 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Barrie Marshall
Date: 2002-08-23 20:34
Lets have some clarinet horror stories, I have just posted one on 'Odd Man Out' about destroying a mouthpiece, here is another.
I was trying out two different clarinets at home before I went on a gig, I lost track of the time and when my lift arrived I quickly put them away and grabbed my favourite instrument and happily went off to do another great gig with the band, we arrived and I unpacked my clarinet to assemble. shock-horror I had an upper and lower joint from two different clarinets and they would not fit together, the jazz band had to play without me and sadly I had to spend all night at the bar, happily I was not driving.
Barrie
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Author: Ralph G
Date: 2002-08-23 20:40
High school, I'm in the tryout room with about 30 other clarinetists playing one by one to the judges who had their backs turned. It's the late rounds and I have a feeling I'm gonna get first chair. My turn comes up, I get in the hot seat, start playing, and I get the gurgles in the C#/G# hole. I stop in horror, turn to a colleague who's about to toss me a swab, but a judge says "keep going." I muddle through it. I end up 4th.
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Author: javier garcia
Date: 2002-08-23 20:53
An octet concert on a church. At the intermezzo I put the mp on the stand to swab my clarinet. The mp fall down and break in three or four pieces. Fortunately my fellow clarinetist had a second mp (very bad) and I could play the final repertoire.
The day after I've bought my current B45.
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Author: Barrie Marshall
Date: 2002-08-23 21:58
Here I am replying to my own posting
I always have a a spare mouthpiece because after one gig I made the fatal mistake of placing my beloved instrument on top of a pile of cardboard boxes I turned my back and heard a srange noise behind me, the boxes had collapsed and my clarinet had rolled off and hit the floor like a missile, it was OK but I had a mouthpiece in about a million pieces.
Barrie Marshall
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Author: William
Date: 2002-08-23 22:36
As a high school student, playing the Weber, CONCERTINO at my first State Solo and Ensemble Festival--Himie Voxman, the judge--and halfway through the first page, my low F pad falls out onto the floor. Stop--pick it up, reinsert it in the cup and continue playing only to have it fall out during the next line. Mr. Voxman askes if I have a match?--no. Does anyone have a match??--no. Do you have any gum???--n,n,no; Well, wet it and put it back in and continue playing. OK. And so it went, play--fall out, play--fall out, etc until I completed my performance. My accompaniest was red-faced from holding in his amusement and I was very apologetic as I left the room, my clarinet in one hand and the pad in the other. Later in the day, I learned that Mr. Voxman was the most understanding and kind adjudicator I would ever encounter--he awarded my performance with a first division rating--one of the few of the morning.
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Author: jbutler
Date: 2002-08-23 23:27
Okay, I've got two:
1. I was on my way to my Junior recital (ed. major/saxophone minor). I was carrying my MKVI in case in one hand and my music and other crap in the other. I opened to door to the recital hall and wasn't paying attention when the door came back on my arm and the sax case hit hard on the floor. I didn't think much about it but when I started warming up I couldn't play but just a couple of notes. The shock of hitting the floor was enough to bend a rod. I went to my professor's studio. Luckily, he was there and let me borrow his Balanced Action alto. It felt and responded a lot differently. To say the least the recital didn't go very well.
2. My woodwind professor always had a semester recital at his house. He put on a big spread and fed all of his students like we were royalty. After the dinner we performed. It was always a nice intimate setting. Well, the day of the recital....it was such a beautiful spring day. I got on my Harley (yeah, I was one of THOSE guys back then) and went tripping around North Texas. I was enjoying the ride so much I completely forgot about the recital. When I got back to the dorm there was a message waiting for me...I guess know who it was from! Actually, he was worried about me since I didn't show. The next day when I "fessed" up it was hard for him to control his temper, but he managed.....I got the "privelege" of performing on the weekly fine arts recital hour for a few weeks running to make up for my "forgetfullness". I still get embarrassed telling this one.
jbutler
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Author: Ken
Date: 2002-08-23 23:39
Horror or hilarity? Here's a true-to-life "band" tale worth repeating again and again. My old concert band used to perform evening "gazebo in the park" summer concerts for the Philadelphia VFW. On this occasion we got rained-out last minute and forced to set up and play at an alternate indoor site. The provided facility was an inner city 100+-year-old elementary school in one of those all-purpose gymnasiums and rickety wooden stages. The room had only six tiny windows high on the walls, four dim ceiling cleaning lights and a portable 12-spot lighting tree. The band chipped in, set-up folding chairs and hurriedly took stage. By downbeat it was dark outside and the hall was pitch-black.
It was customary during the program for our conductor to incorporate "kiddie conducting". He would canvas the audience, randomly select a little boy/girl and have them come up and flap their arms to a march. Normally, he'd only have to wade through the first couple rows to find his candidates but this time (due to the poor lighting and inordinate number of elderly) he had search the entire audience to find two kids.
I was sitting on the end of the band 2nd row, stage right. He was gone for what seemed an eternity and I kept peering out into the blackness to see where he was but couldn't see. Finally he found the kids, made his way back up to the stage and began ascending the front staircase behind me. A major ruckus suddenly erupted on the other side of the band, the flutes, horns and bones started busting a gut; beet-red faces, streaming tears and cradling their heads in their hands. I turned around to see what all the excitement was about and saw my Director walking up the stairs hand-in-hand with a little boy (maybe 8) in one hand and what turned out to be a female "midget" in her 40s in the other!
Our conductor a determined professional (his baldhead as red as a rutabaga by now) introduced the unlikely couple and escorted the "lady" to the podium first. He grabbed her arms from the rear in an attempt to help give her the downbeat to "Bravura" but she shocked everyone snatching the baton from his hands and cried, “I can do it myself I’m very musical!” Not cool; that remark set the band off even more. At this point it was useless, the band was so broke up that when the stick came down only one trumpet player had enough control of himself to make the entrance and even he fizzled out after the first 4 bars. We had to stop, regroup and then managed to get through the piece. Needless to say, we got our rumps royally chewed after the concert for that one. v/r KEN <:-D
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Author: Kat
Date: 2002-08-23 23:49
Entertaining thread.
I've got a couple to add, of course...
1) Ever hear of a bass drum roll? One kid in our marching band (about 17 years ago) tripped while walking down the hill to our practice field. Like I said, it WAS a HILL...
2) Yes, another bass drum story. I played bass drum senior year in h.s. marching band (again, this was about 17 yrs ago). We had 4 pitched bass drums, and I played the second-smallest. For our performance in the Preakness parade in Baltimore, we had another clarinetist playing the drum just larger than mine. She was a slender girl though, and with our wool band unis (I grew up in Ohio), she was suffering through the heat and humidity that Baltimore offers. Her drum was getting heavy for her too, so she ended up laying out for a while and holding onto the rims of the drum. While she was doing this, I was making sure she was ok. While we paused at a corner, I managed not to notice the trombone player in front of me stumble. I met that manhole with a severe trip. My knees crashed to the ground, then the drum, and then my arms swung down and hit the rims. I think I bumped my chin too. The rest of the band marched past me, and then the asst. band director helped me put the drum back on, and I scuttled back to my place in the drum line. I had the biggest, nastiest-colored bruises EVER on my arms for weeks after!!!
And then there was the time in 7th grade when someone bumped me from behind and my clarinet mp went into my eye!
Katrina
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Author: Jamie Talbot
Date: 2002-08-23 23:55
When I was a teenager I played clarinet in the London Schools Symphony Orchestra.One concert we did included Procofievs' Romeo and Juliet which has a tenor sax solo in it starting on a low C#.
Rehearsals were fine but on the concert I couldn,t,for the life of me,get the C# to come out.The conductor was giving me a puzzled look
and eventually I discovered that my suit tails were tangled up in the keywork.I still break out in a sweat thinking about it!
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Author: GBK
Date: 2002-08-24 00:01
Never let other teachers use your band room as an after school detention room:
There was the time when my 8th grade tuba student came in to the band room for his weekly lesson.
Normally a very good low brass player, he was having extreme difficulty that day producing any sound at all.
After thorough examination of all possibilities, we discovered that one of his classmates had thought it would be humorous to insert a bag lunch deep inside the bell of the tuba.
It was the month of May, and the week old sandwich was tuna fish...GBK
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Author: Cindy
Date: 2002-08-24 04:15
During marching band a year ago, we had a move that became affectionately known as the "suicide move" The first time we learned it, everyone was falling over eachother, and it didn't get much better than that. But, in a full runthrough a girl who had just learned the move forgot that we had to take really really really big steps, and got hit hard from the front. She fell, and her hand hit her clarinet. She was not hurt, but the clarinet was literally snapped in two.
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Author: Lisa
Date: 2002-08-24 06:26
Not really instrument related, but band-related nonetheless.
When I was a teenager I played first clarinet in my local British Legion band in a popular seaside resort in South West England. Every monday and thursday night, we would give free concerts on the town quay for the holidaymakers, a tradition that had been going on for years and years. Our "bandstand" was literally the old disused spot on the quay where the trawlers used to land their catches, and as the port was still a working harbour, there were always several large sea-trawlers moored up next to where we played.
One night we were merrily playing away, when suddenly we heard this massive "creak" - followed by a several very loud "snapping" noises like guns going off. We all tried to surrepticiously look around to see what was going on while keeping one eye on the conductor only to see a massive 100-odd foot long trawler snap all it's moorings and fall sideways into the harbour. Cue massive splash, water everywhere, and the whole band in fits of giggles trying so hard to be professional and ignore our lovely backdrop of a sinking ship!
Lisa
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Author: John
Date: 2002-08-24 14:47
I was playing a Puccini opera in college and there was a quick change from Bb to A. The reed and ligature came off in my hand and the conductor whistled the beautiful clarinet solo. Later, people complimented me on how much better that solo sounded!
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Author: Ginny
Date: 2002-08-24 21:22
I had been hired to play for a fancy dinner is SF on classical guitar. And of course there was terrible traffic, so I was running late. The Fiore de Itali was on Union, and I assumed (dumb) Union Square. I was lost and in stop n go (mostly stop) traffic, I asked a passing motorcylist (one way and next to my window) if he knew where the restaurant was. It was on Union Street, and he pointed the way. Off I crept. A block later, the motorcyclist caught up with me again, and said he'd misguided me and he'd drive there and I could follow. OK. We arrived in North Beach! a few mins. before I was to start. No garages, parking is always grim. The kind motorcyclist waved goodbye, and a parking spot opened in front of Beach Blanket Babylon's theatre, never had such a thing happened on Friday evening in SF before. I got out of the car, late and unhappy, when up walks a fellow guitarist from the Conservatory. Hey aren't you George's student, aren't you Daivd's we exchange. Let me give you a hand with your stuff...
Luck and the kindness of strangers.
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Author: David Pegel
Date: 2002-08-25 15:20
Speaking of suicide moves in marching band... my freshman year we had a great marching show with it's own "suicide move". The percussion break choreography was meant to look like a battle scene. The color guard even had sword fights. But the major crowd grabber was the tenor drum solo where the band, divded into a woodwind group and a brass group, suddenly charged through each other, taking 40 inch steps at 180 beats per minute.
At our last football game we were performing in the rain. That was when I found out that rain makes grass really slippery. During our big move, when we suddenly start to change direction, half the band does a "baseball slide", including the tuba section. I was one of the few that was standing at the end of the move, though I did flail around a lot.
Fortunately the crowd thought it was part of the show.
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Author: Melanie
Date: 2002-08-26 07:03
In high school, we were travelling to a jazz band competition about 6 hours away from our school.Our director told everyone to put the music in a box so that it would all be together. Everyone did as told. We all got on the bus and drove off. The bus got a flat tire, and then we were stuck in the snow. We arived at the festival a day late, but they let us perform anyways. We had all worn our nice clothes the day before so we just had jeans and t-shirts left. When we went to unload everything, we realized that our music was altogether just as it was supposed to be, except it was still in the band room back home. We performed from memory and still received high marks, I guess things always work out.
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Author: Ken
Date: 2002-08-26 16:23
Here's two more classics rolled into one...and YES it really happened and just like I’m telling it. My ceremonial band marched a 5-mile New York City ticker-tape parade (from what I recall it was the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade). The band bussed up from central Jersey and was running extremely late getting caught in a traffic accident in the Lincoln tunnel. When we rolled-up to the site one of the parade marshals charged the bus and screamed at us we had less than 5 minutes to step off. We scrambled as swiftly as possible changing into our uniforms; shirts, pants, shoes and hats were flying everywhere. We all piled out of the bus and into formation. In this particular formation the drum section formed-up in the middle of the band, the bass drum far right on the outside of a 5-person front; a row of clarinets (me) were behind them and one file to the left. On this occasion, one our talented but notoriously klutzy bassoonists volunteered to bang the bass drum. To start off the event literally on the wrong foot I was straightening my hat, happened to look down and noticed the bass drummer put on/was wearing two "left shoes". We barely got formed up and called to attention when the drum major got the signal to step off.
We stepped off so quickly the bass drummer didn't have time to fasten/harness his drum properly. Marching down the street (at a brisk pace and with unusually large steps) he managed to latch the ride side up but still not the left. He continued struggling with the drum to get a grip, the left side hanging and pulling him down. This is where the scene really got interesting. As he was trying to balance and grasp the drum "and beater" in his right hand he decided he needed to free up his right hand more by temporarily doing something with the beater. Well, instead of stuffing it in his pants pocket, inside his coat or passing it to the drummer next to him he chose to shove it in "his mouth". Not a bad idea right? wrong-o, this guy couldn't just slip the handle into his mouth sideways, n-o-o-o-o-o, he had to be creative and attempt to jam it in his mouth “beater end" first! It was an amazing sight to behold; he looked like a 200-pound large mouth bass getting a hook removed! He did somehow get it stuffed in his mouth and press on with the challenge. He began lurching to his left with both hands trying to secure the other hook and his head bobbing up and down. I was impressed, with the handle of the beater wildly waving around about his face he looked like he was conducting the "Americans We" march we were playing at circus tempo. It only gets better and more unbelievable, just as he got the left hook latched he wasn't watching and stepped squarely into a fresh lump of steaming horse dung and lost his footing. As he slipped he started falling backwards, his face almost straight up in the air. I and the clarinet player behind him reached forward to grab him and just as we caught him a gob of runny bird crap dropped out of the sky and caught him square on the lips and all across the bill of his hat.
The soap opera STILL isn't over with this guy. 3 miles into the parade we had to march halfway up a street with a reasonably steep incline. We had to do an "about face" and stand at attention for about 15 minutes while there was a brief memorial service, flag folding, prayer and taps. I remember the hill was steep enough the band had to actually dig their heels in and lean backwards to maintain their balance. After the speech, the clergy began his prayer and heads were bowed in silence. The Drum Major (for some reason) chose that moment to turnaround and motion the whole drum section to "put 'em down". As the bass drummer unfastened both side of his harness (yep, you guessed it) he lost his grip and the bass drum crashed to the street with an echoing BOOM. It got away from him, bounced and tumbled like a beach ball 30-40 feet down the street. It proceeded to slam into the curb and landed in the lap of a kid in a wheel chair knocking him and the chair over. Thankfully, we were far enough away from the stage so it didn't disturb the ceremony. The Drum Major dashed down the hill and retrieved the runaway drum. He politely helped the stunned but “unharmed boy” back into his chair, apologized profusely, carried the drum back up the hill returning it to the bass drummer and accompanied by probably the dirtiest and most evil look of the 20th century from one person to another. v/r KEN
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