Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Here goes the first part of the Talent Night saga. We had the first practice for our bamboo percussion number Tuesday afternoon. There were two and a half octaves that had to be manned, and since the line-up wasn’t finalized yet, we dragged whoever entered the Executive Vice President’s office into our performance, not sparing even his secretary. The EVP was, of course, the conductor.

In the end there were six of us, including a P.E. Teacher, a student, the computer-lab-in-charge, and the Registrar. Not bad. We just play snippets of a three song medley: “Can Feel the Love Tonight?” followed by “New York, New York” and “My Way” (after all, we have a limited note range to begin with), which lasts no more than five minutes total. What makes it easy is that through the wonders of technology our short opuses will be projected onto a screen via presentation software, along with karaoke-like cue highlights.

And from what I heard, the EVP will be buying more of those native musical instruments and offering them for use in Music class, and maybe even holding in-school competitions and participating in regional ones.

Wednesday morning I also found out that my cousin (when he passed by the EVP’s office) was also asked to be part of our “band”, but he went home too early last Tuesday (immediately after the orientation on his first meeting of P.E. – Dance) to show up for the practice.

I discouraged him from attending future practices because it’ll just throw off our learned intros.

That night we had a practice near the stage, which is to be the steps of the building, with the audience at the bottom. The four-color switching lights were tried, as well as the acoustics of our instruments.

We weren’t sure yet of our positions if we were going to be in two lines or one straight line on either side of the center railing. We were also still undecided whether to have manila paper with our notes on the stage floor or have them projected onto a screen. By that night I had decided to suggest it should be the latter so the audience could follow what we were playing, even if it meant showing them our profiles (or worse our backs) because otherwise some of them might have no idea.

On Thursday there was no practice. I got suck-up points though going to the EVP’s office asking about it. I also told him about projecting the notes on the backdrop to allow the audience to follow the transitions we make from each song in the medley. It seems he thought about it too.

I just told him I don’t have any more classes Friday afternoon, making me free for practices until the evening.

It looks like the day of the presentation itself will have an entry all it’s own. That’s coming up next.