Best posts made by Newell Post

@Tobylou8 I missed the chiclets era at TM. I think I was there for a couple of years and had about 600 posts. But I never got banned! Admonished by rowuk a couple of times. But everybody got that once in a while...

@_Mark_ Pressing the third valve (either alone or in combination with other valves) should lower the tone by a minor third, provided you don't change your lips. If the tone is going up, you are changing the embouchure (lips). Try following a systematic method such as the "Mitchell on Trumpet" series of books and get some coaching from a good teacher or experienced player.

Every once in a while, I use a pocket watch. I don't really use it as a watch, but I set it on the podium when making speeches and things of that nature when I don't want to always be looking at my wristwatch. The "railroad style" face and hands are very easy to read. True railroad watches were designed that way so trainmen could read them in all kinds of weather and lighting conditions.

Go to Costco and ask about "office glasses." That's what has worked best for me. They are "blended bifocals" with an enlarged middle-distance region. I can see the conductor OK and also read the sheet music well. I also sometimes use them in the office when working on the computer. And, since it's Costco, they aren't too expensive.

The spam from Spain is plainly just a pain.

There. That's better.

Kanstul 1510

@Shifty Hey, flugelgirl. Welcome aboard.

That has got to be one of the most un-singable military songs of all time....

@trumpetlearner Good observation. You should use as little pressure as possible.

Please note that "Spam" is a trademarked brand name and the fine folks at Hormel have only requested that the internet scourge be denominated as "spam".

The wood rafters obviously burned at Notre-Dame de Paris, but from a purely construction point of view, that would be manageable provided the stone vaults did not collapse. Recent photos look like most portions of the vaults survived, but there was some partial collapse in the vaults. That's a much bigger deal to fix. You don't find vault stone masons on every street corner in the 21st century. Most people don't realize that when you are standing on the floor of a gothic cathedral looking up at the "curved ceiling" (vaults), what you are seeing is actually stone that is 8" to 12" thick. The wood rafters are above that creating a large "attic" space between the vaults and the rafters. The fire just raced through that "attic" area feeding on 800-year-old timber.

I am always reminded of the time Doc Severinsen called the flugelhorn a trumpet with a thyroid condition.

@dr-go I think I'll Taiwan on, instead.

Actually "Alhambra Grotto" is a really fun circus march that you rarely hear. I recognized it from when I lived in St. Louis since Alhambra Grotto was one of the parts of the "Mystic Order of the Veiled Prophet..." This is the St. Louis version of Mardi Gras. The composer (King) was apparently a circus band master, among other things, who wrote it for the Alhambra Grotto organization. Circus marches are very fast and high-energy. You can't really march comfortably to them in the traditional sense. Here's a good recording. (Not by us.)...

@trickg There is an active debate about that right now among the architectural and historic communities. There are three possible strategies:

• Replace everything with historically accurate things, right down to the wood pegs holding the rafters together. This maintains the original configuration, but those wouldn't really be 12th century pegs now, would they?
• Restore the exterior as it was, but use modern structural materials in the "attic" and places where they are not visible. This maintains the original appearance, but clearly says to anyone interested that the structural work is 21st century.
• Fix the stone vaults, but do something completely new with the roof that clearly expresses our own age. That may seem heretical to some, but there are cathedrals that were built over many hundreds of years that changed drastically in style as they expanded. Witnesseth St. Albans, north of London. Salisbury might seem "prettier" to some since it was built in a very short period of time and is therefore very consistent in style throughout. But St. Albans is a great expression of the times in which is was built.

I remember Doc saying in an interview somewhere that he was able to hire all of the top studio musicians for the Tonight Show Band, because it was a great job. It was steady work every weekday with every weekend off, so they could play freelance gigs on the weekend. And there were no exhausting road trips full of one-nighters. That doesn't take away from their terrific musicianship, but it does help explain how he got the top players.

So, Monette got paid $35K for making it, but says they invested "several times" that amount in labor cost, but recommends an insurance value of $300K. Sorry, but it doesn't look like the precious stones are all that precious, and it is basically a re-decorated version of an existing model. OK, it's pretty. But the values seem pretty inflated.

For ever and ever, it was "The King's English." But the old joke during the reign of George VI was that the queen's english was much better than the king's.