It's a real shame when an instrument goes into a storage room because there aren't enough funds to maintain it...
I finally borrowed a tuning kit from my friend a couple days ago. After having browsed through tens of threads about tuning I wasn't sure if should touch anything at all... But eventually I did. I was very careful and it took me a few minutes to get it right, but I managed to tune that "E". A small victory on my part. 87 seven keys to go
With the trip in the Spring, the music dept is a little strapped for cash right now. Pretty much everything is going for the trip, maintaining the department, and paying the band staff (aside from me and my assistant band director) what little commission we can afford to pay them. Luckily though, we have an amazing Band Parents Association who make magic happen and can do so much with so little. Little known secrete: for a successful band program (especially at the high school level) an active and involved BPA is an unmeasurable tool for success. As a band director, it is incredibly hard for the parents to hate you/not be involved. Why? Because that rubs off on the students. Trust me...first hand experience with that. Anyways the point is that
somehow no idea how, but somehow, they've come up with some extra funding presumably from one of our running fundraisers to be used for instrument repairs. Of course I'm going to repair the ones that we use on a regular basis first, but if I have enough left over (and maybe a bit from my own pocket) I can get the grand tuned.
Quick story: when I first got hired here, I had just moved back to the US with my new wife (had just been married almost a year) and had obviously started to look for work. It was two weeks before the 4th of July, and my predecessor had just passed away two weeks before hand. I got a call from the principal because I had just sent them my resume to get my name in their brains. So a week later we officially interviewed, and a few days later I was hired as the band director. He thought it would be a good idea for me to go to the 4th of July parade and meet the band. Well I was meet with stiff resistance at the very least. For that entire first year, the parents all hated me. With a passion. Grown men and women. The *only* two groups that would give me a chance within the band were the freshmen and the seniors at the time. I think it's pretty obvious why the freshman gave me a chance--they were freshmen and new to the band. I was later told by the Senior Drum Majour before she graduated that the Seniors even though it was their program, and they loved my predecessor, but they saw that I cared about them. It was that group of seniors that turned the BPA in my favour. But that was at the end of the year. Before hand...not only did I tune all of the instruments by myself, repaired what needed to be repaired out of my own pocket, but got the percussion new heads and sticks again from my own pocket.