Tag: writing

The Rise of the Band Geeks, Episode 1: Kendra

Alias Leave a comment

The wind whipped through Kendra’s thin excuse of a raincoat, and harsh droplets stung her cheeks and speckled her glasses.  Her arms were drawn into her sides as she stood, shivering, her feet planted in a 45-degree angle and the tips of her fingers red and numb.  Locked in her left hand was her cell phone with its shattered screen protector and worn case, opened on an intricate display of symbols and letters across a coordinate plane.  She squinted at the screen now, at the highlighted dot at the head of a thin lime line, the opposite end of which marked where she currently stood.

 

The wind picked up, flung a punch directly into her slight form.  Behind her, someone let out a curse he thought nobody else would hear.  He must have nearly shouted, since she could hear him well enough despite the thick foam plugs wedged into her ear canals.  Not that she blamed him.  She was biting back her own gripe, but she was saving her lips and breath for playing, and she did not have much air left.

 

A command made faint by the plugs in her ears prompted her to travel to her next dot.  Another backwards move–seriously?–in sixteen counts, and diagonally to boot.  Still, she scurried to the next spot on the field with haste, if only to warm herself for five seconds.

 

The hand holding her horn was frigid.  Even with the grease-stained, formerly white glove on, the low temperature, drizzle, and gusts brutalized her extremities, and it wasn’t like these gloves were meant for insulation.  They were meant for playing this damn instrument, a rental from the band hall with a sticking valve and perpetually flat tone, that she played outside of practice, oh, maybe once or twice a week if she felt like it.  If she thought she stood a chance, she’d practice harder, almost every day, but things had tapered off once she’d realized she wasn’t as good as the other kids in her section.  She’d tried to get her motivation back several times, but it just wasn’t there anymore, like she’d somehow given up.

 

Another direction issued from the tower compelled her to run back to her previous dot, phone in one hand and rain-slicked brass instrument in another, her ears stinging and the hood of her jacket flopping back, dodge a random cymbal player, and stand at attention, all while shoving her phone back into its pocket on the inside of her jacket.  They’re just marching for now, sixteen steps back with their respective instruments held aloft, yet Kendra found herself doubting her step size, her ability to march in time to the metronome.

 

This was for the homecoming game; everyone was in the show, regardless of how good they were.  Kendra was thrilled to be out on the field marching actual drill and learning music for a show she would perform, yet she could not shake the nagging notion, the mantra that sometimes kept her awake at night:

 

You’ll never be good enough for this.

The Rise of the Band Geeks: Preface: The Unofficial Marching Band Glossary

Alias 2 Comments
An image taken before the start of the Michigan football game against WMU. Photo taken by an MMB alumnus very dear to the author.

Ah, I see you’ve stumbled upon my humble abode.  Welcome to the column of all things marching band, or, should I say, the column of all things marching band according to Alias.  Here, you shall find short fiction and poetry centered around the theme of marching band, though for today I begin by introducing some common band terminology:

 

Band Director (n.) —  The Fearless Leader.

Band Geek (n.) — A member of the marching band; a super cool person who may be sitting next to you in your creative writing class.

Brass (n.) — A category of instruments constituting the alto horns, euphoniums, sousaphones/tubas, trombones, and trumpets.  Trumpets think they’re the heart of the band, but we all know it’s the drumline* (see below).

Drill (n.) — The set of movements constituting the actual marching part of marching band; something you should already have memorized.

Dot (n.) — The specific spot on the field you’re supposed to reach, or “make,” within a set number of counts (ie, 16 counts means you take 16 steps to get from one dot to another ); someone is said to be “on their dot” when they make said spot.  It happens once in a while.

Drumline (n.) — God’s gift to marching band.

Drum Major (n.) — A rad person, usually an upperclassman, who leads and represents the marching band.  Ironically, the DM is almost never a percussionist.

Flags (n.) — The section of people who dance using flags and enhance the visual effects of performances.  They make it look easy, but it’s highly technical and difficult.

Field (n.) — What’s the football team doing on the band field?

Fight Song (n.) — A song, typically a march, played at sporting events to celebrate victories and generate hype.  The Victors (see below) is objectively the best of these.

Marching Band (n.) — A sport that involves playing fully memorized music whilst marching around the field in perfect time while in uniform (see below); definitely not a cult.

Michigan Marching Band (MMB) (n.) — The greatest marching band in all of human history.

Michigan Stadium/The Big House (n.) — The place where over 100,000 fans gather on Saturdays to see the marching band.

Practice (v.) — What you should be doing instead of reading this glossary.

Rank  (n.) — Subdivisions into twelve or so performers, each with its own leader or two; in drumline, each individual instrument is considered a rank.

Reserves (n.) — The people who did not make the performance for this week’s show; in drumline, the people who don’t play in halftime at all for the whole season.

Section (n.) — A group of people who all play the same instrument; the group of people who constitute the holy order known colloquially as the drumline.  Each section has a section leader.

Shako (n.) — The epic hats band kids wear.

Show (n.) — The sweet medley of songs performed at halftime during home games.

Social Life (n.) — Never heard of it.

Temptation & War Chant (T & W) (n.) — Two glorious songs always played consecutively because, as we all know, you can’t have one without the other.

The Victors (n.) — The divinely inspired fight song wrought by Louis Elbel in 1898; the best college fight song ever written; God’s theme song.  Comes in several flavors, including “As Written” and “Parking Lot Victors.”

Twirlers (n.) — A small section of cool people who twirl batons that can be attached to LED lights or even set on fire.

Uniform (n.) — The awesome getup the band wears on game days.

Woodwinds (n.) — The piccolos (pics), clarinets (sticks), and saxophones are all considered woodwinds, and often play the melody or sixteenth notes.  These instruments will be damaged by the evil entity commonly known as rain.

 

*This information was derived from a reliable MMB trumpet alumnus the author holds in high regard.**

**The author respects the trumpet section and loves the trumpet part of “The Victors” (see above).

Looking Forward: Mentality Magazine

Lucy Freeman Leave a comment

Happy Saturday!

We are rapidly approaching the end of the semester which means I only have a couple of posts left. This week I’m posting a day late because my organization, MUSIC Matters, held our biggest event of the year. If you attended SpringFest day festival or the night concert featuring Hippo Campus – I just want to say thank you. We all appreciate it so much and hope that you enjoyed it. 

Moving on, this week we are talking about Mentality Magazine! I had the opportunity to speak to Liz Hoornstra, the current editor-in-chief of the publication. She explained that the magazine aims to do two main things: 1. Create a sense of community for its members and 2. Destigmatize mental health through writing. As someone who has been focusing on taking control of my mental health for the past year, I was really excited to learn more about how the magazine has done this and how others can support their mission!

Mentality Magazine typically publishes digital issues, with a printed copy done once a semester. This semester marks an exciting milestone for the organization: 10 printed publications (and 5 years of being an org on campus!). Some of the topics they’ve been focusing on most recently deals with the impact that the pandemic and racial injustice towards the BIPOC and AAPI communities have had on peoples’ mental health. This follows in their larger commitment to diversifying the magazine’s staff and writing focuses, including highlighting marginalized voices in mental health discussions. I was excited to hear that they’re taking on these topics so directly, as they have affected us all in different ways over the past year and are, in many ways, directly tied to some of the most widespread mental struggles on campus. 

Mentality Magazine has also recently partnered with steps wellness, “the mental wellness platform for college students”. The platform helps connect students to licensed therapists, provides safe, private spaces for them to have therapy sessions in person or through video call, and allows them to share and read about their peers’ experiences with mental health. This is something that I found incredibly important. Especially in college living situations with many roommates and with most therapy sessions being virtual right now, it can be hard to find a space where you can talk about your struggles without worrying if others will overhear or barge in. This partnership shows that Mentality Magazine is really committed to helping students at every level of their mental wellness journey.

Liz also explained to me that COVID has sparked some important conversations regarding mental health equity and accessibility, things that people were sometimes skittish to talk about before.

“We welcome any and all members to Mentality, but we also are very open that mental health is not a topic that you can be apolitical about and we have to recognize that, holding a space in the mental health community here at Michigan means that there are certain times when we cannot stay silent. I hope that going forward, that is something that we are prioritizing.”

If you’re interested in getting involved in Mentality Magazine, you are welcome to join at any point! They look for writers all through the year, so you don’t have to join at the beginning of the year or semester. You can visit mentalitymagazine.org and fill out the contact form and a member of their exec team will get back to you about the next steps. If you don’t have enough time to be a writer, or that’s not your personal skill set, you can still do other things to help support the magazine and its important mission on campus! Reading and sharing articles is so important – de-stigmatization can’t happen without conversation. 

That’s all from me this week! Thank you so much for reading and I will be back next week with my last post of the semester featuring a capella group 58 Greene!

Stay safe & stay well,

Lucy

From Audio File to Spotify

Josie Faith Leave a comment

A question I got a while back was how someone would take a piece they’ve been working on and actually go through the process of putting it up on Spotify/iTunes/etc. I’d like to take this post to share how I’ve personally gone about doing this!

The song I am releasing is not up on streaming platforms yet–it’s currently under review to make sure it abides by all copyright laws, etc.–but the process for getting to this point was actually a lot easier than you might think it would be! So here we go: my step-by-step guide to putting something on Spotify:

  1. The first thing you’re going to need to do is figure out what third-party website you want to use in order to manage your release. There are a lot of good options including songtradr, TuneCore, etc. but these all require you to pay a subscription fee. I personally recommend using a website called Routenote (https://www.routenote.com/) Routenote has the option to use a free version or a paid version of their service. The free version allows you to keep 85% of your royalties, while the paid version allows you to keep 100%. If you don’t really care about the monetization of your work, then the free version of Routenote is a great plan for you.
  2. Creating a Routenote account was the second step for me. It lets you log in through Soundcloud, Twitter, Facebook, Google, or by manually signing up, so there are tons of options! I’ve found for some reason if you use an incognito window there are fewer glitches while signing up/logging in.
  3. Once you’ve created your Routenote account, you’ll be able to create a new release. You’ll give your release a name–this is the name of the album. My song is just a single, so the album was the title of the song, but if you’re releasing a multi-track EP or full-length album, you’ll have to come up with a title!
  4. After you’ve submitted your title, Routenote will send you to a page where you’ll have to edit four different things: Album Details, Add Audio, Add Artwork, and Manage Stores.
    1. In Album Details you’ll provide artist details, titles, any copyright info, etc.
    2. Add Audio is where you submit the actual audio files for your release. These have to be uploaded in a very specific format. The website only accepts MP3 or FLAC files–though this is easy to convert in Apple Music if you’re using a Mac like me!
      1. In Apple Music, go to “Music in the upper lefthand side of your screen.” Click preferences, and then “files.” You should see ‘import settings.
      2. Once you’re in import settings, under the settings menu, click “custom.”
      3. Set your stereo bit rate to 320 kbps and your sample rate to 44.100 kHz.
      4. Click okay.
      5. Now go back to your music library, click on the song you want to convert, go to “File,” “convert,” and “create mp3 version”
      6. Music will create an MP3 version of your song, which you can then drag and drop to your desktop, and upload directly to Routenote.
    3. Add Artwork is where you can upload the artwork you want to show up as your album cover. This must be at least 3,000 by 3,000 pixels, so make sure your image is big enough!
    4. Manage Stores is where you choose what platforms you want your release to be available on. I am personally only releasing to Spotify, iTunes/Apple Music, and TikTok, but there are dozens of other options available!
  5. Once all of this information is filled in and correct, you are able to confirm your release. The website will put it under review, and once this is complete, it will be sent to streaming platforms within 14 days!

 

That’s really it! Not too hard at all. I hope this helped, and if anyone ends up releasing some of your own work, I’d love to give it a listen!

Art Biz with Liz: Shaping Creative Lineage

Elizabeth S Leave a comment

This past Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending an event called “Shaping Creative Lineage: A Poetry Reading + Writing Workshop with Carlina Duan.” The event, presented by Multi Ethnic Student Affairs (MESA), featured Asian-American poet and educator Carlina Duan. While I hadn’t read one of Ms. Duan’s poems until this past year, it was wonderful to hear her read from her collections I Wore My Blackest Hair (Little A, 2017) and Alien Miss (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2021). The event was a great opportunity to learn more about what inspired her poems and have a conversation on writing about our own experiences.

In I Wore My Blackest Hair, Duan’s poems tackle topics related to ancestry, identities, and belonging. They also reflect on themes of racial consciousness and growing up. Duan’s second collection of poems, Alien Miss, reflects on the experience of growing up as a diasporic, bilingual daughter of immigrants, introducing tales of both love and survival. It was exciting to hear from both of these collections, especially since Alien Miss came out just this year.

I promise this blog post isn’t just an advertisement, though my excitement may come off as such. The event made me consider what it means to write about our identities. It also encouraged me to reflect on the power our creative action holds. For artists like Duan, the question of responsibility is raised. What pressures and influences do we have in creating art when existing representation may be limited? For art so language-based, how can we create care and active thinking in the language we use within our communities? These questions raise more questions regarding what we owe to ourselves and our own vulnerability.

While I still enjoy it, early literature of Asian Americans is often wrapped around imagery of chopsticks and white rice. These concepts alone don’t capture the complexity that is the human experience, and people like Duan are disrupting some of these images through their art. I was impressed with how she uses poetry as an expansion of historical archives, infusing her words with other texts and lineages. When it came to “creative lineage,” however, I was a little confused by what she meant. I assumed it must refer to our ancestral line, the history that gave way to who we are today. I learned that creative lineage is not just our ancestors, but the people who inspire you. These individuals could be people who came before you, but it can also be your friends.

To generate discussion on the topic during the event, Duan raised several questions: Who are you accountable to? Who lives in your creative lineage? Who are the thinkers, makers, and people who you carry with you each time you enter a room for solace, support, community? When I sit down to write, I often consider myself alone with my thoughts. But that’s not necessarily true. When I write, there are often a chorus of people in the room with me, hundreds of memories and experiences impacting who I am and what I create. Creative lineage is talking about these people as well as the spaces I live in and am descended from.

I’ve discussed my unfamiliarity with poetry before on Arts, Ink. I generally consider myself a beginner when it comes to interpreting and writing poetry; however, I still hold an appreciation for the medium it provides in exploring the complexities of identity, emotions, and experiences we hold. I also believe the lessons and questions raised in Duan’s workshop—including the concept of creative lineage—can be applied to all kinds of art, not just poetry. Moving forward, I’d like to consider this idea of creative lineage in my own work. Perhaps you will, too.