Magical Band Geek

Magical Band Geek

Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be, and he will become as he can and should be. So states Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), widely considered to be the greatest German literary figure of the modern era. What could you accomplish if, instead of always giving in to the voices of reason and doubt, you actually bought into someone else’s belief in you, at least until your own belief in yourself kicked in?

When I was nearing the end of my Junior year of high school, many years ago, I was encouraged by several of my friends to join our school marching band as a “manager”, someone who travels with the band helping to carry the musical instruments, flags and so forth, so that I could continue to hang out with my friends at the weekly football games and periodic band competitions they travelled to. However, when I approached the Band Director one morning before school to apply, his response was not quite what I was expecting: “We need horn players!” He was an intimidating man known for his intense passion for music and, yes, his proclivity for yelling. “But, I don’t play an instrument,” I replied. Yes, I had taken 5 years of piano lessons 7 years prior, but I had never practiced between my forced weekly lessons and thus, I had never developed any real skill at it. Besides, all I knew how to read, somewhat, was treble clef and trombone music is written in bass clef. Nonetheless, I was given a trombone and half a dozen private lessons. Then, without warning, the whole trombone section, there were 4 of us now, got switched to Flugelbones, a 3-valve horn instead of the traditional trombone slide mechanism like I had just been given lessons on. And so, I set about anew memorizing the various valve fingerings.

Early on, the other 3 horn players chastised one another for playing so poorly. “Stop blatting!” they would yell at one another. It never dawned on them that I might actually be attempting to play my instrument too. Nobody took me seriously, or expected much, if anything, from me except for the Band Director. And it never dawned on me how extraordinary of a transformation I was undergoing.

By the end of the rigorous band season, I could play, relatively well, all of the required trombone music AND, even though I never had occasion to play such, I could even play the baritone player’s solo too. All the while, I still could not read a single note of bass clef!

One day, as the season was winding down, towards the end of practice, I was fooling around playing the baritone solo on my Flugelbone when, “You actually play that thing?!?” It was Marcia, a fellow band member, staring at me with a look of utter disbelief. At that moment, it hit me like a ton of bricks, the magnitude of what I had accomplished. We are all capable of so much more than we typically give ourselves credit for. Sometimes, it takes someone else’s passionate belief in our potential before we can even begin to entertain such thoughts ourselves. But, when we do, the results can be downright magical indeed.

by jon m ketcham

Special thanks to William Barbour for seeing far more in me than I could have possibly seen in myself at that time.