Best posts made by barliman2001

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

@IrishTrumpeter You might invite Rowuk for a holiday stay in Ireland later in the year - he's a very friendly guy and possibly the most knowledgeable trumpet guy on TB ever, the God of the Circle of Breath.

@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!

I've had my fill of Cs... I started off with a Bach C/Bb combo which was out of tune as a Bb and even more out of tune as a C. It only started working when I added an A and even an Ab slide... Fortunately, a friend of mine borrowed it for a theatre job and managed to get it stolen. The insurance paid up ande that pqaid for a Bach rotary C. Nice horn, but not universally useable and rather a hard blow. I had a couple of Besson Mehas afterwards - the Bbs are good, on the verge of fantastic, but the Cs are quirky and extremely mouthpiece sensitive. I then went for a Couesnon C/Bb combo: Easy for the C, with a nice sound, but almost a peashooter on Bb. Anything below the stave is sharp. Another C rotary crossed my path when a friend asked me to advise him as to a rotary C with all the trimmings, NOT a Lechner (he had a colleague who always flaunted his gold-plated Lechner), with a budget of $ 6,000. I had Votruba of Vienna build him a gold-plated, three Vienna keys rotary C, with four different leadpipes - the works - and supervised the build for him. It turned out "the best C I ever played, and it easily outplays the Lechner", at a final price tag of $ 5,400 including shipping. resulting in the other guy selling his Lechner and ordering another Votruba... Another friend of mine has an Inderbinen Alpha C - costly, but not for me. and recently I came upon a Gaudet C. Thiw was the "second choice" brand of Antoine Courtois, horns that had some kind of optical glitch like missed bits of lacquering or an unaligned water key - things like that. The valve block is correctly stamped "Courtois". And that has been m go-to C for the last five years. Nice, mellow tone, yet caqn strip paint if you want to do so; perfectly in tune; and an easy, precise blow. One of the few horns that will only come on the market if you shoot me first - But I've always been a fast draw...

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).

Ok, had a longish - four and a half hours - Big Band rehearsal (www.bbmf.de) yesterday evening. Had the Recording with me for the first time.
What an experience! A horn that can sing almost like a flugel, whisper, and strip paint at the slightest provocation in that direction. Just what I wanted... only one horn has ever done that to me, and that was another Balanced model - a 1950s Courtois. But that one is in such bad shape, with silver plating almost completely gone, huge areas of red rot and the brass worn paper-thin in patches that Votruba did not want to try a restoration for fear of the horn crumbling in their hands... the Recording, being almost 70 years old now, is good for another 70.

Morbus N+1... (N being the number of trumpets you already have). There is one sure sign of having contracted this disease and being in the incurable stage: When you consider skipping meals to finance another trumpet, that is certainly one too many.

@newell-post said in Which trumpet to buy?:

Many years ago, I got to meet Bill Chase before one of their concerts, along with a group of other people. As part of the Q&A somebody asked him what horns they used. As I recall, the answer was: 1 Schilke (for Bill), 1 Connstellation, 1 Benge, and one I don't remember. Maybe a Committee or a Selmer something or other. In any event, that trumpet-centric group had 4 top-notch players that all used different horns. There isn't one right answer.

There is only the right answer for the right player.

@administrator You forgot one straight cornet for jazz and big band work, one pocket trumpet for travelling, one multi-pitch trumpet by Jaeger trumpets, one old banger for the football pitch, one to scare the wife with...

@fels said in Which trumpet to buy?:

@flugelgirl

I have opined before that you may or may not find your idea of the best horn -- you have to be patient and it will find you

Thirty or forty years ago I was playing a Selmer Paris and wanted something better....I went to our local music store and played several "pro' horns. I selected a Bach 37. Payed it for the next 20 to 25 years. A Schilke X3 was available at the store and that has been why horn since. I still play the Bach, but do not like its weight. I bought my Courois Flugelhorn unseen on Craigs List. There are better (cosmetically) flugels out there, but I can make the Courtois sound the way I like -- it found me.

Courtois instruments seem to have a way of finding one... my 154R flugel came my way after a trade fair in Munich, when the Courtois people had a few more cases left over than they could possibly fit in their truck. I was hanging about there and admiring the way they tried to solve the problem, and when I asked whether I could help them in any way, they just told me to "take my pick". And so I walked away with a brand-new case with - as I found out later - a brand spanking new Courtois 154R flugel in it - for free. Haven't looked at another flugel since then - it's that good. Few years later, Votruba's in Vienna told me they had taken in a Courtois Balanced in part-exchange for a new instrument. Would not sell as it was cosmetically bad, so they let me have it for € 150... it's my main big band axe now. And only recently an old friend told me he's thinning his herd and letting go another almost unplayed Courtois Balanced - he likes "heavy" horns, the harder the better - and that will be mine as soon as I pay the postage...

I once met HM, many, many years ago (around 1990), at the official opening of an exhibition about the Domesday Book in the Public Record Office (now National Archives) in London... I was there for the exhibition which enabled me to view many documents that I needed for my PhD thesis in one place instead of spread out all over the country... so I had planned to be there on Day One and stay as long as needed. I was in the exhibition hall when suddenly a group of obvious security officials appeared, a red carpet was unrolled and a tape was slung across the entrance - mind you, there were about fifteen visitors already inside because the exhibition had opened at 9 am and by this time, it was 11 - then the Keeper of the Records arrived, in full robes and panoply, a couple of other officials lined up, and then HM arrived, in a pigeon-blue costume with matching hat. Someone dropped on one knee to present HM with a cushion with the scissors on it, and she cut the tape and declared the exhibition opened, and proceeded down the hall to see the exhibits, most importantly the first volume of the Domesday Book dating back to 1068... and had to pass me. She addressed me with " So why are you so keen on the exhibition that he could not wait for me to open it?" and I stammered something about not knowing that there would be an official opening. "Why shouldn't there be?" was her reply, " Anyway, success to your research." and was gone.

Seems not to have reached the intended target audience. Locked.

Just found this on the "Bored Bandsmen" FB page...

The orchestra was having a great rehearsal. The oboe player was keeping the double reed nice and moist between the lips when possible, but all of a sudden sucked a bit too hard and swallowed the reed which became stuck in the windpipe. The conductor spotted this straight away and dialled 999. Explaining that the oboe player had a double reed stuck in the windpipe the conductor asked what could be the best thing to do. The call handler without delay said "try a muted trumpet"....

@barliman2001
Pistoia, 2022

With the Vienna Klezmer Orchestra in Lviv/Ukraine

Playing Repiano Cornet with the Vienna Boy Scouts' Band

Playing a large-scale ball in Munich, with my main big band (www.bbmf.de)

This:

Apart from regular products, it might be interesting to research into what people use in emergencies if they don't have the right product available... I once saw an oompah band player whose valves began sticking unscrew all the valves, pour about half a pint of beer into the valve casings, reassemble and continue...

@bobmiller1969 As to viola... how do you prevent a valuable violin from being stolen? -
Put it in a viola case.

What did the penniless viola player do at the end of the month? -
Went into a bank, took the viola out and said, "All the money, or I'll play!"

... and many, many returns...

@Kehaulani Good for you. But now keep up the good work, or she'll fall back into it worse than before.

@dale-proctor My gig bag would not even fit... and I always travel with gig bag, mute bag, music stand and "divers gear" bag...
but then, I would not fit in a Miata, either...

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."