Best posts made by barliman2001

Trombones have their uses in pretending you are something you are not...

@ssmith1226 However, by cleverly combining some, you will be able to get astounding results:

1. A piece of toast will always fall onto the buttered side

2. A cat always falls on its feet.

So you take a cat, liberally coat its back with butter and throw it down. It will try to fall on its feet, but then the buttered side would be uppermost, so the resulting reaction will cause the cat to hover a foot or so above ground and rotate faster and faster, until you can connect a crankshaft to the cat and drive a generator.

Just happened upon this Norman Rockwell painting... I am sure someone can identify the trumpet!

Our family teddy bear Wendelin who came into the family in the early 1890s... sitting in the rocking swan my grandfather made for me... I used to sit in there in a suit of plastic armor, listening to Lohengrin...

Just wanted everyone here to know that there is a new, very novel and very versatile flugelhorn out there... the BONONIA by Iliev Brass Music in Bulgaria.

Nikolay Iliev is a well-versed trumpet professional currently doing great work in getting disadvantaged kids off the streets and into his wind band project at the school he is working at as Head of Music... his work in repairing the instruments donated to this school for his kids to continue playing has made him into a respectable instruments craftsman, and combining his life-long experience as a professional with ideas he picked up from all over the place led him to develop a new flugelhorn which is intended to be the answer to a multitude of questions in the flugelhorn world...

The BONONIA flugelhorn is a high-riding, "wrong-way-round" flugelhorn (somewhat like some ideas of Ray Farr) which allows the bell to swing freely except for a couple of stays for stability. The right hand is supported by an extra bit of tubing carrying a pinkie ring that can be swapped for an attached hook, and the distance from valve block to hook/ring can be easily adjusted. The leadpipe can currently take two different mouthpiece receivers - one for a normal small shank flugelhorn mouthpiece, and one that accepts both trumpet and alto horn mouthpieces. There will be additional mouthpiece receivers for French Horn mouthpieces and for small shank trombone mouthpieces.

I have test-driven the prototype, and came to the following conclusion:
The BONONIA flugelhorn is of outstanding consistency. With a flugelhorn mouthpiece, all registers up to double C are within easy reach and really consistent, with slotting being very precise while still allowing for some leeway. It is veerycomfortable to hold as you can easily rest your left elbow on your hip while playing... a very good fixture for those long gigs.
With a flugel mouthpiece, sound is as it should be - warm and cuddly, while always ready to strip paint if required. With a trumpet mouthpiece, the upper register becomes even easier to reach and the sound goes in the direction of a slightly brash rotary flugelhorn. And with an alto horn mouthpiece, you get the feeling of a really plushy comfort blanket or cuddly toy while barely compromising on the high register. A well-balanced sound.

Here is a video of the BONONIA flugelhorn, in all of its currently possible configurations:

Title says everything. Details here. One place already taken - by me.
www.meisterklassen-gutenstein.com/trumpet-2023

And here's another, with a special scene from 4:40...

@bigdub Good on you to give away musical ability that way. A few months back, I donated three instruments and a heap of mouthpieces to a school in Bulgaria in a disadvantaged district... only last week, they sent me pics and videos of their founding a band at the school and their first performance at the End of School Year ceremony... with an official thank you document and an icon blessed by their local Orthodox priest... I can't tell you the joy I had from that. May you be similarly blessed.

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

@Newell-Post I've got his e-mail and will send him a note. Haven't heard from him for some time, though, and he was living in a particularly lively corner of Africa...

This is what happens if a group of superb dancers just have fun with a good band...

@j-jericho Can only concur with your description. Could not have done better myself (probably would have done far worse!).

I'm overjoyed to announce that yesterday, Kinneil Band were crowned First Section Champions in the British Nationals, as the first Scottish band ever to achieve this! That's a blaze of glory for you!

@Dr-GO ...and someone could be a humorous person adept at joining string with two needles - the knit wit...

@georgeb At any rate it is much more relaxing to be invited by the greats to play with them than to be called into action due to emergencies... I once attended a concert by the Dusko Gojkovich Big Band where a friend of mine was regulation 4th trumpet. At the last piece before the interval, he collapsed on stage and had to be brought to hospital by ambulance due to a ruptured gall bladder... when he was carried out, he had me called and told me "my case is in the greenroom - you carry on", and I had the unenviable task of playing on another guy's instruments, in an orchestra I had only heard once before, a repertoire I had never played... without rehearsal... somehow i got through without too many notes left out...

Amati - conglomerate name for a series of small workshops working as a Soviet style company in Socialist Czechoslovakia. Operating under this name from about 1955 onwards, simply continuing to produce whatever instruments the previous companies (like Bohland & Fuchs) had been making since before the War. In the period between the end of WWII and 1955 (or so), some of these small companies simply resumed whatever production they could with the materials and workers available. Usually, these instruments are built like tanks (because you can't produce delicate instruments if your precision tools have been looted by the Red Army - sorry, they called it War Reparations). And development of new things being generally frowned upon in the Eastern Bloc (except arms!), when amalgamated into Amati, they just continued with what they had been doing, without proper quality control or much interest in same, things going from bad to worse. Thus, if you find an instrument that was later marketed as Amati, it is very likely better instrument if it does not bear the Amati brand.

@GeorgeB said in Having to play in too many sharps?:

@Trumpetsplus said in Having to play in too many sharps?:

@GeorgeB QED

Sorry, Ivan, my ignorance is probably going to show here: What Is QED?

Originally, it's Latin and the abbreviation for Quod Erat Demonstrandum, meaning, "what was intended to be demonstrated". The abbreviation was first used in mathematics.

@Dr-Mark Pope John Paul II was notorious for his sudden decisions and irregular outings (at least, at the beginning of his pontificate). So, one day, he decided to swap places with his chauffeur one day and drive through Rome a bit - the pontiff at the wheel, the chauffeur in the screened back. Pope John Paul II had a hankering for speed so, inevitably, he runs into a speed check by Rome City Police. Obediently, he stops and rolls down the window. The policeman sees him and staggers back, at once caling HQ: "HQ, we've caught someone very high up speeding... what shall I do?" - "Arrest and enforce a fine!" - "But he's someone really very high up..." - "What do you mean, very high up. The Mayor?" - "Nnnno, no, much higher..." - "Well, then, the Prime Minister?" - "No, even much higher." - "What in the devi's name do you mean, much higher? Who is he?" - "I don't know exactly, but the Pope is His driver..."

Here's proof that even Eurovision Contest winning songs can sound nice... if you put enough brass in!