On BBQ and Tomatoes (sort of)

So today I had the pleasure of listening to 26 high school trombonists from around Texas audition for their region band! Before I tell you about the experience, though, I should provide a disclaimer that should explain why I would never wish this fate upon anyone, no matter how much I disliked them for other reasons, who was not deeply invested in the trombone and the teaching thereof. In Texas, if you are part of your high school's band, you must take private lessons (which are not paid for by the school; how does that work? It's still unclear to me), and you must audition for region band. So I was expecting a huge audition, with lots of students, and therefore lots of judges.

But nothing could quite prepare me for what a fiasco it really was. There were five judges in each room, and a total of 38 rooms, 3 for tenor trombone alone, which means a total of (carry the 1) 190 judges. Assuming there were approximately 25 kids in each room, you would get close to 1,000 kids running around. I don't know how many buses that would be. The guy in charge (wait, no, I mean "in charge") said that other regions had changed the way they did these auditions, having a first audition at each school before the kids got this far, which sounded like a great idea to me. But he then went on to say, with some pride, I might add, that they had stuck to their system, which was working just fine for them, thank you very much. I really wanted to raise my hand at this point and move that this guy, whoever he was, be sacked and replaced by someone with some god damn sense, because This. Could. All. Be. So. Much. Easier.

And why, while we're on the subject, did each room need five judges? When I auditioned for the similar bands in Massachusetts, there was one judge. There was no screen. You walked in and looked your future in the eye. That judge then gave you a series of scores, usually from 1 to 8 or 1 to 10, depending on the level, each one for a certain aspect of your playing, such as tone quality, articulation, intonation, or rhythm. This system worked fairly well. But no, the Texas system is quite different. More on that later.

Here are some highlights, good and bad, from the experience:

-They fed us barbecue! When we got into the room where we were supposed to meet and nobody seemed to have any idea what was going on because not everyone was there yet, soon we began to see people coming into the room with food. So we went and stood on line for food, which was delicious home cooked barbecue. Usually in these situations I am more grateful for the food than for the payment I receive, and this was no exception.

-When we got into our room, the head judge read out the rules, then called the first few kids up to the "ready" chairs, I guess so that they could get ready to play. In a different chair, I, I guess. Then he said "you have one minute to warm up," after which followed the unmistakeable sound of 26 high school trombonists warming up simultaneously.

If hell only had a soundtrack.

-The sheet which told us how to keep score was completely indecipherable and infuriating, which are not good qualities for something that is passing itself off as "instructions." On it, I was told many things, most of which I did not understand and therefore ignored. I managed to figure out that I was supposed to listen to a major scale, then give it a score. Okay, I can do that. Wait. A score...from 0 to 25? Why such a large range? It's one major scale. Okay, well I guess I'll just go in multiples of five, can't be too hard. Then, next, I listen an excerpt from the first etude, and give that a score as well. A score from 0 to...75? No, that can't be right. "Your combined score will then be out of 100." Fuck, they really do mean 75. So I'm supposed to hear 30 seconds of trombone playing, and then pick a number, any number, between 0 and 75? Wait, it gets better. This pattern repeats three times: scale, etude, scale, etude, scale, etude, and the total score is out of 300. 300! No wonder they told us to bring a calculator, which I of course did not, confident in my ability to add numbers from 0 to 10 in my head.

Anyway, this complete pigfuck of a system had the following result in my scores: The student who very obviously (to me) should have placed first did place first (on my sheet). The students who placed second and third also played quite well and got the placement they should have (again, on my sheet). After that, the placements that I had in the end seemed even to me to be a little bit random. I couldn't really remember after the first three who had played better than whom, so the rest of them could have come in any order whatsoever. This wouldn't bother me so much, but, get this, 8 (eight) (eight!!!) students from our room alone advance to the region bands. So my top three deserved to advance, but what about the other five? Couldn't they have been just about any of maybe 10 of the others? Granted, combining the scores of the five judges probably evens things out a bit, but couldn't I possibly have sent some deserving and hard working kid home in tears from not making the band because I picked the wrong number from 0 to 75?

Imagine, just for joke, that you are a farmer. Your specialty is growing tomatoes. Your tomatoes sell well, for the most part, and you enjoy growing them, though you don't feel as if you have been doing it for long enough to be called an expert. Somehow, you are volunteered to be a judge at a county fair, where you will be judging tomatoes. You are presented with three tomatoes each from 26 young growers, who have just started growing tomatoes recently. Also, most of these tomatoes were grown hurriedly and in bad conditions. Your task is to give each tomato a score from 0 to 75. Oh, yeah, and your total scores will most likely affect whether these young people eventually spend the rest of their lives growing tomatoes or find something better to do (usually law or investment banking, it seems). You get the idea.

But they did feed us good food, I did get paid, and afterwards I got to relax for a while in Craig's hot tub, so now all is right again in the world of Chris.