ANCOC Day 4

Thursday evening already ... not sure if the time is going by quickly or not. On one hand it's only been four days since we started. However, our first scored music evaluation (ceremonial conducting) is tomorrow afternoon.

This morning started very early with combined ANCOC / BNCOC PT. The session was led by one of the academy instructors. When I was in BNCOC, we did PT every day and it was led by one of the students. Not sure why they have gone away from that model. Maybe the students were burning each other out? SSG Campbell sure did his best to burn US out this morning with a set of exercises targeting the upper body and abs. I'm quite sure I won't be able to sit up tomorrow morning when the alarm clock rings. Speaking of tomorrow ... we already know it's a cardio session, and I fear that it will be led by the academy instructor who "enjoys training for triathalons."

The temperature took a severe turn back towards winter. The morning session of drum majoring was tough since we battled the cold, the wind (which was worse than the cold) while trying to learn the latest mace movements. Fortunately the class members seem to be picking things up rather well. In another change from when I attended previously, the drum major evaluation is GO/No GO instead of being scored. Thus there is FAR less pressure about extra after-hours rehearsals and stress.

The morning indoctrination was a free writing assignment. (Yes, this really is an Army school.) We were given the word "INSPIRE" and told to take 10 minutes to write whatever we wanted. Then many shared what they had written. As you might imagine, without more specific instructions we got quite a wide range of ideas. One guy did the middle school assignment where he wrote a short sentence for each letter in the word, starting with that particular letter. Others were quite poetic. One guy wrote down lyrics to a song he started to write in his head during the time. Another gave a Latin lesson on the meaning of the word, morphing into the biblical story of creation (no, I wasn't that guy). Fortunately at least a few of us wrote about leadership, and overall we had a pretty good discussion.

After lunch the MST's got rehearsal time, which we used to sight-read a lot of German music. That will make more sense when I post our final script for our group's performance coming up next Tuesday. I also corresponded with a co-worker back in Corvallis (a native German) to get some translations of many of the songs. I think we're figuring out the strengths of the various players, which is definitely defining the music we can select. It's kind of fun to be alternating 1st and 3rd in a horn quartet again.

The last class of the day was more practice at outdoor review ceremonies, with primary emphasis on the role of the bandmaster. More than 3.5 hours on Saturday will be devoted to drilling these steps, as the evaluation (again, GO/NO GO - not scored) is scheduled for Monday afternoon. I played the role of a company commander, which meant a lot of screaming ("Practice your COMMAND VOICE!") so I'm hoping to just be a band member tomorrow. Besides, I need to see what the BANDMASTER is supposed to be doing so I can get a GO on the eval.

This afternoon I'm catching up on a couple of work assignments, and putting in time with the mirror to rehearse conducting the National Anthem. Tomorrow afternoon is our conducting evaluation, which is one of only two scored tests for this course. Of course, several things have been changed since they taught this same skill at BNCOC, so there are several things to practice.
Another day down, and 6+ more to go. Almost half way!