I'm rolling.
I'm hers.
All right, we're all good now.
All right.
One more hand on that part.
Of course.
Corey Montagne, you don't have music.
I said that wrong.
It's not funny, man.
It's just E-T-D-S, we don't have any.
Is it a little flat?
No, no, you don't have that.
Corey Montagne, if you want to make sure you're on the way.
It's not funny, man.
It's just E-T-D-S, we don't have any.
It's a little flat foot.
No, no, no, no.
Oh, it's a little flat foot.
No, no, no, no.
Corey Montagne.
Corey Montagne, if you want to make sure you're on the way.
It's a little flat foot.
No, no, no, no.
Oh, it's a little flat foot.
No, no, no.
Oh, it's a little flat foot.
Corey Montagne, if you want to make sure you're on the way.
You want to make sure you're on the way.
Corey Montagne, if you want to make sure you're on the way.
Corey Montagne, you try to get me into trouble with that.
I want to that question very shortly.
But, just so that people have an idea of how much preparation goes into getting ready.
We rehearse nearly ten hours a week for game days.
And it takes that much time to get ready.
So we've got a one-week preparation.
We've put in nearly 10 hours.
If you've got a two-week preparation meaning,
a one-week preparation would be, you had a game on Saturday,
you come in on Tuesday, and you've got another game on Saturday.
And that's all the time you get.
If you've got a two-week preparation meaning those are
a week in between, that takes about 20 hours.
So when you have two hundred and nine-plus folks playing music like that,
do you hear a wrong note from that one board?
Yes.
Most of the time, and that only confessed that I can hear it all the time.
But often, often, is everything a shit down?
No, it doesn't shut down, you know.
They are hearing, and they can correct it on their own,
that I can hear it too many times at that point, you have to say.
All right, we need to double check this.
Now, you asked a question a few more minutes ago that said,
oh, yes, I don't think we know.
In an ideal world, the marching and the music
will have equal footing, and they will be both drained.
Why do you have that equal footing in your face right now?
You know, I'm also a musician, so you know, if you're asking my personal feeling,
my personal feeling is that the music is the most important thing.
However, not everybody feels that way, not even within our organization.
And so, it's, well, I also read too, that when Dr. Grom was hearing it first took over,
he was known for creating this band.
Yes, it is.
Some of the bands are out there.
Yes.
What's that about?
It involves a lot of practice, and a lot of...
Well, you know, bands were doing the high-step, you know.
Bands were doing the high-step.
His innovation was how we do the high-step.
Because if you look at the HBCUs, they all high-step for my most part.
Yes, yes, I mean.
Yes, the human jukebox.
But they don't high-step in the same way that we do.
And no other big 10 high-steps in the same way that we do.
So that was his innovation in contribution to the band, which is significant.
And we spend an inordinate amount of time perfecting that and making sure that we're able to
play the music and execute the step at the same time.
Is it hard to get on as a band or here?
It's challenging.
It really depends on the section that student wants to be in.
For example, in our band, the trumpets and trombones are the largest section.
By far, there's not even close.
And so, if I'm a trumpet player and I'm interested in getting into UW band, that's not as difficult
as someone that is interested in playing clarinet.
You know, so for example, you've got a knit near the hundred trumpet players.
But clarinet's, they're in the low teens.
So it's much more difficult to get in the band as a clarinet player than it is to get in the
trumpet, as a trumpet player, just because of the sheer numbers.
Having said that, you know, we try to take as many people as we can.
If someone shows musical aptitude and we have space, we'll often train them on another instrument.
That is a dream of mine.
No, they're not a scholarship.
And so the students in the band do it because they love it.
Now we have a handful of awards, so those are scholarships.
Those are just a donor who wants to award someone for meritorious service, but it's only a year.
That's not what I'm talking about.
And I'm talking about where if you make the marching band, we're in a position to say,
you're going to get this much money every year for four years.
We don't have that.
And that is a dream of mine to be able to do something about that.
I wouldn't hear your perspective on what it feels like to be standing in a...
Can you put a ladder in front of me?
All those people, you know, controlling all that music.
What's that feeling like for you?
I hope you couldn't hear that.
That's so much more.
I hope it can be.
It's a pain.
You couldn't hear enough.
It's a pain.
I just hear it.
It's a pain.
I don't think about it.
It's hard to describe.
Because it's what I do.
And I don't think about it.
I enjoy it.
But when we perform for thousands of thousands of people,
it's an enjoyable experience.
And I love it when I feel like the band is kicking on all cylinders.
And so I'm very proud of the students at that point.
But I don't know how I want to describe it.
I mean, the only thing that blocks our sensation is that you always see people talk about,
if you feel like you're drilling, does that get into you?
I try not to let the adrenaline get into you.
I try as best I can to be even killed about what we are getting ready to do.
Now that's not to say, I'm not to say it.
Now, I'm not talking about the act of leading the music and conducting the music.
That's a totally different thing.
I'm just talking about getting ready to go and doing what we do.
And then the bands just perform, we're done, and now we've got to go to the next phase.
That's kind of what I'm talking about.
It's just, you know, what I do.
And it's interesting, too, that I'm having such a difficult time describing that,
because, you know, I step on the football field every week.
And I know that it's a special place.
I know that it's a historic place.
I know these days.
But for me, I'm just stepping on the football field and getting ready to work.
But then you see someone that has the opportunity to step on the football field
that has never been on the football field in that place, in that time.
And it's a totally different experience for them.
And so that's kind of what I'm trying to get at when I say,
it's what I do, and I do it every day, and I don't think about it.
It's probably a much different experience for someone that doesn't do it as regularly
and then has the opportunity to stand in front of those people and leave.
That's not to say I'm ungrateful.
I'm very, very grateful and very fortunate to be in this position.
But it's a way of life more so than anything else.
It's just what we do.
In front of the HBCU's and the band tradition and some of those schools down there
and having gone to one, a lot of times the band is a big deal with football teams
or basketball teams that they play for.
So when I go to your games, my friends really make fun of me.
For example, some of that thing.
And as a sort of vocal tradition that comes with that,
I'm wondering if the UWA is getting that out of the reputation for itself
and I know it hasn't in a certain sense, but is it getting to that balance
where the band is sometimes bigger than the sport?
It's a terrible band.
I'm being very careful.
I don't dare say that the band is bigger than the sport.
However, I talk to a lot of people every week that for them the band is bigger than the sport.
And now I try to decide if I'm going to say what I'm going to say.
So I'm going to say that, you know, when everybody's winning, everybody's happy.
But when the team loses, the band wins and people are very appreciative of that.
I think I don't treat anybody because, you know, we lost a lot of basketball when I was at college.
And we lost a lot of football when I was at college.
Man, in that baby, you know, we've got a lot to do because the music was so good.
You know, so...
Well, you know, we want the band to be a point of pride for everybody in there.
And so we work very hard to be consistent from week to week.
Well, I shouldn't, but that's a lot.
Because we don't want to be consistent from week to week.
We always want to get better as the week progresses.
But the point I'm trying to make is we want to be the best that we can be and we want to put a product that makes people proud.
And sometimes, when things are not going as well, athletically, as we all would like it to be,
we're fortunate that for a lot of people, they can still point to the band and be proud.
Yeah.
And we all know that, you know, the band has arms with a lot of different activities from all basketball and hockey.
Give you a sense of all the different avenues you guys have in terms of high sports or different basketball games.
Yeah, it's quite tough.
We perform for six sports, football being the big one.
Then you've got a man in women's basketball.
You've got women's volleyball.
And then men and women's hockey.
And so, we try to do as much as we can for all of those sports.
Not occasionally, well, not occasionally.
Often, we're not able to do as much as we would like to do, or as much as people would like to see us do.
And that's mainly because, you know, there are students.
There's a finite amount of things that we can do.
And so, we really have to be careful that we're not overextending the students.
How do you balance the playlist for those different sports?
That's a good question.