Klarinet Archive - Posting 000573.txt from 1997/10

From: "Tahna Britton" <tahnab@-----.com>
Subj: Re: Clarinets players becoming sax players
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 00:55:37 -0400

I _higly disagree. It's hard to *master* the sax - blowing
> a tune on it isn't so hard, but the sax players in the high
> school jazz band here are the tops in the regular band.
>
My friend and I picked up tenor sax our sophmore year in order to play in
Jazz
Band. Another clarinet player picked up alto sax. We had to compete with
all the "original" sax players to earn our spots on the band and did so.
The jazz saxophone section was made up of 3 players whose main instrument
was clarinet and two players whose main instrument was sax. The clarinet
players held the highest chairs. The point I'm trying to make is that it
is not that difficult for a clarinet player to pick up sax and learn it
well enough to beat out players whose main instrument is the sax. At
least, it wasn't for us, and the sax players we competed agaist weren't
awful.

----------
> From: Mark Charette <charette@-----.com>
> To: klarinet@-----.us
> Subject: Re: Music education in MI.
> Date: Monday, October 13, 1997 10:51 AM
>
> Charles wrote:
> > It wouldn't be too hard for a good clarinetist to master the sax to
> > play in the jazz band. There are not many arrangements for jazz
> > bands that have "just" clarinet parts.
>
>> > In order for there to be an orchestra in high school {of any quality)
> > strings would have to be started in the elementary school and
> > continued through the middle school. A five year plan would be
> > more realistic. {than 10). You just need good teachers!
>
> And instruments. And assorted support equipment. And music.
> And a bond issue. It t'aint cheap. I think 10 is realistic -
> 2 or 3 to get the financing, 7 or 8 more to get a reasonably
> good ensemble together (the taxpayers expect the orchestra to
> sound pretty good in a year or two, and it probably won't).
> --
> Mark Charette, MIKA Systems, Inc., charette@-----.com
> ">>As far as I can tell, no."
> ">Fortunately, this is not correct."
> "Proving once again that ... the best way to extract useful infor-
> mation is to post wrong information." - Roger Glover, F90 mail list