Best posts made by SSmith1226

@j-jericho said in THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED:

@ssmith1226 Afghanistan does appear to have some harsh music critics!

One can only hope that no one there plays the Bagpipes or Banjo.

@dr-go said in A little humour:

@ssmith1226 said in A little humour:

Again, this reminds me of a retirement village resident sitting outside on a bench along the public walkway leading to the village. A scantly clothed young lady approached him and said:

" I can give you super sex".

To which the retirement resident replied:

"I'll take the soup".

The conductor of the local symphony orchestra was in a terrible accident, and his "manhood" was mangled and torn from his body. His doctor assured him that modern medicine could give him back his manhood, but that his insurance wouldn't cover the procedure, since it was considered cosmetic surgery. The doctor said that the cost would be $3,500 for a "small," $6,500 for a "medium," and $14,000 for a "large." The conductor was sure that his wife and he would want at the least a medium... and perhaps even a large. But the doctor urged him to talk it over with his wife before he made any decision. The conductor called his wife on the phone and explained their options. The doctor came back into the room, and found the conductor slouched over in the chair looking quite dejected. "Well, what have the two of you decided?" asked the doctor. "She'd rather remodel the kitchen."

@barliman2001
“Two wild and crazy guys!

I just saw this rendition of the National Anthem on Classic FM.

https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/videos/musical-saw-us-national-anthem/

@kehaulani said in How Louis Armstrong, Jazz, And The Mafia Got All Tangled Up In Storyville:

Interesting read, I enjoyed it, thanks. I didn't see how a direct Mafia-to Louis link was made, though.

New Orleans was the first area in the United States where the Mafia was established as far back as the 1800s. One of the early crime families was the “Matranga Family”. Louis Armstrong’s employer, according to the original post was “Henry Matranga”. The following is an excerpt from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_crime_family

“ The Matranga crime family, established by Charles (1857 - October 28, 1943) and Antonio (Tony) Matranga (d. 1890 ?), was one of the earliest recorded American Mafia crime families, operating in New Orleans during the late 19th century until the beginning of Prohibition in 1920.

Born of Arbëreshê descent and members of the Italo-Albanian Greek Catholic Church in Piana dei Greci, Sicily, Carlo and Antonio Matranga immigrated to New Orleans during the 1870s and eventually opened a saloon and brothel. Using their business as a base of operations, the Matranga brothers began establishing lucrative organized criminal activities including extortion and labor racketeering. Receiving tribute payments from Italian laborers and dockworkers, as well as from the Provenzano family (who came from the same village), they eventually began moving in on Provenzano fruit loading operations intimidating the Provenzanos with threats of violence.….”

In his autobiography, Armstrong writes about his arrest, and mentions Matranga. "They did not book us right away and held us for investigation in the prison yard with the long-term prisoners waiting to go up the river," Armstrong writes, describing a situation that might conflict with civil liberties protections today.
The experience was jarring for the young man.

"The first day we were in the yard, I went up to shake hands with one of the prisoners I had known out on the street," he writes. "All of a sudden someone jabbed me in the back with a broom handle and tripped me up. When I looked up, I saw Sore Dick (the yard boss) staring at me without saying a word. It dawned on me at once that I had better get busy with the broom he was holding. All the newcomers, I later found out, had to sweep out the yard whether it needed it or not. That is the way they get you in the groove before you start serving a term."

Matranga pulled some strings ("part of a system that was always worked in those days," Armstrong notes) and got the cornet player out of jail -- and just in time. "The day I got out of jail, Mardi Gras was being celebrated," Armstrong writes. "It's a great day for all New Orleans, and particularly for the Zulu Aid Pleasure and Social Club (sic)."

He continues, "When I ran into this celebration and the good music, I forgot all about Sore Dick and the Parish Prison…..”

“Breathe Again” = “Live Again”

After Covid, Playing Trumpet Taught Me How to Breathe Again

The benefits of group (music) therapy.

By Shea Tuttle
Nov. 29, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
Our director stepped onto the podium, and the auditorium stilled to an expectant silence. The black sequins on her conducting dress flared in the stage lights; the audience behind her was lost to the glare. With a glance and a whispered word, she gave us final instructions. As she raised her baton, we all breathed in time; on the downbeat, we exploded into sound. The song was “The Hounds of Spring,” by Alfred Reed, and I can still hear the opening bars. That concert, the entirety of which felt downright enchanted, propelled me into music college, where I studied music education, learning the basics of a dozen instruments so I could teach them someday. After a year, I turned in my loaner instruments, transferred to a new school and changed my major. At 18, I wanted to save the world, and I thought I could do it better some other way.

Two decades later, in November 2020, worn out by lockdown, I longed to use my mind for something other than worry, to fill my living room with a sound that wasn’t the tinny, competing voices of my children’s virtual school. I played the trumpet for only a couple of months during college, after working with woodwinds and strings in high school, and I imagined studying fingering charts again and summoning a sense memory of correct embouchure. I messaged my middle-school band director, a brass player, and we swapped listings until I sent her the model number of a solid, beginner-level trumpet for $70. Two minutes later, her reply: “Oh, yes! Grab it!” Reconnecting with the trumpet was a delight, but playing alone in my living room was a discipline I didn’t keep for long.

Covid caught up to me in May of this year. My symptoms were not dangerous, but they were persistent; I counted 12 days, 14, 16, and I still couldn’t eat normally or function for more than a few hours without exhaustion and physical pain. My mental-health symptoms, meanwhile, were devastating and worsened as the days passed. I couldn’t see the point of anything; I couldn’t stop crying; I couldn’t imagine a time when these things would change.

I left the house, in those days, only to go to my daughter’s softball games, a five-minute drive from home, where I could prop myself in a camp chair yards from anyone else, sip Gatorade and feel the sun on my back. If life is pointless, I thought, thank God for softball. And then I thought, OK — if life is pointless, then why not do some things just because they’re fun?

So I decided to relearn trumpet in a more committed way: by joining a community band. I found a no-audition ensemble near me and filled out the online interest form. I received a welcome text from my new section leader and a card in the mail, telling me how the band was sure to be better because I had joined. The first time I attended rehearsal, I played a single note, badly, then spent the rest of the 90 minutes listening. Throughout the following week, I practiced at home every day, switching on the metronome and playing long tones until my lips gave out. When the next Tuesday evening rolled around, I could play. Not well, but well enough. It felt astonishing, a revelation: Sometimes, things get better instead of worse.

The trumpet only has three keys, called valves, which are played in seven combinations to make all of the possible notes. Depressing the first valve, for instance, can produce a low B-flat, an F, a higher B-flat, a D and several other notes I can’t reach. The difference between one and another depends on the frequency of the lips’ buzz. It is equal parts science and art. And it’s more difficult than I remembered.

Nonetheless, on Tuesday nights, I grab my $70 trumpet and load my backpack with music, stand, mute, fingering chart, valve oil and slide grease, plus a towel to catch the mix of spit and condensation that brass players insist on calling “water.” I slip in the door, nodding to my fellow third trumpets as I set up and warm up. When the conductor — the volunteer director of this band for 42 years — raises his baton, I count like mad, leave out the notes I know full well I can’t hit and do my best on the others. I spend rehearsal listening, hard, to try to merge myself into the whole. Seventy of us — blue-collar workers and office administrators and retirees, woodwinds and brass and percussionists — count and breathe and quite literally vibrate together. We’re often out of tune or unpracticed. We sometimes dissolve into chaos, and then laughter. When time is up, I pack my bag, nod to my section mates again and slip back out the door into the night.

In the months following my Covid infection, the most severe depression of my life gave way to the most severe anxiety. Normal days were rife with triggers: the car, the office, meetings, therapy, food, the doctor, social engagements. Community-band rehearsal was no exception, but I went anyway.

I wasn’t always sure why. It was, as I had hoped, fun. But it was also more. Tracking the notes, counting the beats, linking the notes on the page to the correct fingering, frequency, breath and duration — it seems like a miracle that it ever works. Multiply that by 70 players, and it can feel like witnessing the impossible. Somehow community band did what I knew music could do when I enrolled in college, before I changed my mind about my future: It saved me. It drew me out — of my home, of my head. It taught me how to breathe again.

Shea Tuttle is the author of “Exactly as You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers,” co-author with Michael G. Long of “Phyllis Frye and the Fight for Transgender Rights” and co-editor of two collections on faith and justice.

You all know the story of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer. I for one played it at least a dozen times in the last couple of weeks. If you need to refresh your memory, here it is:

Here is the rest of the story!!! This is an example of exhaustive investigative reporting that answers numerous previously unanswered questions. It will take about 15 minutes to read, but time well spent, especially if read between practice sessions, thus relating it to “Trumpet” and making it relevant to this site. You will never think of Rudolph in the “same light”.

https://actioncookbook.substack.com/p/theotherreindeer

Sunset today in Central Florida

Two days ago an article appeared in the Classic FM Site:

“Brazilian trumpeter Moises Alves creates a spectacle of sound using a metal tube, dancing flames, and a fiery trumpet solo.

For most people, music is something we only experience with our ears. And when it comes to the science of sound, it’s usually easier to understand the things that you can see. Seeing isbelieving, after all.

When a genius like Moises Alves transforms physics into a visual spectacle, the results are often mesmerising and baffling, all at the same time.

Thanks to Alves, who plays trumpet with Brazil’s Claudio Santoro National Theatre Symphony Orchestra, we can now see the shape of sound waves through the medium of 100 tiny flames...”

The full article can be found at:

https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/videos/trumpeter-fire-sound-wave-visualisation/

We talk about mouthpiece safaris. With violinists, it’s the perfect bow. The following is a story about a $40,000+ 19th century violin bow.

“For most violinists, the mere thought of breaking their bow mid-performance is enough to give them nightmares. But for American violinist Stefan Jackiw, this fear-inducing scenario became a reality while on stage with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra last week.

“About 1/3 of the way into the concerto, my trusty Voirin [François Nicolas Voirin, a violin maker], suddenly snapped in two! Obviously, I was totally unprepared for this disaster, but I grabbed the concertmaster’s bow and just kept going.”

The average price of a sought-after Voirin bow is between approximately £18,000-£40,000, however, one viola bow that went to auction in 2019 sold for an eyewatering $98,000 (£74,643). So breaking one of these is certainly not at the top of any musician’s to-do list.”

@administrator said in How about a "Random Meaningless Image...let's see them string"?:

@dale-proctor said in How about a "Random Meaningless Image...let's see them string"?:

What am I looking at?!

From Wikipedia:

The Penrose triangle, also known as the Penrose tribar, the impossible tribar,[1] or the impossible triangle,[2] is a triangular impossible object, an optical illusion consisting of an object which can be depicted in a perspective drawing, but cannot exist as a solid object. It was first created by the Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärdin 1934.[3] Independently from Reutersvärd, the triangle was devised and popularized in the 1950s by psychiatrist Lionel Penrose and his son, prominent Nobel Prize-winning mathematician Sir Roger Penrose, who described it as "impossibility in its purest form".[4] It is featured prominently in the works of artist M. C. Escher, whose earlier depictions of impossible objects partly inspired it.

Waterfall (Dutch: Waterval) is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in October 1961. It shows a perpetual motion machine where water from the base of a waterfall appears to run downhill along the water path before reaching the top of the waterfall.
While most two-dimensional artists use relative proportions to create an illusion of depth, Escher here and elsewhere uses conflicting proportions to create a visual paradox. The watercoursesupplying the waterfall (its aqueduct or leat) has the structure of two Penrose triangles. A Penrose triangle is an impossible object designed by Oscar Reutersvärd in 1934, and found independently by Roger Penrose in 1958.[1]

Youtube Video

I had an interesting eye opening experience today purchasing a mouthpiece advertised on the “Trumpet Herald Marketplace” that would apply to purchases on our site, eBay, and others where private individuals sell used items, such as instruments, accessories, etc.
The price was fair and no negotiation was necessary in my purchase, other than the method of payment. The seller of the item requested “PayPal Family and Friends”. As you know, under these circumstances there is no protection of the buyer. I counter-offered to add a 3% surcharge to cover the PayPal fees. This however was not the issue. The seller was concerned that PayPal would have to report this sale, of a used mouthpiece, in combination with his other sales, to the IRS as income. My initial thought was that this was a “tall tale” (c&b story) created to deceive me. My gut feeling was to walk away from this transaction, but first I researched it and found out that his concern was accurate. After researching it I found that if “you have a side hustle where you buy items and resell them for a profit via PayPal or another digital payment app, then earnings over $5,000 will be considered taxable and reported to the IRS in 2024.”In the near future this will drop to sales over $600 for the year.
Those of us selling used equipment at a loss will have to show documentation of the loss in order to avoid income tax on these sales. I myself am going to list a half dozen or more high end used instruments in the near future that I no longer play. I foresee a major headache when this happens even though there will be no profit involved. This issue not only complicates the seller’s transaction but adversely affects the buyer’s side of the transaction. For those interested, the following is a link to a complete explanation of the current status of this problem:
https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/taxes/1099-k-irs-delay-what-paypal-venmo-and-cash-app-users-need-to-know-this-tax-season/

On March 13 and 14, a Trumpet Conference was held in Lagos, Nigeria. If you are interested in reading about this, the following links announce the conference and report on it. If “Seth of Lagos” attended or has knowledge of the conference, perhaps he can comment on it.

https://punchng.com/lagos-trumpet-conference-set-to-educate-trumpeters/

https://punchng.com/victor-ademofe-olabisi-julius-others-speak-at-trumpet-conference/

I wholeheartedly agree with both of our esteemed Global Moderator’s observations and opinions. I was actually thinking of putting those two points in my initial post, but modesty kept me from doing so, especially since Rick Martin (J Jericho) and Double E (Barliman) were not on the list either.

@Dale-Proctor
That looks so realistic, it could be a Big Dub painting! Where is that, Scotland or England?

@barliman2001

@barliman2001 said in A little humour:

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

I can’t identify the trumpet , but, As per my previous post on January 31, 2024,
“ On November 18, 1950 a painting, called “Boy Practicing Trumpet”, appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. This painting also featured puffed cheeks and a dog. The model Norman Rockwellused for thispainting was Tommy Paquin.The trumpet was borrowed from Rockwell's middle son, Tommy.
The slip covers for the chair are painted after the fashion of Rockwell's good friend, Grandma Moses. We can safely assume that she was flattered by the emulation.”

https://trumpetboards.com/topic/593/vintage-horn-eye-candy

@Dale-Proctor

@J-Jericho

@administrator said in A little humour:

You gotta eat whatever the local environment produces, I guess. I keep hearing something about cats and dogs...

Reykjavik, Iceland: