Our Band
Monday, 31 May 2010
Cream crackered
Friday, 21 May 2010
The Sport Of Banding
To me, 'having a sports mentality' is playing to win rather than playing not to lose. Just like Tiger Woods with him practising bunker shots just in case. As you know, I'm on a speech recovery programme. As well as dealing with the physical blocking of stammering, I have had to development a sports mentality in order to improve my speech. I have a set of tools and techniques to help me, and I practise, practise, practise using these tools and techniques with family, friends, others on the speech programme and work colleagues (these are all comfort zones to me), so that when I enter a challenging, pressurised speaking situation, I know that my speech will hold up and I won't have a bad experience. I play to win.
What's this got to do with banding? Think about it. It has everything to do with banding. If we want to improve our playing both individually and as a team (our band), we need to practise. Practise in our 'comfort zones', such as in the band room on a Wednesday night, in our homes. Even at your workplace like I do. By doing this, when we play to a concert audience, we know that we can play the music. When we walk out on a contest stage, a pressurised situation, we know that we have put the hard work in beforehand and know that, despite the nerves, our own playing and that of the band will hold up.
We all know that we need to practise playing to get better. It's the same for those who play a sport. You only improve if you put in that extra time. But have you thought about it before as developing a different mentality. Think of it as getting good at the aport of banding.
You may see where I'm coming from with this and agree, or you may think it's a load of nonsense. To me, adopting a sports mentality is probably the biggest factor that has helped me get to where I am with recovering from my stammer. Plus I spent most of last week in Cork on a McGuire Programme speech course, which provided the inspiration for this blog post.
Thursday, 20 May 2010
Last NIghts Rehearsal - trumpets, singing and weeds
Sunday, 16 May 2010
Trombone Player Crisis Point
Hey, time is ticking away nicely, days turning into weeks into months etc.. still we have no trombone section, whats going on!! It is time for everyone to think hard. ask around and see if there are any trom players lurking in the shadows. Please, please lets try, I so want to play Officer Krupke at Sutton (my own selfishness of course)
Friday, 14 May 2010
PONTINS RECRUITMENT
Wednesday, 12 May 2010
Monday, 10 May 2010
It's Good To Type
The band now has it's own Facebook group, kindly set-up by Ryan (thanks Ryan), and there's a link to it on our website. If you are on Facebook already and want to join the band group, drop Ryan an e-mail (via his address on the website) and he'll invite you to join (Ryan, please correct me if this is wrong). As with this blog, it's there for band members and supporters. Enjoy!
Saturday, 8 May 2010
SUTTON PROM EXTRA REHEARSALS
Friday, 7 May 2010
Good Idea
Ain't Got That Swing!
Thursday, 6 May 2010
The morning after....
Last night's rehearsal focused on American themed music in preparation for the Sutton Prom. Have to say, that despite not usually being my 'thing', I really liked the 'Porgy & Bess' selection. We just need to get into 'that swing' a bit more perhaps?
Amusing episodes from last night.....heavy breathing coming from the front row inbetween off-beat quavers and the innocent moth that tried to find it's way up Sue's trousers, then distracted the horn section, before meeting it's demise under Adrian's shoe!
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Welcome!
Welcome to the Littleport Brass Blog!
I didn't want to patronise anyone by writing the definition of a 'blog', but if you do want to know, good old Wikipedia can help you out.
Unfortunately for you, as I set up the blog, I'm the default author. Now, this is the first blog I've set up, and, despite reading a number of other blogs (mostly beer related ;-) ), I'd prefer this to not be Shaun's blog. Mr. Keene and I had a chat about this while waiting for the recent St. George's Day parade in Ely to start, and thought this would be good forum for band members to post thoughts, comments, musings (you get the idea) about practise nights (perhaps reflecting on some of Nigel's amusing descriptions on how flat the band is sounding), our music, concerts, contests and really anything else you can think of. Another way to further build on the already great team spirit within the band.
Anyone can comment on blog posts (I've currently set the blog up so you don't have to have a Blogger account set up. But if you do want to be a post author (I'm sure you all do or will in time), you will need to set up an account, and then I can add you to the list of blog authors.
Anyways, enough of me. I've no idea if this blog is going to go anywhere, fingers crossed it will though. Over to you...