Shinning Like Gold In Concert Band (Part 1 of 8)

I had played the drums in fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Now in junior high I had started out in the brass and percussion band in seventh grade. I was in the class with four other drummers and a teacher's aid who was a ninth grade drummer. Mr. Crawford was our teacher and he quickly let us know that the percussion players were to go to a practice room every day and work on rudiments. What happens when you get six boys into a practice room to work on rudiments? They screw off! We goofed off the whole time. When we were asked to show what we had worked on all those weeks, and then had nothing to show for it, Mr. Crawford was not pleased. We developed some great friendships though. I was involved with every one of the drummers in some capacity or another throughout junior high and high school. While we practiced the drums (such as a set of twenty-four drum rudiments, including rolls and the double paradiddle) the trumpet players, trombone players, and baritone players worked on things that were just as tedious to them. However they had Mr. Crawford to keep them on task. All this boring attention to detail payed off in later years as we went on to some of the finest bands and orchestras in the State of Utah. But in seventh grade I had a hard time to see the need for it.
One thing that we did in that class was to learn the circle of fifths. This was to play all thirteen major key scales. The brass instruments did this as well as we, the percussion players. We used the bells, or as it's called in the marching band, the glockenspiel. I practiced the scales at home on the piano. These took us several weeks to learn. When the day came to pass them off, Mr. Crawford had each of us in turn pass off all thirteen scales one at a time. We all sat there and listened to each other pass them off. And then it was my turn. I took the mallet in my hand and began taping out the C Major Scale, then the G Major and so on around the circle of fifths. In minutes I was done and then I could relax. Everyone in the class passed them off. A tribute to the music teaching of Mr. Ray Crawford.