Home office frustration...
Best posts made by barliman2001
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RE: How about a "Random Meaningless Image...let's see them string"?
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Signed Trumpet Case
Already in TM, and here as well, I've from time to time talked about the trumpet case that I've been lugging around to every trumpet concert of note that I attended - usually with some kind of rare, original or weird instrument inside. I've had it backstage quite often, and usually was able to induce the star of the evening to sign that case. Quite a few people were clamoring for pics.
Now, the wait is over. Here it is.
So far, ten renowned brass musicians have signed. Whoever gets them all right will be entitled to a pot of coffee with cake in a Vienna coffee house.
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RE: Old Photo
...and about 30 years earlier, in my first band uniform ever... with a Weltklang cornet with Ab slides in it... -
Flugelhorns...
As a few people here already know, Vienna now has a proper British brass band, under the name of Pfadfinderfanfare Wien (Scouts' Band Vienna), and I've been honoured with the flugelhorn position. So far, I've been using my own Courtois 154R flugel, but last rehearsal, the conductor approached me and told me that the band had several world-class flugels lying around and he would like me to use one of theirs... I agreed - no problem with playing a good flugel and thus aving playing time on my own.
Yesterday was The Day. He brought along what he described as "the best flugel the band has, and one of the best flugels ever made."
I was expecting something really, really special... what be brought out was an old and slightly decrepit Bach Strad 135... serial number 423 xxx, dating it into 1994.
Following orders, I played the first two pieces on this, ... until the conductor exclaimed, "Your own flugel is obviously much better than this, and you certainly know how to get the best out of it... I'll take back the Bach."
Inviting comments. -
RE: A little humour
An old, blind Marine wanders into an all-girl biker bar by mistake.
He finds his way to a bar stool and orders a shot of Jack Daniels.
After sitting there for a while, he yells to the bartender, 'Hey, you wanna hear a blonde joke?'
The bar immediately falls absolutely silent.
In a very deep, husky voice, the woman next to him says,
'Before you tell that joke I think it is only fair, given that you are blind, that you should know five things:- The bartender is a blonde girl with a baseball bat.
- The bouncer is a blonde girl.
- I'm a 6-foot tall, 175-pound blonde woman with a black belt in karate.
- The woman sitting next to me is blonde and a professional weight lifter.
- The lady to your right is blonde and a professional wrestler.
Now, think about it seriously, do you still wanna tell that blonde joke?'
The blind Marine thinks for a second, shakes his head and mutters, 'No...not if I'm gonna have to explain it five times.'
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Musicians' Glasses
Ok, as a background, you should know that I have had cataract operations on both eyes in 2014 and since then, my eyes can't change focus any more. Since then, I've had to work with four different pairs of glasses - one for reading closely, one for music reading, one for mid-range seeing (normal distances within the house) and one for outdoors and driving. Bit of a hassle carrying all that stuff around; and when playing music, I could only focus on the sheet music; the conductor was a dim figure somewhere in the distance.
A friend of mine is both a cornet and double bass player and an optician. She has now developed special musicians's glasses that are in effect six-strength varifocals... just got mine, and I am amazed. I can sit at my computer and write this, seeing a clear image of the screen, and I can look up and see the horrible amount of washing-up I still have to do, sharp as anything, in seven feet distance, and I can look out of the window and see clearly what the builders are doing in the yard, at 35 feet distance. And I have a sharp image of the house at the end of the street...
It's a fairly cheap process, considering a consultation will take one full day to adjust the focals to your special needs, and it can't be done but in Yorkshire. But it really is worth it.The Magic Woman who does this?
Sheryl Doe
Allegro Opticals
1-3 Station Street
Meltham, West Yorkshire HD9 5NXwww.allegrooptical.co.k
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RE: Flugel Thread
In 1991, I acquired my Courtois 154 R flugel by rather devious means... a large brass xhop in Munich had invited a number of makers for an in-house trade fair of brass instruments. All the obvious people were there, and a few weirdos. Courtois had come with two truckloads of instruments and were hoping to return with only one truck, so they had hired only one for the return trip. Things did not go quite as planned, and when they were packing up after four days, they could not quite get the unsold instruments into the one truck, and as there was a big trade fair going on in Munich at the time, there were no hire trucks to be had for love or money. Imagine a young guy loitering about their truck while they were discussing what to do... a young guy who had loitered about their stand on every day of the fair, ahd tested the instruments and had stressed that did not have any money for a new instrument at all... Imagine that guy asking whether he could help. And they said, "Oui" rather shortly and pressed an instrument case in my hands - the one case that they could not by any means fit into the truck any more. Content? One 154 R flugelhorn. I've never found one better suited to me, so after a few years of comparing, I just quit and am totally happy with that flugel...
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RE: Phony players
Most of those responsible for TV shows and motion pictures just don't care about these things, or don't have a clue, or both. I was once in a casting for a DHL ad where the casting agency deliberately wanted a homely-looking trumpet player to perform "Ain't no mountain high enough" as a finish to a clip showing all the way a trumpet takes from a factory in backwoods China to the trumpet player in Vienna.
I won the casting - but did not get to make the ad, because DHL had by then found "the perfect looking guy" amongst their own workforce, and wanted me to show the guy how to simulate playing to a playback recording.
I walked out on them. -
RE: A little humour
@SSmith1226 There is a similar story about a Sultan's wish to see into the future. They brought an astrologer and clairvoyant who consulted the stars and his crystal ball and with a very sad face, came to the Sultan, saying, "Oh plentiful ruler, a sad future awaits you... All your family will die before you and you will yourself die a lonely man." - "Miserable worm! Get him the bastinado! And another soothsayer!"
The new man saw his predecessor howling in pain and approached the Sultan with his findings: "Oh happiest of mortals! I can predict a very long life for you. In fact, you will survive all of your greedy and mischievous relations!" - "A true wise man. Give him a life-long pension!" -
RE: The Serpent
And the illegitimate love-child of the Serpent was the Ophicleide...
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RE: “The 15 Top Trumpet Players Of All Time”
Any list of "top trumpet players of all time" that does not include Maurice André, Guy Touvron, Carole Dawn Reinhart or Alison Balsom and Tine Thing Helseth is just a list of randomly selected jazz trumpet players.
If you include players most successful outside the US - Dusko Goykovich, Derek Smith-Watkins and Sergey Nakariakov.
If you include those who were perhaps not in the 1A* class of players, but even more influential as motivators or teachers - Adolf Scherbaum, Pierre Thibaud, Timofey Dokshizer and Adolf "Bud" Herseth come to mind.
And if you include those historical figure who made trumpet playing what it is today - Anton Weidinger (inventor of the keyed trumpet), Jean Baptiste Arban and of course Herbert Clarke come up.
That's another fifteen names for you. -
RE: A little humour
@BigDub In the same spirit:
How do you get a giraffe into a freezer?
Open door, giraffe goes in, close door.
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RE: New to this board
Welcome to TB! I admire your indomitable spirit, and your unquenchable thirst for music. Feel free to ask any question you might want answered, even if the question sounds stupid to your ears - there is a saying in Vienna, "You can only get cleverer by asking stupid questions."
As to holding the instrument: ErgoBrass have a very nice contraption that might suit your needs. -
RE: How many of you taught yourself to play?
Well, this is the perfect place to tell my particular relationship with the trumpet. I always loved the instrument - from three years onwards. I once, at age five, even got a toy trumpet, even made of brass!, with ten "valves", each of which was confined to one note. They don't make them any more... at any rate, I loved that thing, but it did not feel right. It had too many of these round things sticking up above the leadpipe. Proper trumpets had only three, I knew for certain. So one day I sneaked away into the basement with my grandpa's small metal saw, and started working... neatly sawed off seven of the ten "valves". So now it not only looked like a proper trumpet, you could actually grip it like a proper trumpet. I was intensely proud of this achievement and showed it to my parents who were unaccountably angry. They were talking about, "you're always ruining things" and when I said that I wanted to learn trumpet, they told me I would only break it like the toy trumpet... so I was thrown onto piano and violin (both were already in the house).
And I hated it. They soon realized I was hopeless with the violin, but kept my nose to the grindstone on piano. The local music school would not do, so every second day, they carted me to a neighbouring town for lessons with a very special, very old-school teacher: A spinster of about 69, complete with moustache, and a wooden ruler lying on the piano to whack a student's fingers with. For seven years they forced me into this kind of thing, and I became quite good at piano - out of sheer self-defence! - won a few local competitions... until I boldly told them that they could throw me out or beat me to death, but I would not go to that teacher again... They tried a different teacher for another year or two, but by this time I was refusing to practice so piano lessons ended, after nine years or so. And quite a few years later, at age 22, I won a trumpet in a raffle. Well, a bugle. No valves or anything, just a tube with a bell flare and something that could imaginatively be called a mouthpiece.
OK, I thought, this looks like fate. How do I get this thing to work? So I got out a Maurice André record cover - 1970 vinyl, in fact this album https://www.cdandlp.com/maurice-andre/l-extraordinaire-maurice-andre/33t/r118969818/ - retreated in front of the big bathroom mirror and looked closely at how Maurice's lips were shaped on the mouthpiece. Tried to emulate the shape, put some tension on and - - - toot! Since then, I styled myself "student of Maurice André". It became true about ten years later...
Next day, I went into the local music shop and bought myself a trumpet kit - Chinese "Comet", complete with 7C mouthpiece, cleaning set, wooden case and set of white gloves, for 99 Deutschmarks. Continued to work with "Maurice". After two days, asked my choir director to find me a trumpet teacher. Which he did. And only a week later, accompanied me to a specialist shop where I bought my first "proper" trumpet, a Bach Strad 229 C/Bb... new, for a whopping 2,999 Deutschmarks (we're talking 1988!). No stopping now... -
RE: A little humour
How do you get a rhino into a freezer?
Open door, yes-
NO.
Giraffe out, rhino in, close door.
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RE: Favorite Trumpet Playing Memory
My most exquisite trumpet memory is a recital by Maurice André in Munich - or, rather, not the recital but what happened afterwards.
I attended the recital and afterwards, went to the stage door to perhaps get Maurice to autograph my special "signatures case". When I got in, I found Maurice heartbroken and almost in tears. He had broken off the screw to the tuning device on the leadpipe of his picc. It was Saturday night, he had not thought of bringing a second instrument, and was due to play a matinee concert next morning.
Well, I got him to calm down a bit and told him I could help him get that fixed within the next few hours, if he would leave everything to me and just hop into a taxi with me. From the taxi, I called up my good, now departed friend Hermann Ganter who lived over his workshop as an instrument maker and repairer. I just told Hermann that I was coming within the next half hour and that he should be awake and sober.
When our taxi arrived at the very outskirts of Munich, Hermann was on his doorstep with his working apron over his nightshirt and, without really looking, growled that I was in for some rough treatment if... "Oh, Monsieur André, I am enchanted..." The repair was a very minor affair, but Maurice was happy, and invited me to stay a week or two at his place in the South of France. Which I did. We became firm friends, and a few weeks after Maurice's passing, I got a parcel with a lawyer's letter saying that the contents of the parcel were intended by Maurice as a last parting gift to his saviour after the Munich recital.
The contents? A 1966 Selmer high-G picc that Maurice had played during the first years of his career. He still remembered that I did not really like a Bb or A picc, and willed that high-G to me... -
RE: Blasphemous takes on classic tunes
Not quite blasphemous, but definitely out of the ordinary...
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RE: A little humour
@BigDub I met that guy when he came home from the African safari - we met at an airport whie we were waiting for our connections. He told me that apart from seeing that elephant,he had a close encounter with a lion that entered his tent. He took off at speed, not wanting to be a lion's breakfast. And so they ran - the guy in front, the lion behind. Until the guy could not run any more. He just stood there and faced the lion, "and suddenly, the lion slipped and fell down". - "And you just stood there? Wow! I would have sh*it my pants." - "Well, what do you think the lion slipped on?"