On campus organization: MSU Concert Band

 
Below is a picture of the Sparty statue -- right in back of that is Dem Hall, where theMSU concert band rehearses.

There are various MSU bands that are open to music majors and non-music majors alike. The one I participate in is the MSU concert band.  Rehearsals are for fifty minutes Monday through Thursday of every week. The band is directed by Dr. Cormac Cannon, but usually on a piece or two, one of his conducting students will direct a piece. 

A lot of people have participated in ensembles and bands in high school, but university level ensembles, as well as professional and extracurricular ensembles (such as the spartan youth wind symphony run by MSU), really push rehearsals to a higher, intensely focused level. 
The biggest difference you'll notice in a university ensemble is that rehearsals don't help you to learn your part -- that's what is required of you outside of rehearsal. Instead, rehearsals focus on matters of the ensemble. In other words, rehearsals are not about your ability to play as an individual, but the ability to play together as a group. This includes the ability to blend and balance the sounds of each instrument, to be able to play rhythms in sync, to be able to match style, to work together to create the feel and tone of a piece -- the list is really infinite. Showing up to rehearsal with just your part learned is not enough. Rehearsals are not a test where you exhibit your knowledge, but they are like any other class where you show up to learn. In a rehearsal, you learn how to all become one performer.

Of course, the overarching purpose in an ensemble is to make music. You'll find in the music community "making music" means a lot of things. It can't be defined simplistically, because so many things go into making music. Music is not just simply playing notes on a page. It's not even playing a combination of notes. Music making is everything beyond what is notated on the page -- written out music is simply a mediator between the musician and music making. It is a sort of translation to breifly understand what the music means. But as a soloist, an ensemble member, or any sort of performer, your job is to work to portray all that beyond what's written.