Every time I pass a school band outside practicing, it always reminds me of when our son was in band in high school.  He started band in sixth grade and stayed in it every year into his college years.  I remember going to music stores in search of the right drumsticks and percussion mallets.   They also sell these online at sites like  tc helicon at Musician’s Friend.com, but we usually needed them really soon and found this one music store had them in stock all the time.

When it came time for finding a certain piece of sheet music for UIL competition, we would usually have to order online to find the exact piece.  The pieces our son would play for UIL were very challenging, but he worked hard on learning them.  His hard work paid off, though, because he was able to go to state UIL competition a couple of years and play a solo piece from memory.  His senior year, he received a “1” which is the highest score.  (There’s a story about how we were given the wrong information about the location of the competition sight which was in Austin, but that’s a story for another time.)   🙂

We are proud of our son and the accomplishments he made in band, and I thought about this when we were watching the Olympics.  People are talented in different areas, and while we can’t do what these amazing athletes can do in the Olympics, there are talents in the areas of music and art that are amazing as well.