Surprisingly I slept pretty well last night. I still woke up at 0600 (I'm finally used to that time), and my audition piece was going through my head non-stop. Finally I just had to get up and get ready.
First order of business was individual auditions. All ANCOC students were supposed to score a 3.0 during a commander's audition before coming to the school, but we each performed another scored audition again today. This time the raters were the school instructors. While there are some very good players, nobody that admitted their score achieved 3.0 or higher.
In my own audition I had some high-quality vibrato (horn players aren't supposed to use vibrato) but it got mostly under control by the time I finished the first movement. Without direction I had rehearsed all three movements, but the rater had me stop after only the first. Too bad, because the 3rd movement is my best. Next we moved to scales, which I knew coming in would be the worst part for me. Fortunately it's only worth 10%. G-flat major was fine. But then my brain simply would not do the C-sharp harmonic minor. I was trying to play it as D-flat minor and I think that method you end up with a double flat somewhere. Anyway that was a bomb. Next he asked for E melodic minor which fortunately is much easier. I was most confident in my sight reading ability (50% of the total) and that went fine. I even got to sight-read a couple of saxophone parts, which had to be transposed. Most of the comments were about my airy tone (no argument) and how my mouthpiece isn't centered on my chops.
Other horn players had significantly worse experiences. The guy before me came out and said, "That guy has the personality of a rock." (He seemed perfectly fine to me.) The student after me reported that he was told, "Well, you do have ONE good quality ..." There was some general belly-aching about the whole audition process, and how the Active Army bandsmen are paid to practice and play every single day so of course they should be expected to perform better on these auditions. For many of us, the audition today was the first in many years, or perhaps even the first since originally joining the military. I guess people feel better when they have someone else to blame. But overall everyone was happy to have that part over and done with.
My computer forced an "update" yesterday and the result was a series of BSOD (blue screens of death). I can't seem to access the internet, work materials, or do much of anything right now. (That's the reason these blogs will be posted to the family page late.) So I had to finish my final essay from the computer in the classroom. Thanks to those who proofread it for me; I was able to incorporate many of your suggestions. (Kari, I didn't, include all the commas, that you, wanted, me to, use.) :+)
After lunch we had a group discussion about the role of the First Sergeant. Most or all of the students in our class are expecting to fill that role at some point in their future, so it was good to hear everyone's ideas and thoughts. We also were introduced to a new tool that allows leaders to add people to a review pool, and request that they rate you on a large number of things the Army thinks are important to develop. The system will add up those scores and compare them to a self evaluation, to give the leader an idea of how others think they are doing. Sounds useful. Too bad the internet was running slow and the system was apparently being updated while the seventeen of us were trying to access it. Something to try another time.
I'm on my way to dinner tonight with Mr. Alexander - since we're both students at the academy we had to get the proper paperwork filled out. Even though we were basically told on day 1 that nobody would be given permission to interact with any other students, I suppose an officer has more "pull" than most.
Out-processing, end-of-course counseling and graduation rehearsal are all we have on the schedule for tomorrow. Maybe I'll head out to help encourage those retaking the APFT tomorrow morning. Should be a fairly easy day.
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