I don't know how I got here, but I can't leave

Impulse is a percussion guy. I gotta put him on marching snare. I gotta. He and Skizz do DCI in the summer, college band during the fall, snare drum. …going to put Skizz on snare as well, but I have no clue. I'm not checking. They keep trying to get Skizz on a bass because he’s huge and he’s built, and definitely could run around with a 30 pound drum on his chest, but he’s committed to the snare. And Impulse. I feel like Impulse would be a tech major and Skizz would be gearing towards music ed.

Joel is an orchestra kid that they kidnapped.  They gave him a flute and told him to march.  He does not know what’s going on.  He used to play viola.  He's supposed to be playing viola. He used to be in an orchestra.  God why.  He shouldn't have trusted that bassoonist, what the hell, band is a cult, the perc kids have started a fire in an old drum barrel and are dancing around it.  That one clarinet keeps watching him.  What the fuck is going on. He doesn't even know how to play flute.

Grian plays clarinet.  He’s quiet(not really, he's lying), but the off kind of quiet, where he knows too much and is really kinda snarky about it.  He steals everyone’s music, just to learn it.  Like this man pulls out the trumpet solo from two years ago off the top of his head and just starts clarinet-ing it.  This pissed Gem off, that was her solo damnit. He's working his way towards learning trumpet to do DCI. Evil evil man. Skizz supports this decision. Don't ask where he got the DCI money from.

Gem is a trumpet.  She prefers marching band to concert band, and is stellar on the field.  Pearl keeps finding her, and Gem's been slowly and covertly teaching her how to actually play baritone.  No one will ever know. Gem is one of the few trumpets to actually practice her instrument, like she’s actually very diligent with her horn.  She plays for the orchestra in the spring, and DCI in the summer. Fear her.

Scar is a trombone player.  He has broken enough slides that the school has set up an entire deposit to either fix them- if they’re salvageable- or just buy new instruments.  He- he’ll pay it back one day.  Maybe. He literally has a tab with the school.  He once rolled over his entire trombone with his truck.  It was flat.  Mumbo actually screamed when he saw it.  Scar still has it to this day, he brings it to sectionals to scare people.  He’s very prone to breaking horns, but also very good at putting his body between the horn and the ground.  He did break his arm one season, and spent that whole semester flirting at people from the sideline.  The woodwind sideline.  He should be on the brass sideline- Scar- Scar goes out to play with the Disney orchestra every summer, he's thrilled about this. Do not ask how many Disney songs he can play. The answer is ALL.

Mumbo plays flute.  It is a miracle he can, he does not use standard fingerings.  I don’t know enough about flute posture to tell you what fingerings he’s using but whatever it is it’s Wrong.  He and Grian whisper back and forth every rehearsal, they’re horrendous.  Mumbo’s entire focus is on the instrument, and on Grian.  He has no thoughts, only flute and oh fuck wait that's the ground. No one ever said you had to be good at marching to march. Or like. You know. Hand-eye coordination.

Bdubs plays alto sax.  God have mercy on those around him he’s so fucking loud.  He’s woodwind captain.  Does anyone listen to him?  Not at all.  No one respects him.  Not in the slightest bit.  But boy is he loud.

Etho plays french horn, and marches mello.  On a bet, he switched to alto sax for a season, and he and Bdubs were miserably competitive.  He now marches sax, to everyone’s dismay, except for Bdubs.  Don’t tell Etho though.  Etho does a lot of synth work, and is working on a few pieces.  Doc and X are trying so hard to recruit him into their metal-indie fusion band that Doc runs out of his shed.  Etho’s been asked to be drum major a few times.  He keeps running away, elusive son of a bitch- Cleo is this close to dragging him up to the podium and unscrewing the ladder to strand him up there.

Cub is first chair trombone.  Most people keep a healthy amount of fear for him.  Except for Scar.  Scar and Cub have been attached at the hip for like.  A decade.  He’s very militaristic with his horn, posture, routine, style, everything.  Like otherwise he’s this very chill guy but when he picks up the horn- Also a DCI guy.

Xisuma is a guitarist.  Electric guitarist, to be clear.  Don’t catch him with that strumming stuff he’s here to shred.  He also does not know.  Why he’s here.  But his little brother asked if he’d play a feature for their marching show and he auditioned for the hell of it and now he’s being shipped to California for a football game.  Um.  What is going on.  Help.

Ex is a tenor sax.  He’s recently figured out how to slap tongue and is a jazz improv addict.  Someone stop him jesus christ.

Ren is an alto sax.  He’s a theatre major, nobody knows how he has the time for marching band or what he’s doing here- “Ren stop quoting Shakespeare during set 50 I don’t care if it’s on beat, you cannot shout Macbeth quotes in our marching show about spaceflight I will hit you with my trumpet, Ren-” but he has fun.  

Martyn is Ren’s buddy who follows him to practice.  He’s also a theatre major.  He cheers them on by distracting them from the drum majors with dramatic acting scenes.  He practices his lines on the sidelines.  Ren sometimes responds with his own lines.  During a break, they once acted out this entire scene where Ren’s character- The Red King- asked Martyn’s character- The King’s Hand- to kill him, and Ren acted out dying in Martyn’s arms for like ten minutes.  The entire band watched.  It was really, really cheesy.  One of these days someone is going to kill one of them.  It might be Cleo, actually.  Cleo might just kill them both.

Doc is a guitarist as well, but he followed X to the band and has just kinda stuck around.  They put him on cymbals to give him something to do.  He also plays bass guitar, but keeps poking around Ren and Etho to see if they’ll teach him sax.  They’re trying to find him a bari sax right now so they can get him an instrument as loud and foreboding as he is.  This man is about to pull off the most technical and precise scales on an instrument the size of a small machine gun.

False plays oboe.  She’s been in both the band, and orchestra for years now, but the orchestra guys and the band both thought she was two separate people for like. Three years.  She has a full time job, but no one quite knows what it is exactly.  She’s very vague about it.  False gives Gem rides to practice and Gem pays her in the gossip she shakes out of Grian.  She marches clarinet.  

Hypno is on mallets.  Wels was out for a season because of an injury, and spent the entire time poking around his marimba.  Hypno eventually gave him a triangle and told him to go play.  Wels told him he broke most of the bones in his hand(Fencing.  He also sprained his ankle.)  Hypno is about ready to throw him into the street.  Wels tends to sleep through his alarms and Hypno has bodily picked him up and dragged him to rehearsal more than once.

Wels’ current instrument is a dollar store tambourine.  He usually plays trumpet, but somehow tripped, sprained his ankle, and fell on his hand while holding his saber.  Yeah he’s out of commission for a little bit.  He makes up for it by annoying Hypno.  His instruments for this season have so far been a triangle, a child’s recorder, an industrial 55 gallon trash can, his saber, an otamatone, a thumb piano, Doc’s cymbals, a melodica, and finally the tambourine that xB bought at dollar tree.  He also plays acoustic guitar!

Hels is not in band, he’s solely in fencing.  He uses an épée because he is a vicious, vicious man.  The épée has a wider target area than the saber.  Ex keeps telling people it’s pronounced like the word eepy(it’s pronounced ay-pay), and that Hels is just a very tired boy.  He uses Wels as supporting data.  Wels is a very tired boy.  Hels is thoroughly pissed about this.  It’s a miracle Ex is still alive.

xB plays trumpet, he has escaped the trumpet cult thus far.  It is only a matter of time.  He hangs out with Pearl, and the trombones, but they keep finding him in the flute section.

Keralis plays flute.  He’s not the most band kid band kid out there but he can and will go flirt with that guitarist they asked to help out with the show, yes please.  xB is very supportive of this.  Keralis keeps leaving him with the flute player that Pearl and that one clarinet kidnapped- I mean relocated.  Yeah, relocated.  Joel does not know how to play his instrument.  What is he doing here?

Jevin plays tuba.  He can and will leave it with you and walk away.  He's put that sousaphone through hell and back, I am really not sure how it's still in once piece. He’s slowly trying to start a mutiny against the trombone section.  Cub has promised that if he goes through with this, he'll stop fixing Jevin's sousaphone. Jevin's horn has been looking particularly worse for wear the past few months.

Joe… Joe isn’t even a band kid, he’s an english major.  He just kinda showed up and they adopted him.  He keeps writing poems or phrases that have eventually either worked themselves into counting chants or into the show itself.  

Zed- Zed keeps making instruments.  He’s the symphonic version of Doctor Frankenstein someone stop him before he resurrects Scar’s flattened trombone.  He fucking homebrewed his piccolo.  Why does he own a welding tool.  He is singlehandedly keeping those plastic instrument vendors afloat, he has made so many abominations.  His music theory instrument of choice is this fuckass seven string guitar that Tango has named The Seven Deadly Mistakes. He's a chem engineering major btw, what is he doing here

Tango plays mellophone.  He’s a music composition major, but keeps getting pulled into ensembles by Bdubs.  This usually ends up with him playing saxophone music on a french horn.  He’s writing an orchestral suite he calls The Citadel.  He keeps giving excerpts to people to see if they can play them, so he can listen and make edits.  They’re usually terrifyingly difficult.  Like entirely runs and weird ranges and horror movie esque shifts in dynamics.  Grian took one look at the score and walked out of the building.  Pearl has been bassooning the bassoon part into the ground.  Cub has been trying to learn the trombone part for like four months.  Etho once got locked in the band hall overnight with Tango and the suite, and hasn't been the same since. Tango wrote a part for Zedaph’s “tromboneophone”(he welded a trombone slide to a sousaphone), and Zedaph Will be playing it in concert.  He keeps sneaking into orchestra rehearsal to study and write, and probably also to talk to the double bass player.  For no reason. He also plays piano, but like.  In the music theory way and not in the classical way.  Pianists hate him.

Beef is a drum major, god rest his soul.  He’s usually on tenor sax, but has been unfortunately put in charge.  He has no power over these fools, what were you thinking?

Cleo’s the other drum major, she’s on the front sideline, Beef’s on the back sideline.  Cleo is on front for a reason. People actually listen to them.  Etho doesn’t, but the jury’s still out on whether or not he’s “people.”  She plays clarinet and bass clarinet, but learned euphonium out of spite(DCI).  Joe named her bass “The Undead” because of how often that thing falls apart, and will only refer to it as “The Undead” when it’s brought up in conversation.

Beef is a drum major because no one could make Etho do it, and everyone is too afraid of Zed and Cub.  Hypno also just flat out said no.  Cleo, Hypno, and Etho were the original picks.  Hypno turned it down, because he decided he’s needed in front ensemble, Cleo accepted, as you do.  Etho literally ran out of the room.  Beef had the misfortune of walking in right after Etho left.

“Beef!  Hi!  You’re going to conduct with me!”

“I- what?  Uh, excuse me what-”

“You’re going to conduct with me, Beef!  I refuse to do this alone!”

Gem is the trumpet cult leader.  They worship the sun.  The sun may or may not be Bdubs’ sax.  Coincidentally, Bdubs’ sax keeps going missing.

Martyn usually shows up to rehearsal with Ren, and once tried to conduct from the sidelines.  Enough people went along with it that Cleo jumped down from her podium in the middle of a run and punched him in the jaw. He was fine.  This is the in-universe equivalent of Double Life.

Doc, Etho, Bdubs, and Beef once pulled together an ensemble, which eventually just turned into a sax choir.  Bdubs played soprano sax- he is so goddamned loud someone get him a harder reed- Etho played alto, Beef played tenor, and Doc played bari.  He also brought his guitar… and- and an amp-?!  Uh, Doc- Doc?!  Yeah Doc got an electric guitar feature in their sax choir. New Horn Organization, sure why not

Ren and Doc run duets all the time, it is their default state.  Martyn is this close to caving and learning an instrument.

Bigb plays guitar, he vibes.  He’s known Grian, Pearl, Martyn, and Jimmy for years.  He occasionally shows up to rehearsals to say hi, and to watch the band. He may or may not have been involved with the great Joel heist.

Grian, Mumbo, and Scar had an ensemble one spring.  It ended with several broken music stands, some really shitty cocktails, a bunch of expired store bought cookies, a broken flute, and a broken heart. And no, to this day, no one knows why Ren and Doc were hiding under the stage wearing sniffer costumes.

The in-universe equivalent of Vampires was a jazz ensemble that was doomed from the start.

I just... I just realized that my lows section is Doc, Jevin, Ex, Pearl, and Cleo.  Cleo I am So Sorry. At least she doesn't have to march with them.