Music (Amanda Capper)

 Something that Dr. Redick brought up after the presentation on chapter 13 of Ecology of Eden was the dialogue musicians have with one another. As a kinda-sorta-musician myself (I play the cymbals with the marching captains), I have seen this dialogue before. Musically speaking, instruments can "speak" to one another in a piece through a "call-and-response." For example, in one of our pep band tunes called Frankenstein, the cymbals who are labeled "A's" play on counts 1 and 2, while the "B's" play on counts 3 and 4. By the end of the phrase, however, we all come back in to play a unison crash in the next measure. 

A quote that I wrote down in my notes from Redick was, "We become the music when we are in dialogue with one another musically." As someone who did band in high school, specifically in the percussion section, I have A LOT of examples of this, lol. If you know anything about percussionists, its that we are WILD. I remember one instance where one percussionist my junior year of high school made what he called, the "Jingle Jonny." What was this mysterious and elusive "Jingle Jonny" you ask? A ~6 foot metal bar with a bunch of jingle bells zip tied around it. And you can bet that he used that thing in our Christmas concert, too. As the winds and brass were busy playing the gazillion notes making up the chorus, us percussionists were jamming in the very back of the stage to the thumping and jingling of the mighty Jingle Jonny. In that moment, a sense of Christmas cheer grew in all of us collectively. 

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