Acoustic Quirks and Focus

At the ASU/UGA football game yesterday I noticed one very odd thing. Let me set up this first. I was in pretty good seats (thanks to a church friend) down near the field near the northwest 20 yard line. The 300 plus member Sun Devil marching band was seated at the southeast corner of the stadium in the end zone and the maybe 25 member UGA pep band was seated in the northeast corner of the stadium. Due to some acoustical quirk of the stadium in my seat when they were playing in the stands the UGA group was louder than the entire ASU band. It was very odd to see that little band put out so much sound!

You will find that certain venues have acoustical quirks. One of the seatings we tried when I was in the Nashville Symphony involved putting the third and fourth horn behind the first and second in the back right corner of the stage (looking at the stage from the audience). The result was that the first two horns hardly projected at all and the third and fourth were over balancing the entire brass section. That seating did not last long.

The other thing I want to mention in relation to the game this weekend and also the D-Backs baseball game I went to last week is the topic of focus. It is pretty impressive how the players can keep focus through tons of distractions around them. You don’t get the full sense of it watching on TV, there is a lot going on in the stadium. This is why materials on sports psychology like for example The Inner Game of Tennis are extremely important materials for horn players to read and digest, as so much of it relates to us in terms of developing a high ability to focus and peak performance.

A final side note would be I find it interesting that some “arts” people would never be caught dead at a baseball or football game. I don’t go often but really it is a good thing to go occasionally. In music our concerts have much in common with sports events in relation to peak performance and entertaining an audience. Get out to a game sometime; you will see what I mean. Even if you claim to hate marching band I think if you were there you would have to admit that the ASU marching band sounded great and put on a show that was a highlight of the night for many there.