And the winner is...

The clarinet section!!

Today during our dress rehearsal (also called a VIP concert because teachers, administration, faculty, etc. are invited to watch and I provide some refreshments for them) the following took place:

One of my clarinet players who is a perfectly normal kid and has never caused me a problem has a tiff with her friend who is also a clarinet player that sits beside her. Because they are in a tiff they each get their own stand. We have exactly enough stands to service our band and there are no extras. Because they each have their own stand, this means that my flute player does not have a stand at all. It's the dress rehearsal and I don't have time to play counselor so I just tell them to suck it up and share a stand. Clarinet player gets huffy, puts her clarinet in the case and just sits there. Even though she is normally a great kid, I don't have time for craziness and send her off stage. Now I'm down a clarinet. Actually two clarinets because one ran away from home Monday night and no one has heard from her. But that's another story.

My first chair clarinet has a solo during one of our pieces. Later in the song my flute player also has a solo. I have music and a mic set up for this. During the dress rehearsal my clarinet soloist completely freaks out. She has never even missed a note before and now she can't even get one note right. It's crazy. She gets lost. She keeps stopping and keeps playing the wrong notes! Later I find out that she walked up to the stand and started reading the flute music instead of the clarinet music.

I hope they got it all out of their systems before tonight. Honestly these two incidents didn't bother me all that much. Frustrating, yes. But I could cope. It was the percussionist sitting in the back of the stage giggling like little girls that make me want to scream. Why is it that the section that is most visible to the audience is also the most immature?

And the good news.................WE HAVE A WORKING SOUND SYSTEM!!!

In case you are wondering - it goes like this:

(you techie folks may want to look away)

Plug the little red and yellow jacks into the far right set of red and yellow jacks on the sound board. Plug that into the little grey adapter thingie that hooks to your computer mic port.

Plug in mics to sound board. Use short stubby mics for the boom stands. Use any other mic for other stand. Turn on the "phantom" something or other button on the board.

Run cord from "main out" port on the board into the sound room off stage. Connect other end of cord into the top black box under the "channel one" port. Make sure black box is turned on.

Turn on power to board.

Make sure main level is up and mic levels are up.

(And here is the part I was missing and couldn't figure out yesterday)

Make sure the Sub L and Sub R levels are up. I don't know what these mean or even if that's the right label but those two things have to be up or no sound will come out of the speakers.

Check and double check recording volumes on the laptop. Our first few test runs were very loud. Those short stubby black mics are extremely sensitive.