 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: Lisa
Date: 2004-08-12 15:09
I'll start with something stupid I said once. I was in the music store checking out those flavoreeds (smelling them, actually) when the lady behind the counter said, "Can I help you?" Keeping my attention on those reeds, I absentmindedly asked for "A box of clarinet reeds--3 1/2, R13." "You mean V12 don't you?" "Um, yeah..." ![[right]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie8.gif)
And here are two classic quotes said by the same director. Contragirl also knows who I mean:
"Clarinets, I know it's a Bb, but do something about it!" (I quite honestly believe that my plastic Bundy got a clearer throat Bb than my current grenadilla Leblanc.)
"Trumpets, if it was 20 years ago, I would've thrown something at you for playing like that!" (I've heard stories about what an SOB this guy was years ago. Apparently he's mellowed in his old age and realizes it.)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2004-08-12 15:23
Lisa,
I have more Big John quotes if you'd care to hear them!
DS
UMd-CP '79
by the way, he wasn't an SOB --- just a euphonium player!
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: GBK
Date: 2004-08-12 15:37
"...There aren't any good R-13 A clarinets to be found..."
...GBK
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Ralph G
Date: 2004-08-12 15:41
Search all my past posts. Plenty there.
________________
Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it.
- Pope John Paul II
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: RAMman
Date: 2004-08-12 16:20
Maxim Vengerov was asked to perform at the Royal Academy of Music to celebrate the Stradivarian violins in their collection.
At the first rehearsal, he said 'I'm sorry, I cannot play this Stradivarius, I must use my own violin'.
The concert organisers ummed and ahed, 'but the whole point is to use our violin!'
'Ok, I'll use mine, but tell everyone I'm playing yours.
Concert happens....Times newpaper review the next day....
'Vengerov was clearly uncomfortable on the Academy's violin, if only he'd used his own'
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Lisa
Date: 2004-08-12 16:38
RAMman--I love it! 
David--Was it the JW quotes you recognized, or my reference to contragirl that tipped you off? Go ahead, hit me with your best quotes of his. Here are a couple more of his current ones:
"I can waltz to that." (refers to dotted eight + sixteenth note rhythm played like a triplet figure)
"I exaggerate slightly." (after singing a really bad imitation of a section)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2004-08-12 17:45
Lisa,
More JW quotes (you've probably already heard them):
"That has no place in music!"
"I hate saxophones and cats".
"Saxophones, you sound like........saxophones".
"Bass clarinets: what was that sound?"
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Tom J.
Date: 2004-08-12 17:53
A studio guy told me that a few years ago he was working on a film score and a meddlesome producer was needling the composer/conductor about the music. The scenes, evidently, contained some shots of Paris and other parts of France. So, the producer says “Look, can’t you make it sound more French. Use some more French horns if you have to.”
Maybe that’s what Handel was thinking when he wrote the Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music for the British and used all those English horns.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Douglas
Date: 2004-08-12 18:15
While observing a student teacher conduct at school band, the student stopped the group and told the brass they were much too loud. After a rather long pause, she then said, " and I have "P" ( sounds like pee) in my score. Everyone broke up.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: VermontJM
Date: 2004-08-12 20:33
Conductor at a high school music fest in Lake Placid
"THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRACY!!!"
after a bunch of second clarinets from Cohoes got themselves kicked out of rehearsal for talking too much and playing too little.
My friend, a sax player, and I still laugh over this one, almost ten years later.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: contragirl
Date: 2004-08-12 20:49
hahah! And everyone does the same impression of him.
*nasally*
"Contrabass, you're sounding a little buzzy..."
"Bonnie and Stephanie, you sound buzzy, maybe you should work on your reeds together." Me on alto, Steph on bass.
"Contrabass, are you happy with THAT sound?"
Number one most said and most repeated, even by my high school band director:
"You're out of tune."
John is actually retiring this year. Hopefully we get to go on a big trip! If I make the ensemble that is. hehe.
--Contragirl
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Lisa
Date: 2004-08-12 21:11
Our high school music room had a chalkboard that we used to write all over since our director never used it anyway. Before competitions the upperclassmen would write, "Execute or be executed!" Anyway, I'll never forget the one quote someone wrote up there once, and it was based on something our director said: "John Phillip Sousa wrote many fine marches--but "Rifle Regiment" just wasn't one of them!" 
Post Edited (2004-08-12 21:12)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Anon
Date: 2004-08-12 21:45
My best friend was the world's worst high school oboist. Her band director had been encouraging her to try making her own reeds so she and her teacher started the process. Caroline decided to play her own reed one day, the one she had painstaking made. The director kept making facing while the band was playing and finally cut the band off and said "OK, I give up - What the hell is that noise?!?!?!"
She replied "That would be me, sir. I made my own reed."
He paused and said "You must never do that again." and continued the rehearsal!
While working at a music store, I had to handle a customer who was returning a metronome (except she kept calling it a Metro-Dome and I had to fight the urge to tell her that FOOTBALL is played in a Metro Dome and metronomes keep time) When I asked her the reason for the return, she said "This metrodome is defective - it doesn't stay with me!" I had to swallow my laughter!!
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2004-08-12 22:18
For all those not 'in' on the little inside joke involving Lisa, contragirl and myself: The conductor in question is John Wakefield, Director of Bands (though by now he may be Emeritus or something to that effect) at the University of Maryland in College Park --- he really is a good guy, despite our ribbing, but then again he's a euphonium player from Michigan (under Revelli) and has never had much of an affinity for reed instruments --- thus the many less-than-complimentary sayings we've collected from him over the years.
I'll never forgot possibly the most embarrassing incident of my musical life, which involved him (from which I learned a valuable lesson, it turns out): I was a new freshman at Maryland, during one of my first Symphony Band rehearsals --- I was not a music major and was basically self-taught (that is, extremely ignorant) on bass clarinet, and had not a clue as to what was good equipment nor what was available. We were playing something, and Big John Wakefield stopped the band, looked over at ME and said, "what IS that sound? What kind of reed are you using?" Not knowing good reeds from bad, I said, "Rico". After the rest of the band stopped laughing, John told one of the upperclassmen music-major types to go into the back room and get me "some real reeds". I was then, ceremoniously, handed my first-ever box of Vandorens (purple box back then).
I've never touched a 'brown-box' Rico reed since that day.............
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Lisa
Date: 2004-08-12 23:07
--Mr. Wakefield will be retiring after this coming academic year is over, and we're not sure if the next director will be willing to conduct us, the Community Band at Maryland.
Anyway, I have another stupid thing I did--ahh, the walk down memory lane...We had the late Dr. Bob Bernat (who conducted Pittsburgh's River City Brass Band) as a guest conductor for college Wind Ensemble once. We were playing Philip Sparks' "In the Year of the Dragon." (Do you know it?) It was the slow movement we were rehearsing, when the first chair flutist made an odd mistake on a solo line. Dr. Bernat just kept on conducting and the next entrance was me (with a rare solo in the 3rd clarinet part), and gosh darn it--my fingers played the same wrong note the flutist did! I guess I was more auditory than visual back then. At that point the band stopped to laugh at us, and I felt two hands on my shoulders as our director (and my private instructor, Dr. Dan DiCicco) I was sure was ready to throttle me.
Good thing we played it correctly for the concert!
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Tom A
Date: 2004-08-13 00:42
Lisa, was it the D sharp on the rising scale at the end of the movement?
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Camanda
Date: 2004-08-13 01:03
> "THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRACY!!!"
My band director almost says that, but he waits for someone to start arguing with him, and then he says, "See, this is a dictatorship, so no matter what you say, I'm gonna go do what I want."
We had the URI Wind Ensemble director give us a clinic my sophomore year, and we weren't playing rich enough for him, so he said, "Act like your sound is cheesecake -- the kind so rich you might as well just rub it on your thighs, 'cause that's where it's going to go anyway!" Not so much stupid as ridiculous. Even my band director was laughing. The same professor gave us a clinic when I was a freshman, and he took the reed off our only oboist's instrument and chewed on the horn while she was out of the room. Yikes! ![[whoa]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie10.gif)
Harmonic minor was the big thing on my last final exam, and I corrected 75% of those tests (my section leader did the rest -- she wouldn't do any in bass clef and then I was just around to correct them more than she was). Out of the 70-something people who took the exam, 44 failed and most of them failed because of the harmonic minor. All we had to do was write a scale given a key signature, that was it, and we did it a thousand times in class. 3 people scored 100s -- me, the trumpet section leader, and the trombone section leader. Talk about not paying attention.
Rehearsal halls are not generally the most sanitary places in the world, especially in public high schools. One weekend we hosted the Junior Division All-State Festival, and my band director told my class that there had been puddles everywhere in that band room. Our lead alto sax says, "Aw, man, we can't eat off the floor anymore?" Without skipping a beat, our director replied, "Well, you can."
Amanda Cournoyer
URI Clarinet Ensemble, Bass Clarinet
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Sheila-music_lover
Date: 2004-08-13 01:18
I was on a band trip when I was in a grade 7 band and we only had one clarinet in the band; his words? "the clarinet section sounded very together!" lol I like that one.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Lisa
Date: 2004-08-13 01:42
>>Lisa, was it the D sharp on the rising scale at the end of the movement?
Oh wow---yes it was--that's exactly the part!
Getting back on the topic of "stupid things you've heard musically" I think that PDQ Bach's "Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion" has to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard, for many reasons. And I played it TWICE at different festivals in high school, meaning it must've been on the "list of good charts to choose from" that I know the state of PA has. I'm so thankful I've never had to play it since then.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: allencole
Date: 2004-08-13 02:01
From one of my most promising (and least industrious) six-graders:
"I know I suck, but everybody else in band sucks more than I do. As long as I suck less than they do, I'll be FIRST CHAIR!" (fortunately, he saw the light about a year later)
Often, before students begin an exercise, I pose three questions:
1 - What key is it in?
2 - How many beats per measure
3 - What beat are you going to start on?
Today, the answer to question #3 was "C"
Allen Cole
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: kenbear
Date: 2004-08-13 02:26
Exasperated semi-conductor: "Can't you count seven to a bar? It's simple, look - one, two, three, four, five, six, sev-en..."
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Wicked Good ★2017
Date: 2004-08-13 02:30
My favorite was from my orchestration professor (also the clarinet studio professor and jazz band director) when I was in college. He was talking about the range of the clarinet family, rattling off the names of all the clarinets from highest to lowest.
When he finished, he declared, "The limitations are endless!"
---------------------------------------------------------------------
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world:
Those who understand binary math, and those who don't.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Contra
Date: 2004-08-13 02:57
"I need more saxophone on that section."
Post Edited (2004-08-13 21:07)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Melissa
Date: 2004-08-13 03:15
In Regional Honour band our guest conductor said a few interesting things:
"Trumpets are you constipated?" "No." "Then stop playing like you are"
Then he tried to give me a lesson in "cool 101" because I didn't know how to do his secret hand shake and because I go to a school that is situated beside a sheep farm. He thought that was very funny.
Melissa
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: John Noecker
Date: 2004-08-13 03:21
Perhaps not so much stupid as amusing. Dr. Stamp at the PMEA District 10 Band Festival, in one of the more violent passages where the melody was carried by the low winds, turned to the bassoons and bass clarinets and said. "Low winds... before you play this again.. go home and eat small live housepets"
John
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Rachel
Date: 2004-08-13 05:34
"Yamaha clarinets aren't as good as the others"... an opinion expressed by many on another forum I go to.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: diz
Date: 2004-08-13 05:41
Woman who was leading an orchestra I onced played in said to the conductor "Maestro, do we have a "pee" at figure 14?"
We all fell about laughing, he said
"Please wait, we'll take a break in about 15 minutes".
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: jack
Date: 2004-08-13 05:57
"Mommy, I want to grow up and become a musician". "Now Jackie, you know you can't do both".
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: kdennyclarinet
Date: 2004-08-13 06:00
While at the U of Nebraska-Lincoln, I kept a close account of all of the best quotes of our orchestra director. I would save them up, then type them and post them around the building the day of each concert. After two years, I had acquired quite a collection. He spent two years trying to figure out who was doing it. One of my friends finally gave in and gave me up during the last month or so of school. At our last rehearsal, I presented him with a Kinko's bound novel of two years of quotes. He was definitely touched. Here are a few of the best:
In Mahler 1, the fourth movement has quite a complex motion of key centers. An f minor climax as the music of the first movement is revisited suddenly turns to a bright C major in anticipation of the coda, only to be interrupted by a return to the development. The music leaps to the "correct" key of D major as another anticpation of the coda pushes forward. Well, in rehearsal, when we got to the big D major section, the key was severely missed. Here's the quote: "If it goes into D minor at this point, there is no God!"
This is one of my favorites. During a rehearsal of the Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome, our director was trying to get us to be more flexible with the tempo. Here's the quote: "There's one tempo, but there's a fast and a slow version."
ummmmm.... ok
We were playing Pines during my last semester. My most memorable moment, I must say. I think that most of us are familiar with the clarinet solo of the nightengale singing in the third movement. Anyway, we were in rehearsal and, by the way, he frequently talks while we are playing. There is this nice, serene opening and then the clarinet solo comes in. The entrance is on beat four, so I was right in the middle of my long relaxed breath on beat two. Just as I was breathing and just about to begin, he says: "We all get the bird on beat four." I couldn't play... It was just too funny. The air came out and I muffled a dirty word, only it was a bit more audible than I had realized... so, he says, "See! What did I tell you?!"
And finally, for those students who had trouble figuring out the correct end of the instrument to blow through... we have a "Mister Obvious" quote: "Remember, I put the stick down on the downbeats and up on the upbeats."
classic!
Love you Dr. White!
K. Denny
BME, MM, DMA
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Squirrel
Date: 2004-08-13 08:54
From my old band director to one of the trumpets: "I can't hear you if you don't have your glasses on!"
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: clarnibass
Date: 2004-08-13 12:35
About that 7 beats per measure, here is another good method: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and; one, two...
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: cigleris
Date: 2004-08-13 17:32
was leading a wind orchestra with Tim Reynish conducting, the bass trombonist was late for the first part of the rehearsal so the 2nd put a fire extinguisher on his chair for a laugh, can't remember what we were playing but Tim stopped the band and said that "bass trombone you are too loud" (he still hadn't arrived), he put his glasses on and realising that there was no player he then said tell him when he gets here that he's too loud.
He's such a funny person and great conductor
Peter Cigleris
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Lisa
Date: 2004-08-13 20:30
This quote just absolutely floored me--hope you enjoy it. I play flute (self-taught) in church choir and have in the past been complimented on my playing by a flute teacher I sat next to in an orchestra pit. Anyway, our choir director is good on keyboards and vocal stuff, and I don't think has much knowledge on instrumental issues. Last weekend she told me how the previous flutist (a student) played with a light, breathy, airy tone--and could I try playing that way? ![[huh]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie11.gif) Instead of really asking me to play with the tone of a beginner, all she really needed to do was say four words: "Play a little softer."
John, I'm singing "It's a Small World" since I also know Dr. Stamp--he started teaching at my college (IUP) my senior year! I don't remember any of his quotes except for the fact that he called me "Eefer" because I played Eb clarinet (and haven't touched it since my last concert with him.) Come to think of it, I don't think he ever called me by my first name--I was just Eefer, and I didn't mind.
Post Edited (2004-08-13 20:56)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: John Noecker
Date: 2004-08-13 20:36
Lisa,
Interestingly enough, one of my friends played Eb at that festival... He called her Eefer the entire time... I guess it's just a habit of his. In fact, I don't even know that he ever even asked her her name. I never really had the opportunity to talk to him, but he did show up quite often throughout the breaks to talk to "Eefer"... Must just like the instrument.
John
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: coasten1
Date: 2004-08-13 21:40
I once remember my highschool teacher rehearsing us and we sounded bad. Rather than his comment to say 'spare me' he said 'spear me'. We all had a good chuckle. (I wonder if he really meant to be speared after how we played).
Not that it is said or heard, but I have sat in the front row many years and have been hit by an excited baton that leaps out of the directors hand.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: chicagoclar
Date: 2004-08-13 23:13
A guy in our clarinet section once said, "I don't practice. Practicing is just admiting you are not good enough." We've quoted that one numerous times.
One day after a particularly bad lesson, my teacher turned to me and said, "Have you ever though about switching instruments? Maybe saxophone or flute will work. Then your mistakes won't be so obvious."
Not quite sure what he meant, but it definately hit home. That was my last bad lesson.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Kevin
Date: 2004-08-14 03:09
Once, our HS orchestra director was working with the violin section alone. He told them to play a note from a piece we were working on, and when they did, somebody came in early and the sound that came out was not quite what you'd call satifactory. It was a funny enough sound to make one of our woodwind players to let out an audible chuckle. Then the maestro, uponing hearing that chuckle, turned to the person and said "Hey, stop laughing. How do you think THEY feel when YOU play?"
And another time...this time with our pitiful 5-member viola section. All of them not exactly prodigies, not quite too confident in their playing either. Our maestro tried to bring the most out of them as he possibly could and was working with them alone on a powerful single note in a Tchaikovsky piece. He said while his baton arm was in the air just about to give the downbeat "Let's go. Power! Passion! Play it with rage and anger!" He swung his arm back, and came the downbeat...and the 5 poor kids let out a barely audible, cat-purring sound out of their violas. The whole orchestra broke out in laughs.
coasten1 - the baton hitting flying out our concertmaster as well as some other violinists is a classic. Once one of our librarians who also played in that violin section actually was fed up enough to hide his baton prior to a rehearsal under a copy machine in one of the back rooms with the instrument storage closests! That didn't stop maestro, however, as he just pulled out an antanea from a broken TV that was in the room and worked with that. Fortunately, that didn't fly out of his hands...
Melissa - the "constipated" comment has also occured with our school's concert band director! Could we be talking of the same dude?
Finally, some funny remarks of ignorance I've encountered...
"Do you need batteries to play the clarinet?"
(upon seeing my clarinet) "Oh cool, you've got one of those big black flute thingies!"
"Why are many buttons are on your piano? Why 2 colors? Whats the difference?"
I had a non-musical friend over, and he was playing with my piano, hitting random keys and playing around with the 3 pedals trying to figure out what each does. On upright pianos, the middle pedal causes a piece of felt to be placed b/t the hammers and the strings, therefore softening and muting the sound. Only thing was that mine was often getting jammed, etc...so I tied up the felt up so it causes no effect. My friend puts down the middle pedal, presses some random keys, and says "woah! that's so cool! what a nice effect!".....he thens moves on to my perfectly working damper pedal but just somehow couldn't figure out what it does.
Post Edited (2004-08-14 03:14)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Tom A
Date: 2004-08-14 03:58
In the Wind Orchestra of the Sydney Con some years ago we were towards the end of "Year Of The Dragon" (there you go, Lisa!) when our much-admired conductor let go of the stick during a big gesture, thereby propelling it at high speed towards me in the principal chair of the 3rds.
We all knew he was joking when he called to me, "And don't do that again!"
During a performance of a local church musical comedy, one of the leads doing a short and intentionally silly dance on stage fell over the edge and onto the two trumpets behind me. His mate, the other male lead, helped him up with the comment, "Don't worry, it's just a stage he's going through."
Like a lot of posts, neither of these was stupid. They were pretty good saves!
Post Edited (2004-08-14 04:03)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Meri
Date: 2004-08-14 23:58
Stupid thing I heard at a music camp when I was in high school:
"Breath control is not that important" (by one of the fellow clarinetists in the clarinet class I was in several years back--and shockingly, most of them agreed with her!)
Meri
"There is a difference between being flat and sounding in tune, and being in tune but sounding flat. The first I can live with; the second I cannot."
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: kdennyclarinet
Date: 2004-08-15 04:40
I was at a doctor's appointment with my new family doctor last year and he was trying to get to know me. I told him that I play the clarinet and he said, "Oh, like Kenny G?"
I cringed on the inside, but politely corrected him.
K. Denny
BME, MM, DMA
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: allencole
Date: 2004-08-15 05:59
Someone swore to me that she saw Kenny G. play an "electric clarinet" in concert. I questioned her closely, and she herself has played clarinet--but this is the first that I've heard of Kenny playing one. Can anyone confirm this?
(And yes, I know that many people think that the soprano sax is a metal clarinet. I have already pursued that possibility.)
Allen Cole
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: kdennyclarinet
Date: 2004-08-15 07:23
He was probably playing an electronic wind instrument or an electronic wind controller. They look kind of like clarinets, but can be configured to sound like any woodwind. There is no reed attached to this light weight plastic instrument, but you do actually blow into it. Your articulation style comes through electronically as well. The fingerings are more closely related to the saxophone, flute, oboe, etc. rather than the clarinet. This is probably why he was able to play it.
If you've never tried one, look around at a local music store or the next convention you attend. They are neat "toys."
K. Denny
BME, MM, DMA
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: RAMman
Date: 2004-08-15 11:11
Famous British clarinettist was playing Sibelius 1, and began the opening solo on the wrong clarinet.
End of the solo...string entry...
Conductor...
'Strings, please you've just heard the most beautiful clarinet solo, will you please sort out your intonation!!'
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: VermontJM
Date: 2004-08-15 19:01
Because our band is small (and I think he hopes to cover up the intonation of the flutes), our director sits clarinets in the front row. Firsts are right in front of him.
After getting nailed on the head a few times with the baton, my fellow first player made him a glove with the baton permanently attached.
I don't think he ever used it, but he did express interest in one that would spray a stream of water so he could get a player's attention if need be. We looked into it, but couldn't find a classy way to do that.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Krisat
Date: 2004-08-15 20:27
Concerning the "dictatorship" comments our recent band trip to California yielded:
"Band is a dictatorship, and I'm head Nazi." now THAT stupid comment was from a band mother!
And on the funnier quotes:
My band director, to a French horn player who could not even begin his Fiddler on the Roof solo "You should write a book. Call it 'Variations on One Note'" Poor kid. ;-)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Contra
Date: 2004-08-15 21:44
"We can't sound good without our French horn section." I heard that little nugget of joy last night.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: 68fordfalcon
Date: 2004-08-17 18:46
I had a gig playing a Mozart choral piece (Vespers?) a few months ago. It was one rehearsal and concert, and I got to the rehearsal and the piece was for clarino in c. I was broke at the time, so I just tried to sound like a trumpet.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2004-08-17 19:08
I had to play Leroy Anderson's notorious "Sleigh Ride" one Christmas, with a partial orchestra that had no trumpets at all --- I was on tenor sax (!) playing the first trumpet part, and had to do the horse whinny at the end because none of the trombonists had the guts to attempt it --- so I closed all the keys on the sax and yelled a whinny into the instrument. Everyone broke up laughing (myself included).
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: contragirl
Date: 2004-08-17 21:20
Lol David! That is the funniest thing I think I have ever heard!
I also liked the fire extinguisher story in my AIM profile and all my trombone friends get a kick out of it.
Here at UMD, the marching band puts together a book for the big away trip called the "sour note." It is a book of unintentional qoutes made by people, mostly the band director, Dr. Sparks.
Among his most taken out of context jewels of wisdom is:
"March on your balls" (balls of your feet... but he only said balls.)
"You're like a bull in heat!"
During spirit week, all the sections dressed up the same or had some theme going... but the trumpets did nothing. They weren't dressed up or anything, and Dr. Sparks started yelling at them. "You have no spirit, why didn't you do anything" etc etc. As he got on his cherry picker type machine that elevated a platform about 50 feet in the air, a sheet unfolds to read "Trumpets Are Better." All of this happening as he is yelling at the trumpets over the loudspeaker, and 250 ppl start laughing hysterically.
College is fun.
--CG
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: TOR
Date: 2004-08-20 15:21
A couple of quotes that I heard from what will remain an unnamed clarinetist at a master class a couple of years ago:
"You sound like you're playing with a constant airstream."
"Clarinet without vibrato is like...black and white TV."
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Katrina
Date: 2004-08-21 00:03
Ok...I'll bite and add one more even though most people won't read it at this point...
When I was working in a cd/video store about 10 years ago, a "customer" came up and asked for "workout music." On cassette (even 10 years ago, the store didn't have much on tape). I pointed out the few I thought might work (heavy techno beats, etc.) and showed him our listening station which included most of the items we had in stock.
He was disappointed and commented, "I guess you don't have to know a lot about music to work here."
(FYI, I was working on an MA in Musicology at the time, and had already received my MM in clarinet performance)
GRRRR....
Katrina
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2004-08-22 01:45
--------------------------------------
Ok...I'll bite and add one more even though most people won't read it at this point...
When I was working in a cd/video store about 10 years ago, a "customer" came up and asked for "workout music." On cassette (even 10 years ago, the store didn't have much on tape). I pointed out the few I thought might work (heavy techno beats, etc.) and showed him our listening station which included most of the items we had in stock.
He was disappointed and commented, "I guess you don't have to know a lot about music to work here."
(FYI, I was working on an MA in Musicology at the time, and had already received my MM in clarinet performance)
GRRRR....
Katrina
----------------------------
Katrina - you should have given him some Stochhausen to work out to after that comment
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Katrina
Date: 2004-08-22 04:25
Yeah, David, he might have liked Harlequin (sp?) after all! He could have danced it, eh?
:))
Katrina
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: jArius
Date: 2004-08-22 07:53
Lisa, if the guy you're referring to (JW) just happens to have the last name of Wick, then I welcome you to the fraternity of fellow Wickerism readers. I only had him for my high school sophomore year, though, and I never learned his first name. That was the last year he taught at my school. I went to SVHS.
Unfortunately, I don't remember any Wickerisms..... they took them all off the wall a couple years after he left.
I do remember the classic "Frrrrrt" when referring to the trumpets, though, and your quotes sound exactly like the kind of things he would have said.
Jeremy Bruins
Proud member of the too-much-time-on-my-hands club.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Lisa
Date: 2004-08-22 20:33
>>>Lisa, if the guy you're referring to (JW) just happens to have the last name of Wick...
Wrong guy---JW is the already mentioned John Wakefield. I know at this point it's really hard to read this whole thread.
>>>Lisa - is Dr. Dan DiCicco still alive?
As far as I know, yes he is! I saw him at a homecoming game a few years ago, and he told me that he lives half the time in Indiana, PA and spends the colder months in Florida. Someone else told me that his wife died and he remarried---within the past five years or so! I'm not sure how old he'd be by now, but the one and only semester I played in his Wind Ensemble was his last before he retired from IUP (spring of '89). I think it's great that Doc remarried! The last time I saw him was I think last homecoming, and he didn't look well at the time, plus he said he didn't play much anymore at all.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: jArius
Date: 2004-08-23 02:44
Oh, well. Still sounds like the things he'd say, though.
Jeremy Bruins
Proud member of the too-much-time-on-my-hands club.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Contra
Date: 2004-08-23 03:31
"Just get a reed and don't worry about the sound you get"
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: johnsonfromwisconsin
Date: 2004-08-24 20:51
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(And yes, I know that many people think that the soprano sax is a metal clarinet.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As a saxophone player, I do as much to perpetuate that myth as is possible.
:D
-JfW
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: diz
Date: 2004-08-25 02:29
Bob Marley, quite obviously, never sat in front of trumpets or trombones in an orchestra:
"one good thing about music, when it hits - you feel no pain"
(Bob Marley - Jamaican singer, guitarist and composer, "king of Reggae" 1945-1981)
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
Post Edited (2004-08-25 02:30)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: pzaur
Date: 2004-08-25 03:09
Stupid, but definitely not funny, maybe a little sad:
"Clarinets, bite to play the altissimo D and higher notes."
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Topher
Date: 2004-08-25 19:44
At honors band two years ago we were preforming "October," and at one point there was a blatant "musical disturbance" in the baritones. When the director had them play the section in question (a divisi section that was a little difficult to read), all but one hit the line right on. When the baritone in question kept making mistakes at that part, the director asked him what was wrong. He said "That part of the music is just a bunch of notes on a staff!"
After a good laugh one of the first trumpets pointed out that that was what music usually was.
topher
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Kevin
Date: 2004-08-25 22:00
"What a giftless bastard!"
- Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky to his diary in 1886, on Johannes Brahms
"[Tchaikosvky's Violin Concerto] stank to the ear."
- Music critic Eduard Hanslick, after the concerto's Vienna premiere
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: diz
Date: 2004-08-25 22:11
Kevin ... fine quotes, I'd heard the Tchaikovsky Brahms' quote but not the Hanslick one. I'm glad both of them were proved very, very wrong.
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Kevin
Date: 2004-08-25 22:59
Thanks, Diz.
---------
"Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth."
- Ludwig van Beethoven
"There's a basic rule which runs through all kinds of music, kind of an unwritten rule. I don't know what it is. But I've got it."
-Ron Wood
"Country music is three chords and the truth."
-Harlan Howard
---------
The following are from a book I own, "How They Said It: Wise and Witty Letters From the Famous and Infamous" by Rosalie Maggio. Not quite stupid, but humerous letters worth reading...
Ludwig van Beethoven to composer and pianist Johann Hummel:
"Never come near me again! You are a faithless cur, and may the hangman take all faithless curs.
- Beethoven"
The next day:
"My dearest Nazeral. You are an honest fellow and I now perceive you were right, so come to see me this afternoon; Schuppanzigh will be here too, and the pair of us will scold you, cuff you, and shake you to your heart's content. A warm embrace from
- your Beethoven, also known as Little Dumpling"
---
Wolgang Amadeus Mozart to his cousin
"...Adieu little cousing. I am, I was, I should be, I have been, I had been, I should have been, oh, if I only were, oh, that I were, would God I were; I could be, I shall be, if I were to be, oh, that I might be, I would have been, oh, had I been, oh that I had been, would God I had been - what? A dried cod! Adieu ma chere Cousing, whither away? I am your faithful cousing,
-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart"
---
Arnold Schoenberg to Otto Klemperer
"Dear Klemperer,
You have been been misinformed. I did not say that you 'do not like some of my works.' On the contrary:
I quoted verbatim what you said to me in a discussion that I am sure you have not forgotten: 'Your music has become alien to me.'
That is not 'some' of my works but ALL my works. There should therefore be no need for any further explanation why I then consider that you should cease to conduct my works. For what can a performance be like if the music has become alien to one?
How it can possibly be insulting to you for me to quote your words requires elucidation.
The fact that you have become estranged from my music has not caused me to feel insulted, though it has certainly estranged me. I do not mean to say that I shall take no further interest in you; although I have no notion how the broken (artistic) bridge is ever to function again.
With best wishes for your health,
Yours sincerely, Arnold Schoenberg"
Post Edited (2004-08-25 23:02)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: eskil
Date: 2004-08-26 19:56
Quote from a friend on hearing me on the clarinet:
"That must be really difficult. It sounds difficult when you play it, anyway..."
:( eskil
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Dragonpuppy
Date: 2004-08-28 12:38
When a teacher was doing a "mind reading" trick on us.
Pick a number.
Add/multiply/divide/subtract (I forgot...)
Whatever number that is, match it with the letter in the alphabet. Ex. A=1
a b c d e f g a b... wait.... that can't be right....
a b c d e f g a b c..... whats wrong with the alphabet?
then i realized that i had been using the wrong alphabet!
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Fred
Date: 2004-08-28 19:48
Trumpets, let's hear it at letter B . . .
That sounds terrible. Let me hear it up an octave . . .
Better . . . but still not right. So take it up an octave and leave it out!
(Fondly remembered from Dr. C. A. "Pete" Wiley)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: psychotic lil clarinet girl (don't as
Date: 2004-08-28 20:08
My friend is an alto and she talked to her choir teacher a couple years ago about improving her range. The teacher told her "sure I'll get you to first soprano by the end of the year."
Now she's a tenor.
MWUAHAHAHAHAqaHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!11
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Bani
Date: 2004-08-30 05:07
From our choirmaster:
"Never mind if you're all out of tune. As long as you all do it together it sounds right."
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: GBK
Date: 2004-08-30 05:19
"I just got a clarinet. Never played it before, but I thought I would teach myself" ...GBK
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: sbbishop
Date: 2004-08-30 21:31
I once asked my wife how I sounded?
Post Edited (2004-08-31 18:51)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: chicagoclar
Date: 2004-09-04 19:45
When concerning "intonation shifts"-especially from flat to sharp
"Violins! Do you wanna play fiddle in a country western band?" Principal answers "Sure, how much does it pay?"
When one of our "percussionists" (he was a freshman) kept screwing up a timpani solo, our director turned to a grad student and said, "Doug play that darned thing for him. We don't have time to potty train in here."
Never seen a smile so big on the faces of the woodwind section-our director is notorious for picking on the woodwinds.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
