No More Flutes? Really????

Greetings from beautiful Winter Park, Colorado! I'm on vacation, but since I have internet access where we are staying - I thought I would add a new post.

Yup - the heading of this post is true. For the 2009 Brigade season there will not be flutes in the horn line. The reason I have decided to do this is not because I hate flutes - but because I love the sound of the flute so much (heck, my wife is a flute player!!). It breaks my heart each season to see our flute players work so hard to learn and memorize their music - and then pretty much not be heard on the field of competition. Yes, you can hear them a few times during the show - but the sound of a flute just CAN'T be heard that well (1) outdoors and (2) in a horn line with much louder instruments.

If you are reading this thinking I only have it out for flutes - please understand that there are many instruments we don't use in our horn line set up. Examples: oboes, alto/bass clarinets, baritone saxophones, french horns and trombones. People may think we are not playing fair when we make trombone players learn baritone - but often Brigade is all about the members learning new instruments to help flesh out our instrumentation. Take the pit, for example. Of the six pit members we had this year, only ONE of them was an actual percussionist! We had woodwind players playing brass instruments, percussion instruments or performing with the guard. We also had actual brass players switch to different brass instruments to help with the balance of our sound.

I can tell you from experience that switching from a woodwind to a brass instrument was a lot of hard work, yes - but it was also a ton of fun and it opened up my eyes to the world of brass warmups and building up my "chops". Flute players will have many opportunities with Brigade in the future. They can switch to louder woodwind instruments such as clarinet or saxophone. They can learn a brass instrument. They can see if the color guard would be something they would want to try. They can join the pit, try out for a battery instrument or even try out for drum major.

In 2006 we won championships with a brass line that was mostly made up of woodwind players who learned a brass instrument that summer. So - here are the "new" opportunities for the Lighthouse Brigade:

Horn Line:

Clarinet
Alto Saxophone
Tenor Saxophone
Trumpet
Mellophone
Baritone
Contra

Percussion:

Snare
Tenor
Bass
Pit

and of course, Color Guard or try out for Drum Major.

- Rex out