"Band Day"

As mentioned earlier, I'm a member of Purdue's "All-American" Marching Band and spend my time rehearsing two hours per day in order to get the coming halftime show up to snuff. In order to understand what we practice, most people need a little background or refresher on their marching knowledge. Purdue's regiment kicks off rehearsal with sectionals. This means that sections of instruments gather and warm-up by breathing, playing, and stretching. (In the case of the piccolos, this time is also used for much needed music memorization cramming, but more on that later....) Full band convenes after 20 minutes into a music or marching rehearsal. This week, we've cleaned up pregame and spent most of our time learning drill for halftime.

This week's theme is "Band Day," a very self-explainable title really. Twenty-eight surrounding high school bands will join us on the field for this event. Since twenty-eight bands equals an insanely large amount of people, Purdue is only marching drill for the first song, "Get On Your Feet." To get the crowd into a dancing mood, the band will play a selection from Hairspray entitled, "You Can't Stop the Beat." Seeing as it's "Band Day," all of the high schools will then join Purdue in a giant block for the performances of "Aztec Fire," "Greased Lightnin'," and "You're a Grand Old Flag/America the Beautiful." Naturally, the show ends with a march off the field to the ever-popular "Hail Purdue." The band is looking forward to rehearsing and performing with all of the high school students and directors!

Note: There will be no "Purdue Preview" next week (away game at Notre Dame). Click here to view last week's "Americana" halftime show.