#perucssion

This school year has just been full of disappointments for me, and the first term isn’t even over yet. I feel like I just bombed the concert. I know that I just bombed the concert. I already cried about it so hopefully all my tears over this have been shed.

The percussion ensemble went well. I feel like I nailed my part to that and really got into the groove of it like we were all trying for. We purposely wanted to move/dance a bit to the beat as we played, which is really hard for me to do while playing the bells, but I was able to bob my head along so I feel okay about that.

Then things went downhill. The first band song I played is Algorythms (Gary Fagan) and I had the snare part. I was doing okay for the first fourth of the song. I’m not really sure what threw me off, because of all the Symphonic songs I had I really felt that was the one I had mastered, but I ended up getting off and I had to stop in the middle of a drum heavy area to get back on and ended up sounding like an idiot who didn’t know their part. Then in the last half, I started rushing. I was nearly a full beat ahead of the band! Then it ended and I, already feeling crushed for disappointing myself, had to run across the stage for the next song.

This song was The Haunted Carousel (Erika Svanoe) and I had the theremin part (played on an iPad, we’re not fancy enough to have an actual theremin to play). I did alright on this one. I never got lost and always knew what I was supposed to be doing, though I hit a couple wrong notes because it’s hard to be sliding your finger across a screen and hoping you’re hitting the right keys while you’re reading the music, because it’s hard to look at both the screen and the music.

Then there was Toccata For Band (Frank Erickson). Again I played snare on this. It started out well. I was doing pretty good, and then I guess I got lost during the second half on the odd-timed rolls and ended up messing up the entire section and awkwardly rolling through at least eight bars, instantly wishing that I was doing something other than making a fool of myself. I somehow managed to recover for the end of the song.

It was this point that SB was done with their songs, but I played a song with WE as well, and there’s still a full band song. I walked off the stage to wait for WE to play their first songs to join in on the third one, and I’m trembling and trying not to start crying because I didn’t want to cause a scene or make anyone feel bad about our performance, but of course, I cried anyway. The other percussionists all told me I did great but clearly, they either weren’t listening or were lying to me. The band director noticed by this point that I’m in tears over this (I’m tearing up again writing this) and tells me we’ll talk about it later but to pull myself together because we’re “in the fourth quarter” because he likes his basketball comparisons. So now (and still) dreading some kind of serious talk where I’ll start crying because I always cry over everything and we’ll talk about how much I feel like I suck and don’t belong in the band because I’m not good enough for WE but am absolutely beyond miserable in SB (like, to the point of anxiety attacks during rehearsals which of course I haven’t told anyone about because I don’t want to seem overly dramatic). On top of that, I keep feeling like I’m the worst percussionist in the group and an absolute shit musician.

I did okay on the other two songs but got lost twice in the WE song.

But why do I keep trying at these things when I only end up disappointing myself? I told myself this was my chance to prove to myself that I am a good musician and that I deserve to be in WE, yet even with over an hour every other day of just practicing band stuff I still bombed the concert like the screw-up I clearly am and only proved that I am not good enough for WE.