The greatest week ever

It’s hot at the end of summer. The sun is beating down and the humidity is high. Most people can be found taking last-minute vacations before school starts up or staying inside with air conditioning. 

But not the Mountain Brook High School marching band. For them, it’s time for band camp.

“This is the week where we get all of our basic fundamentals for our marching program in,” said band director Jason Smith. Band members come together to relearn how to move with an instrument as well as relearn how to play their instruments in case they’ve forgotten over the summer.

“And, we get to teach the kids about the band family,” Smith said. “Band camp week is one of the greatest weeks ever for those reasons.”

Family is an important aspect to the marching band as Smith said once they’re together, band members will automatically have friends throughout the school and form bonds with each other that will last them until graduation and beyond the confines of MBHS. 

“If you’re a band kid, you never walk into the lunch room without knowing somebody that’s in band with you and having a place to sit,” Smith said. “No matter what, you’ll always have a friend.”

And during camp, the freshmen get to experience what MBHS marching band is all about.

Smith said a lot of the freshmen come in wide-eyed and excited, but they’re mostly nervous. “A lot of kids are still trying to figure out not only if they want to do something like this in the hot sun for eight hours a day, but they’re also nervous because they don’t know what to expect.”

The seniors, however, approach the camp with greater responsibility, such as welcoming new members and helping everyone learn what to do. 

Smith said they start each morning with calisthenics and breathing exercises to warm everyone up and build the endurance needed to march properly with instruments.

“To carry these instruments, you have to have lot of arm strength, you have to have a lot of upper body strength and then you have to learn to control muscles you don’t normally use in marching band,” he said.

Next, they delve into the fundamentals of marching, learning forward and backward marching, transitions and drills sets which are practiced on a repetitive basis. 

“You go back and do it again. ‘One more time — oh no, 10 more times,’” Smith said, until everyone is comfortable with their movements. 

The band does this for a week, operating from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., and continues their camp for a second week with three-hour blocks of training over four days. 

“That essentially makes up our band camp,” Smith said. “And during that time our goal is to not only get the fundamentals [and] music in, it’s to try to get the show on the field so when we come back to school we’re just cleaning and making it sound good.”

This year’s show comes with the title “Fight Night” and miniature boxing rings for their football game half-time performances. Smith said they’re featuring artists such as the Black Eyed Peas and Panic! At the Disco as well as excerpts from “Mulan.”

Anyone is welcome to view the half-time show, and Smith said he expects that everyone who attends will recognize the selection of the music. 

“It’s going to be a neat show featuring some pretty cool music,” he said.