On September 20th I performed the Sri Lanka National Anthem for the Founder’s Day Assembly with the band. We rehearsed the song on several of the previous band sessions, but since many of us, including me, had played the anthem previously, not much practice was required. The band members arrived at 7:15 in the morning to warm up and play through the piece once.

Playing during the Founder’s Day Assembly. Photo credits: GeckoNet.

The piece itself went very well in my opinion, which was especially relieving as the first run-through during warm up was very bad. As I play the first trumpet part, I have some very high notes, which are difficult to play, especially in the morning. Fortunately, I managed to play all the high notes, which was relieving as I remembered that I wasn’t able to play all high notes last year for the Founder’s Day Assembly.

Practicing the Sri Lanka national anthem. Photo credits: Joshua Wright

A difficulty was that the acoustics of the gym, where the assembly was held, are very bad, due to all the hard surfaces from where the sound bounces off. This makes it difficult to to play well together with the other instruments. Another challenge was that early in the morning, my lips are not properly warmed up, regardless of whether or not I do warm up exercises before playing. This means I have to exert a lot more pressure onto the mouthpiece with my lips in order to get high notes. This is a bad technique to get used to (and when playing like this for a long time, I have experienced that my gum and teeth start hurting), but is sometimes the only option.

Despite these challenges we were able to play well as a group and together with the choir, which resulted in a nice musical interlude in the celebration. Playing in a band is quite satisfying in my opinion, as interacting with like-minded people in an atmosphere that’s all about making music is a really enjoyable and enriching experience. Music in general is a lot of fun to me as it makes me happy after a tiring day and cheers me up unlike most other things.