Playing in a College Band

Playing+in+a+College+Band

By Ethan Slaughter, Staffer

Since October, sophomore Ashley Raster has been playing her clarinet in St. Charles Community College’s community band. Raster practices with the band every Monday night in order to get ready for the concert. Raster joined because they needed more clarinets and she wanted to help them out.

“My sister plays flute and I looked up to her and I wanted to play something like the flute,” Raster said. “So I decided to play the clarinet because I thought it was kinda close to the flute. Even though it’s really not that close.”

Raster has been playing the clarinet since sixth grade, but she first found out about the band towards the end of the marching band season in late September from woodwind tech David Aubuchon, who asked her if she wanted to join. Her last concert was May 2 and they played 10 different pieces. The band played movie hits such as “Over the Rainbow,” “Star Trek,” “Star Wars” and “The Matrix.” The band also played some classical pieces. According to Raster, the hardest part about being in the band is trying to get everyone to match sounds and tuning since there are a lot of people taught a variety of different ways and everyone is at different skill levels.

“I think it’s good experience for her and it’s no wonder that she’s so much better than us because she gets to play with better and more advanced people,” sophomore Theresa Winkle said. “She also gets to meet people who play different styles of music and [have] been playing longer and can really help her with becoming better.”

She also joined because she liked the band and it gave her the opportunity to play more and be exposed to different pieces.

“My favorite part is that I can talk to my friends and we get to play harder music and being exposed to new music,” Raster said. “At first I was overwhelmed because the parts are a lot harder but now I’m kinda like ‘this is easy.’”