice for the rest of the school year (all like 10 days of it). We didn't have to do our morning routine of being ready to warm up before the first bell of the day rang. So the band sat around the band hall doing non-band things: cards, gossiping, goofing off. Actually, those are all band things. Let's say we weren't doing anything musical. Then the director comes out and tells us to get our horns. Groans erupted but we followed orders nonetheless. We were baffled by what we could possibly need them for but we took our seats and started to warm up. Of course, we half-assed it, but we did it. Then the director handed me a large stack of papers. It was a song of mine.

At the start of the year I had composed my first large ensemble piece. I had shown the band director it. He said he liked it and he promised me that we would play it. That promise probably kept me in band. By the time that promise was fulfilled, that day seemed so far away.

I quickly handed out the piece to everyone. It was The Carnival of Lona, a song that's part of my special collection of music that I try to tell a story with. I had signed it with my pseudonym: Nomandy Santo. People asked me about it as I handed them the sheet. I merely told them to read the tail of my letterman jacket, my pseudonym emblazened on it.

When we were set, the director told everyone I wrote it and he told them of his promise. He said that it wasn't perfect but it was my first ensemble piece.

And so ... surely you've heard this piece. I had heard it myself many times but this was a real band playing it, one of the best in the state of Texas.

It only took the second note before an entire section played the wrong note.

We played it, slightly undertempo. The french horns couldn't hit the high notes, the flutes couldn't nail the technique, and I myself could barely keep up with the bass clarinet part. It was shaky but it sounded better than the midi from Finale.

With an upgraded Finale, the Garritan Personal Orchestra does a much better job of playing the music as I had intended it, but even perfection in sound is no substitute for the sheer power I felt that day.

Immediately after finishing it, people started griping to me. A pseudo-band-friend turned around and immediately told me that it was silly of me to give the band something to play in G Major first thing in the morning. The french horns said that it was too high for them and that the rhythms were awkward. The trumpets complained about the range. The woodwinds complained. The percussion complained. Some had valid points. I would say that some may perceive a flaw or two in the piece.

But that didn't matter. I had just heard the Dickinson Gator Band play my song. My sworn enemy played my music.

The rest of the day was full of me gloating. I had won that contest.

That ... that was a good day.