@ssmith1226
A young electrician dies suddenly and ends up at the Pearly Gates before St. Peter. He is somewhat annoyed and vents his anger: "To die at 35 is no joke, you old Saint!" - "35? By the number of hours you had yourself paid for you're 98!"
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.
The up-to-date muscle car for anti-vaxxers...
Bass player at the psychologist:
"Doc, no one pays any attention to me..."
Doc: "Next, please!"
I did not know James Morrison had so many twin brothers...
https://www.facebook.com/trumpetlovers/videos/1021644968634328
"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..."
I once sat next to Wynton Marsalis.
At breakfast.
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!"
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.
@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.
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...
Checking whether trumpet valves are tight is pure, unbridled pop-ulism.
@georgeb It's one chapter of Ivan's book.
@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!!
@dr-go Whom does a female sheep consult for incontinence?
The Ewerologist.
There is a guy out there who reworks stupid party sounds into music of gone eras... compare the original
with the Bach-like version... ...
@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!