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My Experience In Alan Keown's Poem

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Breathtaking. It was the only word to describe the sights and sounds of the camp. Birds’ songs danced throughout the air, intermingling with the gentle whispers of the summer breeze. This euphony at Camp Serene was to be replaced by the cadence of drums. It was the beginning of Alan Keown’s Marching Percussion Camp, a foray into an unfamiliar facet of a very familiar subject. I had experience in drumming, having been involved in percussion since the fifth grade, but this was marching percussion. I had never marched before, nor had I played using the traditional technique they taught and utilized at the camp. I had no idea just how outclassed I would be. In short, I was terrible. The instructors had no qualms of reminding me of this. When called out, all I could do was weather the embarrassment. In my mind, every wrong move I made cemented me further into my peers’ minds as a horrible drummer. Having the same lessons about my inadequacies being taught every single day brought me past embarrassment, to a place where I realized I couldn’t beat myself up over what others thought. Looking for areas where I was superior to others in would do me no good. In fact, it would discourage me as almost everyone was miles ahead of me in skill. I had no competition; I was too …show more content…

I had no choice but to be humble. Arrogance would have blinded me to the areas that needed work. I would not have thought that any area needed improvement or as much work as they truly did. But now, I was no longer above work on the fundamentals. Music was taken slower and broken down like how a beginner would learn. Time was taken to really go back to the fundamentals and improve what I had previously thought as solid. The question of whether I needed to practice dissolved into a new conundrum: which of my skills should I work on? My newfound humility released me from my self-denigration and gave me a fresh

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