Dictionary

• Accidentals - Wrong notes.
• Air - Driving force behind brass players; lack of causes clarinets to squeak.
• Alto Saxophones - Instrument for people who, like trumpet players, think they are God.
• Arc - A shape with three corners and a huge whole
• Attention - Another word for standing absolutely still while sticking out your butt and chest like a bird; what drum majors, directors, and section leaders never get.
• Band Freak - A member of band that is mentally insane.
• Band Girl - A female person that is a member of the band
• Band Guy - A male person that is a member of the band, not a band girl
• Bandie - Band member; a want to be band member; see definition of
• Band Jacket - Status symbol; official dress for band nerds
• Band Mating Season - Between the months of October and December when unusual behavior occurs between band members.
• Band Nerd - Someone of the band who spends way too much of his or her free time in the band room doing band things; someone that thinks and/or talks about band stuff almost all the time; a band member without a social life.
• Band Orgy - When a group of band members huddle together for
• Band Room - Base camp of all operations; where band members spend most of their time; a very cold place.
• Baritone Saxophone aka Bari Sax - Instrument for woodwind players that couldn't play tubas.
• Be quiet - You can talk if nobody catches you.
• Bell - A percussion instrument; a part of an instrument. This part, which occurs on all wind instruments except those in the flute and piccolo family, is the point where sound resonates from and is applified.
• Bell-front Instrument - A directional brass instrument made for blasting and overblowing.
• Booster - A member's parent and/or guardian who 1. is trying to relive their childhood through their childeren, 2. has nothing better to do than torture their child, or 3. thinks they are being helpful, a group of bored parents who raise money to send the band far away.
• Brass - All instruments that are played by buzzing into a metal mouth piece and overblowing. ex. trumpets, French horns, baritones, trombones and tubas
• Bus - A home on wheels, made for three year olds, in which the band dwells during marching season; a portable changing room.
• Cadence - Quick way to make people forget about the messy half time show; a chance to do the

• Chearleaders - Way too peppy people that dance and cheer and smile and jump and scream and...
• Circle - A closed shape with definite corners and sides.
• Clarinet - Licorice stick that squeaks.
• Classes - Waste of non-band time
• Collar - What hair isn't supposed to touch while in uniform; what drummers are used to wearing.
• Color Guard - People who try to distract the audiences attention from the band with flags, sabers and rifles; people who distract the band; the evil ones that continually hit band people with flags and other objects as they jazz run across the field.
• Competition - A gathering of bands for the sole purpose to show how much better the are; a place where PDA is acceptible and appropriate.
• Concert - Torture for band members and audience, esp. when exceeding an hour.
• Concert Season - This is during the months of December, January, Febuary, March, April, and May. During this time the band focuses on playing music indoors and does little to no marching
• Conducting - A drum major (or director's) way of amusing a band to the point of uncontrollable laughter
• Crack - A substance that too many people are smoking; someone behaving in an odd way.
• Director - Someone who thinks they're in charge; someone who claims to be in charge when everything is going great; someone who denies responsibility when everything is going wrong.
• Dollar Bill - Used to clean sax pads; what it takes to buy a tiny can of soda from the band boosters at a football game
• Drill - Marching manuevers; marching test; pages that show what the form should look like. They are usually discarded after the first week of marching band camp and can be later found in some very unusual places.
• Drum - Hollow devices used to keep the beat by unceasingly pounding on them with sticks or mallets; those annoying loud things that go bang bang and make the band deaf after a week so that we can not hear when we are making mistakes.
• Drum Major - See definition of
• Eighth Grader: Fresh meat
• Exponential Growth - When you lose one senior flute player and gain three freshman flute players.
• Facing - The process of turning a singular body while standing still.
• F.C.P.L. - An abbreviation for the brass dynamic
• Festival Tunes - Songs worked up to be played at a music festival.
• Field - Strip of mud, rocks, and sand stretching 100 yards that is covered in ant hills and water sprinkler heads; the place where the band practices and performs.
• Field Show - This is also sometimes called a halftime show. This is when the band plays music and marches on the field. The show is usually 10 - 12 min. in length.

• Fight Song - Peppy/corny song that is played at the begining of each quarter or whenever the team scores a point. Played most often at the quarter.
• Flag - Weapon used by the guard.
• Flat - How instruments sound on a cold night.
• Flute - An untunable device for weak armed people that don't want to be heard.
• Football Players - The missing link
• Football Team - The main reason the band can't always use the marching field; the big guys with big egos that think we are here for them.
• Forte - Lowest dynamic possible on a brass instrument.
• Forte-Piano Crescendo - The act of blatting, stopping, then blasting. Freeform - The shapes and formations that are executed during a field show.
• French Horn - Weird instrument played with the left hand that uses strings and valves. It can be played neither loud or fast - or in tune, for that matter.
• Freshmen - Designed to make up at least half the band
• . Fund Raiser - Excuse to sell/buy candy at twice the regular price.
• Halt - A time when everyone is theoretically (I repeat, theoretically) stopped.
• Happy - An expression used to express a particularly good looking person; cheerful.
• Home - The place you sleep, sometimes.
• Homework - Something teachers give to amuse band members on the bus or in the stands; something we like to think that we do; something we don't do.
• Hours of fun - A fuzzy ball attached to an elastic string that is used for pure amusment; a sacastic expression to express displeasure.
• Instrument - Something that makes noise and costs a lot of $.
• Instructor - Someone payed to tell you when you screw up.
• Interval - The distance between notes; the distance between people which decreases and increases as you go down a line
• Juniors - Wanna be seniors who think they can boss people around.
• Lost - Uh....Where am I? Where flute players are half of the time; where that clarinetists' mouthpieces are (this usually happens when they mysteriously float into the drum cabinet).