My most significant accomplishment was being first chair trumpet. When I first started playing trumpet in fifth grade, I was terrible at it. I started practicing more in middle school, but I still wasn’t progressing much. I then started taking lessons during sixth grade and learned that my mouth position was very wrong. My lesson teacher was able to help me fix that problem but then I got braces. When I got braces, I took a huge step back. I had to relearn how to play the trumpet. I eventually got better with practice and in eighth grade I even made one of the auditioned bands at my future high school.
I was making great progress until my sophomore year. I went in for my orthodontist appointment and that is when he told me that I was going…
I practiced an hour each day by playing ten minutes and then leaving and doing something for twenty-five minutes. I was able to rest my lips in between and still finish my homework. Three days before the audition I was practicing my scales and I reached a C above the staff. That was the highest note I had to play in the audition, and I could actually reach it. My range and endurance had increased immensely over the past two weeks. Then, it was the audition day. I went into teacher’s office thinking I was still going to get a lower chair because other people had more time to practice the actual audition material versus spending more time working up their range and endurance. Strangely though, I wasn’t nervous. Looking back on it, I think I wasn’t nervous because I thought that I was going to get a lower chair and had no reason to be worried about that. My audition was perfect. I played my scales and solo perfectly; I even played my sight reading perfectly. I could not have had a better audition. The results were to be posted the next day. A day came and went and I could finally see the results. I was walking to the band room when my friend came up and asked me if I had seen the list yet. I said no and she very enthusiastically said go see it. I thought that this had meant that I had gotten second or third chair, not possible first because I thought that I just wasn’t that good no matter how much I practiced. I looked at the list; I got first chair.
Getting…