Posts made by tjcombo

Took up trumpet as a child and went on to knock out quite a few decent tunes. Sadly he passed away at 91 after breaking his femur a few days ago.
This is a nice reading of my favourite Morricone number.

@Dr-GO - I had the same problem when I got a C trumpet a few years back. The "one crazy trick" that worked for me was to play the same tunes, reading on the Bb and C Real Books on Bb and C horns. This seemed to break the connection between seeing a note on a page, using a certain fingering and hearing a "wrong" note. It worked very quickly and also, the intonation problems with the C trumpet magically disappeared.
Playing from a chart was easy to fix, playing by ear or jazz soloing on the C horn is in the too hard basket.

There is a great interview here
https://overcast.fm/+EPVRlpSAo
It leaves no doubt about him being one of the good ones.

Very sad. A remarkable, inspiring person

@Dr-GO I read your account of dealing with Covid-19 patients with horror. Please stay safe while you do this mighty work.

@ROWUK NZ has the advantage of being one of the most geographically isolated countries in the world. Nonetheless, along with Australia where I live, and I guess most places in the world was faced with an initial steep curve of newly discovered cases of this disease. I visit (using present tense hopefully) NZ a few times a year for work and the Kiwi population seems to have a great team spirit. Support for the incumbent government is evenly divided, but as a nation they pulled together and went hard early with social distancing rules.

In Australia, where we are down to a few new cases a day, our federal government and state premiers (=US Governers) formed a national cabinet and decisions on shutting down were largely carried out on a consensus basis. There is a bit of politicking around reopening particularly where a couple of states closed borders, but by and large we're moving forward. I guess the takeaway from this is that litereally, "disunity is death".

As for the music business, and arts/entertainment in general, the situation is dire. Job support schemes have not applied to people in the transient gig economy, so musicians have been left high and dry. This sector represents about 6% of our GDP, yet as in the rest of the world, has made a massive contribution to keeping the rest of the population from going stir crazy whilst shut in at home. SNAFU?

G&T Jazz is a band put together by Gill (vocals and songwriter) and Tiina (piano) who I was fortunate to meet with at a part time college course a few years back. We've had a great time playing local jazz festivals. The collection of original material has grown so we thought it time to record an album.
Eight tracks, six originals can be heard here...
https://gtjazz.bandcamp.com/releases

Our YouTube channel has just the one video so far, but should grow when I get time to do some more video editing (and hopefully figure how to keep picture and sound synced through YouTube's transcoding).

tj

@BigDub I would like to see a photo of it finished too The photo was taken after it was dragged out of the shed and rolled over after the hull was painted. Sadly, I no longer have the luxury of a shed big enough to hold the beast as the property was sold after a separation. These days it is outside and as we head into our winter, I'm trying to get a layer of fibreglass onto the cabin and cockpit before it gets covered again.

There is an interesting parallel (for me) between boat building and trumpet playing - ambition frequently outstrips ability and a work-around has to be found!

Diving into woodworking with a CNC router is an interesting place to start. The real joy of woodworking (JMHO) is working with hand tools. I do have a good collection of power tools and use them to relieve the drudgery and hard yards of some jobs, but there's nothing quite like watching wood shavings peel out of a hand plane.

Here's a long term project that's nearing completion - hand and power tools used, but not much opportunity for assistance from CNC gear...

Maybe the rats liked the cocaine, and were trying to demonstrate a preference for the music that delivered it to them?

April 25th each year we pay our respects to past and current members of our armed forces and allied services. Ironically, the day chosen honours a great defeat by the Turks at Gallipoli in 1915.

Like most of the world, we're in lock-down and so the usual ANZAC day public gatherings were not possible. Many people replaced the usual dawn service with a driveway service - stand, in physical isolation, at the entrance to your driveway, with a candle. A few days back James Morrison suggested that all brass players should get out and play the Last Post and Reveille.

Last night as I was contemplating whether or not to participate, I got a message from the drummer in my community band, a naval vet, asking if I'd be making some noise this morning. Thinking also of my grandad and several great uncles who served in WW2 and mates who went to various conflicts since, I set the alarm clock for 5:30 AM.

As 6AM approached, I could see lights on in a couple of houses and could faintly hear the service from our national war museum on a distant radio. At 6AM I played the Last Post for the first time in over 40 years, then after a minute of silence, played Reveille (Rouse). As I lowered the horn a man holding a young child and his wife called out "thank-you mate" from a couple of houses away. A little later there was a knock on the door - a man asked "was that you playing the bugle this morning?" One of the neighbours had been sent over by his wife with a thank-you card containing the message below. That's why I'm tearing up writing this post. It's a reminder that we're privileged to be able to make music and really, "louder/faster/higher" means diddly-squat.

@djeffers78 Love it! It's like the sections have swapped instruments - brass players sawing away on strings and the brass instruments picked up by the local butcher!

@barliman2001 best wishes for a speedy recovery.

All of my community band gigs have gone away (mostly postponed) and rehearsals are on hold. We (more than half of the members) keep in touch via a FB page. Given that some, more fortunate members are now working from home, they may have some extra time which was spent commuting. Less fortunate members may have way too much time on their hands. Band members range from professionals, teachers to (very) occasional practicers.
I offered the following list of suggestions, promising to go a little more in depth on each one in future posts. My current project is # 2 on the list, trying to brush up both trombone skills and reading concert pitch bass clef parts, but am trying to keep on with most of the other suggestions.

1. Play along with YouTube videos of other concert bands performing “our” charts.
2. Brush up on your reading skills - maybe transposing or reading other (bass?) clef parts.
3. Write some tunes/songs. Keep it short and sweet at first.
4. Listen - really listen - to music. Listen to the back-catalogue of a fave artist, maybe delve into a new genre
5. Improvise – if you haven’t tried any improv work, now could be the time.
6. Do some home recording – I mean multi-track, sound on sound.

If you have addition time stuck at home, I hope you're able to make good use of it. Things will get worse before they get better.
take care.

@ROWUK Great to hear that you're back playing and getting decent results. FWIW, my dad who had stopped playing cornet after getting a full top denture was talked into playing euphonium when he starting transporting me to band practice way back when. He used a denture adhesive called Fast Teeth which seemed to work for him. He did use a lot of it. I remember him saying that if he didn't remove and clean the denture straight after rehearsal or a gig, it was a couple of days before he could remove it :-).