1. What has been your biggest improvement this year as a player?
I have consistently worked at things that I have struggled with. In the past, I would ignore those issues, skip over the section, and leave it at that. If I struggled with something in particular, I figured I would end up fixing the kinks in band practice. Instead, this year, I was much better at practicing on my own time to perfect my difficult sections. Not only did I try to practice more, but due to my regularity of playing, I also was able to find strategies that worked for me when trying to improve on a piece. I managed to try several different suggestions before realizing that breaking a piece down bar by bar was the most effective way for me. If I made a mistake on a bar, Id go back to the beginning. I did this until I made as few mistakes as possible, before my lips fell off.

2. What is the area you most struggle with?
At this level of playing, this year was my first being the only tuba player in the band. As opposed to junior band, where I found it easy to assess the volume of the other sections and balance to them, this year I found the noise around me overwhelming. It was very difficult to find where I fit into some pieces. I struggled to match the band dynamically and would often catch myself - or Mr. Haq would catch me- playing far too loud for the band. The result creates an obnoxious unpleasant sound that I tried to avoid, but it was very frustrating to have that much difficulty interpreting the dynamics of the group, and I feel like it was my weakest aspect this year.

3. What was your greatest musical highlight this year and why?
The final concert was my musical highlight. Although it was long in duration, I didn’t even realize that fact. Everything went so smoothly, every event, comment, speaker, and performance was funny, entertaining, and enjoyable. Whether I was on stage or in the audience, I enjoyed every moment of the concert. Seeing the look on Mrs. Stewart’s face was pretty priceless as well. I will never forget Mr. Stevenson doing “the hustle”....in that wig haha.

4. What areas do you feel the band accels at and what area do we struggle? Give specific examples.
I think as a band, we play very well together. The odd section stands out at certain troublesome areas of a song, but it is inconsistent in which group is struggling. When we notice an issue, it only takes a small piece of advice to correct, and the mistake is rarely made again. I also think we all play with confidence. As was observed at Nationals, we sight read a piece quite accurately, with hardly any mistakes. Obviously, with strong encouragement from the percussion section, but yet, we still succeed in playing with confidence. Whenever performing Rumble on the High Plains, we showed this quite clearly, with our intensity.
There are some things that could help us be an even better band, however. We don’t practice, collectively as a group. It hurts us when rehearsal comes along, because we can’t run pieces due to simple mistakes that are unnecessary. We aren’t able to get through our entire repertoire due to this fact, and a great deal of time is spent on note and rhythm errors needlessly. Another thing we struggle with is attendance. This, in particular bothers me. As I already struggle with finding balance in the band, being so inconsistent in the sections frustrates me. One day Ill play at a certain level, which is then too loud the next time. This issue was apparent at several rehearsals for me, and I hope that improves in the future. It also led ot certain sections falling apart at times, because some people in the section have worked on something at the last practice and others have missed. Therefore contributing to more inconsistency, and is a negative impact on the band as a whole.