The 10th April marked the last indoor rehearsal for the 2016 season of the Kidsgrove Scouts. The plan for this weekend was to make a start on the drill for the opener and ensemble the closer until it locked in to place.
We arrived on Saturday and spent the morning warming up and running large chunks of the closer and I can tell you right here and now that it’s a beast. It has very long articulated passages with hardly any rest for any section to take a breather. We worked hard to clean all the technical phrases and identify the cleaning points in the music. A common phrase you will hear at Kidsgrove Scouts is ‘NAILS’ as in “that is hard as nails!”. There are sections of the closer that are that and then some.
In order to pull this music off on the move our horn players are going to have to work hard everyday at home and these thoughts were echoed by Music Arranger Tez Smith who talked about rising to the challenge of playing a difficult show. Tez said “don’t let this show beat you, push yourself to become better players by working hard at home.”
Corps director Rob Swindells had us learning the drill for the opener outside in the glorious Stoke on Trent weather and guess what? Yes, it started to rain which is common for these parts of the Midlands. We didn’t let that dampen our spirits though because the drill we’ve learnt so far is fun to march and we were told that i looked great. I’m sure we will have the opener down by the end of the next camp.
On Sunday morning we had stretch out and drill basics outside with Lieutenant Dan and Sam for an about 45 minutes. We then went inside to warm up and start working on the opener and ballad. After lunch we worked the closer in preparation for an ensemble block with the Front Line and main Battery. We managed to play the closer from start to end and then did a one rep of the show. I don’t think many horn players had any chops left after the run having played for most of the day.
We also had two new trumpet players attend rehearsal today. One lead trumpet and the other will play second trumpet. So we are now rocking 5 lead trumpet players and I can tell you that this years trumpet line is stronger than last years due to the quality we have from top to bottom. I personally feel the pressure from standing next to members who play better than me at the moment and the only way I can fix that is to put the work in at home. What a challenge this year is going to be!
Photo credits: Zac the Photographer ,Sam Catcliffe and Georgia Moran
