By Andy Dittrich
Capital Sound
romeoprovipimpcs@yahoo.com

Andy Dittrich
Andy Dittrich is the center snare drummer for Capital Sound, and is a fifth-year member of the corps. He is a 17-year-old senior at Romeoville High School in Romeoville, Ill., and he will be attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Fall, studying English. Starting this week, he'll be contributing frequent reports to DCI.org, and he will continue contributing reports through the summer. Waunakee: A camp report in two movements I've decided to type this first part of my new column immediately after returning from rehearsal, as it seems I might be able to better present the full drum corps camp experience. It hurts to type. It really hurts to type. After putting in the 14 hours on Saturday, I told a friend that there was no position that did not hurt. It hurt to stand, it hurt to sit, it hurt to lie down. We finished the opener drill. That was nice, and we even were able to coordinate it with horns and drums playing, and the guard doing their work. Then we put together about ten charts of the second piece. We finished the closer musically, and did a couple laps of the parade sequence, to sure it up for the parade we have over Memorial Day weekend. Drum line sounded fantastic once everyone got there. I showed up on Friday night to two snares, two tenors, three basses, and a full cymbal line. Awesome. But everyone trickled in that evening, and Pat, who stands on my right, showed up Saturday evening after taking his MCATs. So we finished up only missing the fifth bass drummer, who was out of town all weekend. Sleep ... END SUNDAY After a decent night's sleep, a day of school, and some hard work on stage crew, I feel that I can now report with better accuracy on Capital Sound's second April rehearsal. First, a note of warning: please be careful when you are in the sun. I was pretty irresponsible in getting as terribly burned as I did. One of the pitfalls of drum corps is the danger of the sun, and I have known people who have ended up with skin cancer or skin diseases as a result of their lackluster attitude towards proper sun protection. If you do get burned, drink lots of water. Actually, you should probably drink lots of water anyway ... yeah. Overall, it was a pretty great camp for us. Getting to put all of that stuff together allowed us to catch up after the snowstorm that wiped out our drill learning capabilities last camp. We were even able to get some outdoor basics done. Brandon, the drum line visual tech/all-around guy, managed to find us a baseball field. Enough said. Fortunately, I think he kind of took it easy on us. A pretty "stock" camp logistically as well. Waunakee, Wisconsin, was the site, and it came with all the amenities, including ice cold showers that for some reason have a temperature control lever, as if you actually had control over the temperature. Sunburns, hard gym floors, and half-naked young adults running around a crudely painted football field. Just about the most typical and commonly stereotyped kind of drum corps camp there is. Come to the Open House Concert, May 26 at 3 p.m. at Warner Park in Madison, Wis., and if you are there, make sure you cheer loud for the stud center snare drummer in Capital Sound. If you have any questions, or comments, you can email me at romeoprovipimpcs@yahoo.com . If not, then I will be reporting back to you all in a few weeks.