Posts made by Newell Post

@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.

Kanstul 1510

I used to use Bach 10.5C with my Getzen Eterna Pic. Also Schilke 11D4, but I preferred the 10.5C.

@BigDub From what I have read about PP, the ability to identify a pitch is completely unrelated to the ability to produce a particular note upon demand. Yes, a person with PP needs to be taught that "A" = 440 Hz (or whatever convention is used in the culture in question). But once they learn that convention, they can apparently always identify it.

I have a friend who worked as a music therapist (and excellent recreational musician). She said that in her entire career she only met two people with perfect pitch. Neither of them became advanced or even intermediate musicians because when they were students, playing in student bands and orchestras just kind of drove them around the bend. Perfect pitch made the cacophony of student ensembles completely intolerable to them. OTOH, it didn't seem to hurt Pavarotti very much; nor did the inability to read music.

That is sort of like assuming singers and violinists all need perfect pitch, since their "instruments" can produce a continuum of pitches. One of my old band directors said the trombone is the only instrument in the brass section that IN THEORY has the ability to play every note perfectly in tune. In practice,.... uhhh, not so much.

@Brian-Moon Dude, I'm 64 years old and a recreational player. It ain't going to happen.