Best posts made by barliman2001

The up-to-date muscle car for anti-vaxxers...

Really had to unlock the thread again after yesterday...
Ok, first rehearsal with the ACB picc. Descant part for "Fairytale" (out of Shrek).
Orchestra horribly sharp. No problem with the ACB - you can tune it up to C.
In the part, it really sang. My trumpet partner in crime (trumpet student at Vienna's Music University) was impressed and said so, wanted to try it... did try it, with a few excerpts from Torelli and Michael Haydn... gave it back, cursing all the while.
I asked him why?
Well, turns out he only last week bought a brand spanking new gold-plated Scherzer, for an outrageous $ 5.600,-, and now likes the ACB better!

I did not know James Morrison had so many twin brothers...
https://www.facebook.com/trumpetlovers/videos/1021644968634328

Bass player at the psychologist:
"Doc, no one pays any attention to me..."
Doc: "Next, please!"

I once sat next to Wynton Marsalis.

At breakfast.

"Doctor, my hands are always shaking so badly..." -
"That comes from too much drink!" -
"Can't be that, Doc, I'm spilling most of it..."

Eminent psychiatrist passes away unexpectedly and goes to heaven. He is mildly surprised at the Pearly Gates to be met by a confused St. Peter who rushes him in and exclaims, "Sorry for rushing you up a bit early... but we've got a very bad case of megalomania on our hands... The Good Lord is always waving His arms around and is thinking he is Karajan!"

@tjcombo A blonde clarinet player friend of mine has been badgering me for days to get instructions as to how to properly fold a cardboard box for her imminent relocation... She sent photographs of the unfolded boxes... I sent descriptions, I drew diagrams into her pics, it went back and forth about fifteen times for three days... then, silence. Oh, she's finally grasped it. Yesterday, she sent me a message - "I've now managed to fold and fill the first box. Should I tape it shut?"
When I posted this story on FB, in the "Trumpets, Trumpeters, Trumpeting" group, it was deleted as "not according to the gravity of trumpet playing..."
I left that group because a group that does not understand a joke (especially one that has been happening in the real world) is not for me.

Teeth don't usually matter, unless you have a massive under- or overbite. Tension is all-important, and mouthpiece pressure as well (or rather studied lack of same). The more mouthpiece pressure you put on your lips, the more important teeth become; but at the same time, the more damage you can do to your lips, ranging from occasional tingling to numbness to full-blown, even irreversible, lip paralysis. So your focus at your stage of trumpet playing should not be on high notes (and if your teacher focuses on high notes, you should immediately change to another one!), but on consistency and low pressure within the first octave. And you can achieve that by following Rowuk's Circle of Breath (it's a staple topic here, you should be able to find it easily) and a low-pressure approach by practising long low notes.

Checking whether trumpet valves are tight is pure, unbridled pop-ulism.

Update: Our local hospital released me on 15 March, saying that I would only need to finish the course of antibiotics they would give me - but they only gave me one additional day. Since then, the pneumonia slowly came back, until yesterday, when I had to call the ambulance again and they delivered me not to the same hospital (full of Covid), but another one some 20 miles away. They put me into a single room due to my sleep apnea which means that in between IV antibiotics, I can practice to my heart's content...

@adc Giving away instruments to deserving talents is a good idea. I recently donated a Besson Stratford trumpet, a King Tempo cornet and a Conn Director to a school orchestra in Bulgaria, together with a heap of mouthpieces. Since then, I am swamped with videos of the kids practising enthusiastically; and the orchestra is now much in demand by the civic authorities to give athmosphere to official functions...

Heavens, that's three instruments I forgot to list!!

@georgeb It's one chapter of Ivan's book.

There is a guy out there who reworks stupid party sounds into music of gone eras... compare the original

@dr-go Whom does a female sheep consult for incontinence?

The Ewerologist.

@administrator Hammonds... I once played in a big band whose keyboarder was an instrument collector... for each gig, he brought an electric piano and at least three different Hammonds... and of course every one in the band had to help manhandling them out of the truck and onto the stage. Once, we played the afternoon dance at an Austrian wedding... the usual restaurant function room, as usual a late addition to the building with it's only access being a large double door near the kitchen. Stage nice and roomy, but at the other end of the room which could hold 100 people comfortably but (not uncommon at Austrian weddings) now was crammed with at least 200 packed tightly without proper aisles or anything. And we had to somehow squeeze all our equipment through; electric baby grand, three Hammonds, large drumset, all the amps and monitors and speakers... we ended up carrying the stuff at arm's length above the heads of the audience!

Trumpet player to antiques dealer: "Can you really tell me the value of scales?" - "Of course. They are not rare - though rarer as they should be. They are usually not in perfect condition - and nobody really, really wants them. No value at all."

OK, I get the message... I'll solve.

• Top row, left to right:
  Gene Watts (Trombone, Canadian Brass 1990s)
  David Ohanian (French Horn, CB)
  Ron Romm
  Pour Elmar, Avec toute mon amitié, Guy Touvron

• Second row:
  Amicalement, Maurice André
  Fred Mills
  With best wishes, Sergej Nakariakov (signed his name in Cyrillic)
  Jens Lindemann
  Dusko Gojkovich
  Chuck Daellenbach (Tuba, CB)

Wynton Marsalis signed another case of mine because we happened to meet unplanned (in fact, in a full hotel breakfast room, he had to ask to sit at my table, ending up in a three-hour warm-up session in his room and a free ticket for that evening's concert. I had not even known he would be there (Leipzig) and was there for a historians' conference and getting myself a Friedbert Syhre Corno da Caccia - which was a fun instrument to play, but I never came to use it in a gig, so I sold it).

I always carry two bags - my gig bag, usually filled with my Buescher Aristocrat cornet, the Olds Studio and my Courtois 154R flugel and my "all else" bag with the following emergency kit: valve oil, cleaning rod, cork and slide grease, small can of WD-40, small multitool, sewing kit, spare reading glasses, music pegs, music light, spare batteries; 3-peg Hercules stand; mute holder; music stand (the big gale-safe foldable K&M). And of course the basic mute set:
H&B Symphonic Straight
DW Straight
H&B Cup
Jo-Ral cup with two different felt inlays
H&B rubber plunger
H&B Wah-wah
H&B Bucket
H&B Derby
D&W practice mute