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. He'll be contributing weekly reports to DCI.org through the summer. Again, I have just returned from Madison, Wis. I am not quite as sunburned as I was last time. My neck and chest were well-covered, as I kept the shirt on this weekend. My face got it pretty good though. I wore sunglasses too, so I have this awful raccoon-eyes thing. I am exhausted. We did a lot this camp. The drill is learned up through the first ten charts of closer, and we have coordinated opener, second tune and the ballad. The battery played through visual rehearsal, coordination, ensemble, and everything else we did this weekend, so my hands are very loose. I feel like I am just tossing my hands at the keyboard. This is a very demeaning feeling, too. It is though I cannot operate this simple piece of machinery. It's taken me 30 minutes to type this. How depressing. We did a parade this morning, which went very well. Felt nice to put on that uniform again, and to see that logo on my chest. This corps has given me an awful lot, and my loyalty seems to grow every year. I bought a new corps jacket, as my jacket from '99 was bought when I was about 5'8", and the sleeves run to about my elbows nowadays. Getting to put that on again was another surge of corps pride. I realized how glad I am that I have spent so much time here. I have nothing to prove to anyone, and right now, there is no place that I can see being better for me. You'd better come see this drum corps, it's going to be an incredible season. End Monday Well, good afternoon! After taking a chance to reevaluate everything that happened this weekend, I can definitely say we are on the right track.

Friday night was just sectionals, as usual. We worked on some stuff as a battery ensemble, and started to get ourselves ready for the performances on Monday, as well as prepping ourselves for a couple of long days. Saturday and Sunday were simply drill learning days, with a little bit of coordination rehearsal. We also managed to take a decent beating in basics. Also, I don't believe we put our drums down very much, they just kept telling us to "pick 'em up." The performances were good. I think that we could have performed better on Sunday afternoon at the concert, as we had some serious tempo issues. I was pretty frustrated after the performance, but it is obvious that we were just a tired drum corps, especially after the parade. From now on, you'll be hearing from me every weekend! I know, we're all thrilled too. Our first show is June 12 in Middleton, Wis. It is called "Music In Motion," Capital Sound's home show. So you should definitely make an appearance, and support your favorite DCI.org columnist, and his new roommate, snare drummer Rob Elston. If you are looking for something to yell towards the field when you see us, you can say "GO SNARES, PLEASE DON'T TICK!" Then, we won't tick. People will like us. Or if you want to yell for the snare line individually, you could say "GO A.J., ROB, DITTRICH, ROPFELD, NEIL AND TODD. WE LOVE YOU SO PLAY A CLEAN ATTACK!" Or, if you want to make an obscure reference to something that only we would know about, which is pretty stock drum corps, you can make a mention of Jalapeno Hot Salsa ... we'll understand it. Once again, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, don't hesitate to e-mail me. I'll be back in a week.