ATC Marimba Band Podcast

The podcast is about the ATC Marimba Band, a close-knit community that the speaker, Evelyn Hernandez, was a part of in middle school and high school. Three guests join Evelyn to discuss their experiences in the band. They talk about the unique aspects of the band, such as its instrumentation and the close bond between members. They also mention the challenges they faced and the strategies they used to overcome disagreements. The guests reflect on how being in the band shaped their high school experience and their lives. They also discuss the various ways they engaged with the broader community through events, performances, and collaborations. The evolution of their repertoire is traced, highlighting the growth and development of the band. Overall, the speakers express their love for the band, their gratitude towards their teacher Mr. Carlton, and the joy and energy that marimba brings. They recommend joining a band as a way to be part of something bigger and make the world a better pla Hello to whoever is listening to this. My name is Evelyn Hernandez and the podcast you're about to listen to is about the ATC Marimba Band, a discourse community I was in during middle school and high school. There were plenty of other communities I could talk about, but ultimately my love for marimba shone through. Today I have three guests with me who will introduce themselves shortly and will be joining me in talking about the ATC band. Without further ado, I hope you enjoy listening to all of us reminisce and reflect. Thank you. I'll go ahead and go first. My name is Luna. I am attending the humble New Mexico State University, double majoring in aerospace and mechanical engineering. I believe I was in marimba for five years, starting in 8th through 12th. I am Adam, also going to New Mexico State. I am studying currently computer science and mathematics, and I went to the same ATC marimba band. I was in it for four years total. From 8th grade to 12th grade, I missed one year. Hi, my name is Keri. I'm going to UNM and I'm studying biology and conservation ecology. And I have been in the marimba program for four years as well. What aspects set our marimba group apart from other musical ensembles in our former high school or like other bands? Well, it's just certainly unique in terms of like our actual instrumentation. It was not common. I think there's only one like the other in the whole district around us. That definitely is one unique aspect. I definitely agree. I think also our band specifically was even different from the other marimba bands at ATC. I think we just had such a close bond with each other and with our teachers that we were able to thrive in that environment and create such amazing music. We were just so enthusiastic about the music, and definitely there's a lot of high school bands that lack that aspect. I think part of it too that allowed us to have that enthusiasm is just the fact that the style of music is orally taught and not necessarily written down like sheet music and whatnot. So we had the teacher would teach one of us and then we'd teach each other and it'd be like more of a communal experience of figuring it out and like bonding as opposed to here's your sheet music, figure it out. You feel me? Were there any terms or phrases you used to work through? Like where did they come from? I was trying to think of some of Mr. Carlton's phrase that he would say to us. He said, whoa! Listen, you've got to suffer for the music. Suffer for the music. I think that one in particular was quite unique to me. All of us would end up having talent checks. Yeah. Suffer for the music. Yeah, that was like a big moment in your life, especially for me, like if you're not suffering for the music. Another one, it was our first human marimba. I believe Siri was the one who really had to learn this, but everybody kind of learned it as well, but it's this big long phrase to learn this polyrhythm. I went to town to eat a big turnip. To town to eat a big turnip I did. I went to town to eat a big turnip. To town to eat a big turnip I did. Yes, I did. I believe he taught me that, again, the very last year that I did marimba. So all the way from the start to the end we used that to learn the rhythm. What ways did the diverse musical backgrounds of our marimba members enhance our overall performance? It's really interesting because especially in 11th and 12th, there was a lot of student-led stuff, and especially with Sam Hagley. He played the piano and he was really into music theory. Every year as a thing we would play one song that had nothing to do with Zimbabwe, nothing to do with marimba. It was just a fun song. And he wrote out an anime song and arranged it all for us. It was a really, really complex arrangement. It was super fun. It was like a whole quarter. It was honestly a blast. That sort of spirit just carried through a bunch of other stuff. Especially in the year after, we scrambled, thanks to myself and then Siri, Adam, and Evelyn as well, to put together Spooky Scary Skeletons. We had three days from, Yo, Carlton, can we play Spooky Scary Skeletons for Halloween? And then Halloween. So I remember just like, crap, right? I've got to go home and do this. So I went home and it was just like a total scramble. We pulled it through and it was really fun. That's part of what made marimba special is we could do that. If you have the skill and the drive, you could totally be like, Yo, Carlton, can we just do this? And he'd be like, yeah. Did you have any challenging moments during your performance? I don't know. You bounce back. You know, you make a mistake and you just keep playing. And that's the attitude we had the entirety of our careers, right? Even though that was probably the worst song we'd ever watched, but we were able to continue and we were able to just pretend like everything was fine. And I think even if you do mess up a little bit, it doesn't discredit the entire rest of the performance. How does we address disagreements and political interpretations? What strategies would we use to rid ourselves of those? I mean, the only thing that I could think of where I don't know if we even have any disagreements. It's just like, we had Carlton as the final stand. And we had Democratic vote for most things as well. That's true. But I mean, like, sometimes if the idea has a good purpose to it, we would have incorporated that too. That's very true. A lot of times the final project was a combination of a lot of different ideas. Yeah. In what ways did being involved with the ACP Burnham event shape your high school experience and the rest of your life? I know, at least for me, it really impacted me, especially the 10th grade year, COVID year, when we did Burnham and it was just me, Siri, Evelyn, Mr. Carlton, and what was that dude's name? Kyle. But it was like all online. And of course, you can't take like a thousand dollar handcrafted piece of equipment home. So it pivoted into music production. And I just like, I loved it. It was the one class I was really able to just sit down and fully pay attention to and enjoy. In what ways did we engage with a broader community in terms of events, performances, and collaboration? It was very fun. I mean, it was more of it, seriously, first of all. Like, we'd be able to have a little drink of coffee at lunch and take a shot and just be able to listen to music. But I think, like, even a broader community, when we did events like Light Up the Night, where we got to invite all the parents over, we were able to show this music to so many other people. And with other performances, I can also recall, we did things like we'd play at these kind of elderly homes. So it was always really fun because we'd get to see all these old guys dancing around. They really enjoyed it. It's always nice to play music, you know, and have people actually enjoy it. That's, like, one of the most rewarding parts. We played at the Children's Museum, which was also really fun. We saw all these little kids dancing to our music as we played it live. Whenever we went out busking, we raised money for, like, a Broadway movie for, like, water homes, I believe. I think that goes beyond kind of my community because we were actually in a health community outside of our own country. So, can you guys trace the evolution of our repertoire and how it reflects the growth and development of our current repertoire? It's really interesting looking back at our repertoire because there was a lot of growth shown in it. Because, I mean, when you look back at some of, like, the current songs we did, like, Don't Be On Me, those really simple songs, at least rhythmically, but it still had some cool interlocking parts. But you take that and look at something later that we did, like, Look Up High Pie or Unravel. We did some stuff that was, like, really interesting with, like, polyrhythms and layered interlocking rhythms where one part is, like, what one person plays isn't the whole part. You have to listen to the whole ensemble together to really understand and hear it. There's such a clear line of development from us being barely able to hold a mallet properly to being able to, like, play tight through Look Up High Pie. Another really nice thing that we did that showed our growth and development was making our own songs, like, Red Sky and then Fish. It really showed how much we learned. We were an awesome band. Any final comments? The music, love, love Mr. Krause. He's a love, he's a love band. I love their band. We grew so much together, you know. Marimba itself, the instrument, is fantastic and just brings so much joy and energy. Our teacher, Mr. Carlson, best teacher ever. Can't even compare. And I think I'm so proud of us and happy that we were able to get to experience that in high school. Carlson was awesome. He gave us, like, creative freedom and we just had fun. With all that said, my overall experience with the ATC Marimba Band was fantastic, and I definitely recommend to any middle schoolers or high schoolers out there who have no extracurricular activities to join a band of some sorts because it really just fills that need to be a part of something bigger than yourself. A community in which everyone is just helping each other out and wanting to make the world a better place even through music. Originally, this podcast was going to be 33 minutes long and I wish I could have kept all 33 minutes because there was so much that we talked about that is minor but still very important to the community. But anyways, I hope you enjoyed and thank you for listening. Peace out.