Posts made by Newell Post

@barliman2001 Thanks, Barliman. It was that "lively corner of Africa" perspective I particularly enjoyed.

The stone vaults have collapsed at the crossing and at various places in the nave and transept. Re-building that is a completely different level of effort than replacing the wood rafters and lead roofing.

Very old buildings have been damaged, repaired, modified, and re-built many times in most cases. Some of the windows and the spire were replaced by Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century based on conjectures about the design of an earlier spire, but le-Duc's spire was probably much taller than the original. Disasters like this are certainly traumatic events for many, but they also present opportunities to preserve original structures, eliminate badly-done modifications that have crept in over time, and add new statements about our own age. Buildings like this are not static. They evolve over time. The challenge is not to stop the evolution, but to guide it intelligently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugène_Viollet-le-Duc

@Dr-GO Too soon to tell. They are assuming the source was some kind of construction accident, but that is not yet proven.

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.

@moshe OK, then let's try this musical simile..... It's not completely unlike "Don Giovanni" meets "The Ring of the Nibelung."

@Kehaulani Did you require more than one throne?

@moshe I'm an old fart of 64, but I have learned to love GOT, although it has a certain "learning curve." It's more "Dungeons and Dragons" meets "The Lord of the Rings" than Star Trek. Yes, there are some cult-like aspects, but the story telling is great.

Many old-time marching horns had that "over the shoulder" bell configuration. It was done because bands typically led the parade and marchers behind the band needed to hear the music. I've never seen a modern one, through.

It took me a long time to get into GOT. I didn't start at the beginning. I came in somewhere in the middle and there were just too many characters and too many sub-plots to make any sense of it. But then I was out sick for a couple of days and started at the beginning with HBO On Demand while I was lying around. I still had to watch some of the episodes more than once, but I finally got into the rhythm of it. Some reviewers thought the season 8 premiere was kind of dull or flat of something. But every episode can't be "The Red Wedding" (The Rains of Castamere) or "The Winds of War." That would be exhausting. The season 8 premiere needed to set the stage for the grand denouement, and did a good job of it, IMO.

....if you're thinking non-traditional, my Easter gig is with.... the Unitarian Universalists. Well OK, it's my own church, but with the "UU"s the music can be almost anything. It can be some of those great old traditional church hymns like "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" (see above) but with somewhat more abstract and less literal lyrics. Or it can more modern things.

Today (Palm Sunday) the choir did a great choral arrangement of "I am Willing" by Holly Near. Holly has shown up in person at our place and done it in the past. (But not today.)

What's on tap for Easter Sunday? Not sure. The director hasn't decided yet. (That's kind of UU, also.) Probably just playing along with the pipe organ on some of those big old, grand hymns. But we will see.....

Youtube Video – [00:27..]

My other community band is working it's way up to a Spring concert. The program is still under development, but will probably include the "Department of Homeland Security March". Who knew they had a march? But it's actually not half bad. Unfortunately, it seems to have bumped Sousa's "Golden Jubilee March" from the lineup. That's a jaunty little Sousa march you don't hear every day...

Youtube Video – [00:00..]

Youtube Video

@Tobylou8 Thanks. I actually wrap the brass tip of the bladder thing in electrical tape, just in case it comes into contact with the bell. Although the way the bladder swells up under water pressure, it has never been a problem. Some of the bladder things they sell don't have the brass tip. The picture is from a web advertisement, not the actual one it use. And, oh yeah, get a new clean one from the hardware store! Finally, I don't turn the water on at full pressure. About half pressure seems right.

...and what about piccolos and D/Eb horns where the #2 slide is fixed? I use one of these bladder things intended for flushing pipes to flush my horns. Make sure all of the slides are tight or tied in place, go out on the back deck, hook it up to the garden hose, stick it in the bell, and give the horn a good flush. Press the valves, and you flush all of the slides and valve ports. Before flushing, I usually use the snake brush on the lead pipe and main slide, and a 28 gauge shotgun swab on the valve casings. Then a good thorough flush of the whole horn is the last step before lubricating. Of course, I live in the Peoples Republic of California where I can do this outdoors on the back deck all year round...

Try Stork 7P, if you want to get a piccolo mouthpiece. Not expensive and fully functional.

"It's not a trumpet. It's a bloody euphonium!"
-- Harry, "Brassed Off" (Played by Jim Carter, "Mr. Carson" of Downton Abbey)

Yeah, I know the picture shows a mellophone. But there is no good line about mellophones in "Brassed Off".

I love the sound of a copper bell on flugelhorn. It might even be OK on cornet, although I have never had one. But on the trumpets I have played, copper is just to dull or flat or something. Gold brass is the right metal for trumpet bells, IMO if you want a sound warmer than yellow brass. My Bach 37G is just right, I think.

Copper is cool for jazz and pop. But my Kanstul 1510 C isn't really my favorite for classical. It's good for playing with church choirs and things of that nature, but a little too mellow for orchestral.

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.)...

One of my two community bands is a sight reading band. Everybody loves sight reading so much that this band has been in existence for over 100 years. (No kidding.) That's no big deal to our colleagues in the UK and similar places in "the old country". But for California, it's quite unusual.

The band actually got started by the musicians union in San Francisco to give unemployed and underemployed professional musicians a place to go on Friday nights, hang out, and practice sight reading if they had no gig. It still meets on Friday nights.

The band has no connection to the union today, and is a city park & rec group. But it has accumulated a large music library partly by inheriting the music libraries from other bands that were disbanding. (Can a band actually disband? Need to think about that one.)

Although we are a sight reading band, we do occasionally perform at city events and just for fun. A couple of weeks ago was one of the fun performances. The conceit of this performance was that the director decided we should perform pieces that relate to places that either never really existed or used to exist but are now gone. The title was "Evanescence". The order of battle was:

• Fiume March (The national march of a country that existed between 1920 and 1924. Now a part of Croatia.)
• Camelot excerpts
• Le Lac des Fées ("The Fairly Lake" opera excerpts)
• Atlantis the Lost Continent (more opera excerpts)
• San Francisco (Open Your Golden Gate)
• Brigadoon excerpts
• Man of La Mancha excerpts
• Alhambra Grotto (circus march)
• The Mystic Land of Egypt march
• Beyond the Blue Horizon arrangement

As a sight reading band, we only run these maybe twice before performing, so the quality wasn't great, but nobody threw fruit. I always consider that a triumph deluxe.