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What is it with band directors? Are they all the same? Honestly, with the seven or eight years band directors that I’ve had and the numerous amount of teachers that I’ve had, I’ve noticed that they are almost all the same. There are some differences and similarities, but for the most part they are all the same...
Mr. Z did eventually show us his true self. If he didn’t have his way, he would pout about it. Not for one or two minutes, but for like and hour. It was really stupid and coming from a band director too!
I remember this one time when we were doing charts…well, showing the freshmen how to read the charts was more like it. And the drumline already had ours done and we were sitting in the spots where we were supposed to be. Mr. Z got mad because we weren’t doing anything.
The drumline decided to lie down in the grass and try to guess what shapes the clouds were supposed to be. Mr. Z, however, didn’t like that very much. He yelled at us for a good five minutes and basically wasting his time because we weren’t even paying any attention to him.
Poor old Mr. Z got upset and threw his microphone down, that he used to give us instructions with so we could hear him while we were outside, and walked over to his car and folded his arms across his chest. And he began to pout and say that we didn’t respect him. I could have sworn that I saw a tear run down his cheek…and we sure as hell didn’t respect him after that. We just thought that he was a fairy or something…
Mr. Lanning was the one who actually knew what he was doing however. He taught me everything that I know. Mr. Lanning was one of the best band directors around this area and the best one that I ever had. He wasn’t human. He could play about every instrument that you could imagine. Trumpet, trombone, and drums…he could play absolutely everything!
Mr. Lanning did have one thing that I didn’t really like. He had this test that he would give the trumpet players in my sixth grade band class. He would have us hold out a note for as long as we could. Then he would make us do it again and tell us to “keep our tummy muscles tight”, which I didn’t understand at first.
I would be holding this note out (yes, I was a trumpet player), and he would tell me over and over to keep my tummy muscles tight. So I just sat up a little straighter because I had no idea what he was talking about. Then it hit me literally…
The man would form his hand into a fist and then hit us in the stomach. Of course the sound that came out of my trumpet wasn’t what it was supposed to sound like. It sounded like a dying cow more than anything.
“ To show you muscle control.” He would reply simply.
“ By hitting people?” “ Well, yeah. It works if you would understand it.”
Then he would play a note on his trumpet and then hit himself in the stomach as hard as he could. Now that was crazy!
I didn’t like that test at first but then I understood the reason behind it. But I didn’t really care because two months later I switched to drums and didn’t have to worry about muscle control. So it all worked out in the end.
And while I’m still on the Mr. Lanning subject, there is one other thing that was cool but odd at the same time. He was working on the instrument “cubbies” in the middle school band room one summer afternoon. Somehow he managed to fall off the top of these “cubbies” and broke his arm.
After getting the cast off and everything, he also had nerve damage and had this little battery pack that had a little, thin cable hooked onto this white pad that was wrapped around his arm. And he would turn it onto one of the numbers on the battery pack and the cable would give a little shock to his arm to work with the nerves so that he could maybe fix the problem.
He usually had it on two or three; he didn’t really go any higher than that. Unless one of the students asked him then he would turn it onto the highest setting and his arm would freak out and stuff all the time. It would twitch and wouldn’t stop and it would twitch violently too. That was the funniest part.
