 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: bflatclarinetist
Date: 2005-03-25 19:40
I remember when my band had a clinic the clinician was dancing when she was conducting (dance moves include the "wave"). My embouchure was getting loose because for a second I was have an outburst but I swallowed it back and continued playing (good thing). Then another time at rehearsal I was playing for a long time without a break and there was a lot of spit in my horn. Then all of a sudden a big drop of spit went into my shoe! Yeah...wasn't pretty pleasant I'd say.
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Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2005-03-25 19:48
I was playing tenor sax (my first tenor, a Vito) many years ago in a Top-40 band, at a military officers' club, when in the middle of a solo the left-hand palm D key came unsoldered and fell off. I let out a very undignified expletive and left the stage. I soon thereafter sold the Vito and bought a much nicer tenor.
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Author: psychotic lil clarinet girl (don't as
Date: 2005-03-25 19:50
Well, mine doesn't really come close to yours.
I once faked a whole marching band show, except for the clarinet soli, because I had just started playing. I also had trouble keeping in step while playing.
I once faked a whole rehearsal, because the one reed I had left was smushed. So, I had no reed, and I just pretended to finger everything. The band director said nothing, because he didn't notice. Just goes to show that clarinets aren't much noticed.
One time I was playing bass, started to take it apart, and I got spit all over me... haha, but oh well I got over it.
Maybe I should go on that TV show called "Faking It"!
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Author: Ralph G
Date: 2005-03-25 19:54
Quote:
I once faked a whole marching band show
Whole show? I faked my entire freshman year because I couldn't march and play. By soph year it came together.
________________
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
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Author: VermontJM
Date: 2005-03-25 20:29
My very first college recital, I went to bring my clarinet to my mouth and something went wrong- I bashed my lip with my mouthpiece and just had to keep going. I was about a quarter of the way through when I realized I could taste blood... luckily, it stayed IN my mouth....
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Author: xtreblexclefx
Date: 2005-03-25 20:38
I had just gotten my brand-new Buffet Proffessional whatever model wooden clarinet, my pride and joy, and was showing it off at a festival. We were waiting to enter the stage and I was nervous about my reed being on correctly (it's so picky), so I was stupidly holding my clarinet by the barrel and adjusting the reed. I had it greased so nicely that the barrel slipped out and the rest of the instrument went crashing to the floor. I yelled the worst expletive that came to mind (something inapporipriate having to do with ducks, as I remember) and everyone in the band turned around and stared at me. Luckily my clarinet made it out alive.
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Author: Elizabeth
Date: 2005-03-25 20:50
I played my freshman year of marching band in step and in rythmn...
And I've faked every year after. (I hate it : )
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Author: RodRubber
Date: 2005-03-25 21:50
I was about to perform tchaikovsky fifth symphony, my first time subbing in a particular professional orchestra. Before the concert i went to get a sub with a buddy. I ordered a "pizza Steak Sub." I bit into it and the tomato sauce was so hot, it really burnt the roof of my mouth! Within about a half hour, the roof of my mouth formed a large blister. [Get ready for the gross part] I used my tongue to kind of break the blister open, but blood or whatever was oozing out the whole time. I Started warming up back stage on one of the best reeds i ever had, given to me by Anthony Gigliotti, whose reeds always seemed to be the best i ever tried. Through out the performance, blood was saturating the reed, and by the end of the symphony, it was useless, and i was in serious pain. Luckily, they hired me again, and the next time, all my bodily fluids stayed bodily.
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Author: psychotic lil clarinet girl (don't as
Date: 2005-03-25 22:13
>Whole show? I faked my entire freshman year because I couldn't march >and play. By soph year it came together.
yeah... I meant the whole show except for the soli for the whole season! I got my act together by sophmore year.
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Author: Melissa
Date: 2005-03-25 23:12
At least your spit stories were about your own spit. I was in a pit band this past Christmas, and the bass clarinet player beside me took off the neck of his instrument and dumped his spit directly onto my arm which then dribbled down my leg. Now, this wouldn't have been so bad, except for the fact that he had about half a cup full of spit in that thing causing me to be soaked for the whole drive home.
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Author: Steve Epstein
Date: 2005-03-25 23:52
Eewww! Gross!
I used to try to get the attention of a certain fiddle player in our contradance band by shaking a little spit from the middle joint of my clarinet into a little puddle on the floor by her chair when she sat next to me. But never actually on her. Didn't work, though. ![[grin]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie5.gif)
Steve Epstein
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Author: sfalexi
Date: 2005-03-26 00:00
It had rained just before a marching band show/rehearsal (can't remember which) and when I was marching around, I stepped in a deep spot, and pulled out my foot without a shoe on the end of it. But I kept going with one shoe until the end of the piece and received my shoe later after someone was kind enough to run out onto the field as we were exiting and hand it to me.
There are TONS of goofy things that happened to me in my book (some intentionally), but this one is pretty memorable.
Alexi
US Army Japan Band
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Author: psychotic lil clarinet girl (don't as
Date: 2005-03-26 00:06
it's not my story, but I'm gonna tell it anyways.
It about a friend of mine who plays clarinet. Anyways, we were in the bandroom all dressed in our uniforms for a football game. Well the football game got rained out. My friend didn't have anything else to wear, so he wore his bib pants from his marching band uniform, and he got a ride home. Well on his way home, the person he got a ride from turns the wrong way. Well it's all raining and everything and they get stuck in a ditch. My friend, not wanting to get his uniform dirty, takes off his bib pants and he's in the middle of the road in the rain trying to push a car out of a ditch in his boxers. Someone he knows drives by and sees him, and they finally get home.
That has got to be one of the worst experiences...
Oh and another guy, during marching band rehearsal, kept on marching although his pants had fallen down. No one who was marching saw it, but the band director sure did. We had no clue why they were laughing until we heard. I commend that boy...
Post Edited (2005-03-26 00:08)
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Author: pzaur
Date: 2005-03-26 00:48
Not necessarily a bad experience for me, but my high school band director. It was a typical Tuesday night rehearsal. Multiple repitions on sections of the music and such. My high school band director was on the field working with a section/individual when all of a sudden the sprinklers came on on the football field. Needless to say, my HS band director got a shot of water right up the middle up his rear. Nothing like a nice cleansing to end the day!
-pat
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Author: Aussiegirl
Date: 2005-03-26 03:35
Playing bari sax in a stage band, sitting down when the troms were standing, and getting a shower of "musical juice" into my hair whilst i was playing by that kind bass trombone player behind me...not nice! Ive recently mimed a whole week of choir rehearsals because i lost my voice and its a requirement of my uni course that i go to my ensembles...i was so terrified the conductor would notice!
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Author: bob49t
Date: 2005-03-26 09:06
I was going to post this as a new thread when my embarrassment died down, but it somehow seems appropriate to post it here......................
Setting the scene...
Well, my 94 year old dad broke his arm 3 weeks ago. Just two weeks ago my 92 year old mother became acutely ill and was admitted to hospital with kidney disfunction. I just had time to visit her and then speed off to play Me and My Girl in a town twelve miles away. Due to road works, the alternative route I had chosen was logjammed. I arrived just in time and put together the three instruments I needed, then struggled into the pit.
You can appreciate that I was really preoccupied, harrassed and not really wanting to be there.
The deed...
All started fine until in a short burst of stage dialogue, I turned two pages to look at a particularly tricky tenor sax break in number 8. Being satisfied that I'd nailed it mentally, I turned back, but only one page ! I then waited for the next number to begin, reading that I had had 6 back rest to start. My neighbour on alto leaned to me and said hurriedly, your note for the singer!!!!!!!!! JEES !!!!!!!!!!!!
So, I was on the wrong instrument with the wrong page in front of me. The singer was patiently waiting for his note.
The solution...
Ever the innovator, I quickly decided that the best option was to sing his note to him. Now I could remember it was an open G, but what came out sounded fine at the time but may have been Z for all I know. It was given however, with wondrous zeal and commitment. The singer followed it beautifully like a lamb to the slaughter ...............................
When the band joined in ..........................you can imagine........... 10 bars later the singer arrived at the pitch.............
I can tell you after the day I'd had and once the mortification subsided, it really brightened up my day. The band of course was in stitches. Just what I needed....but not the singer.
The moral then is...
Even if you're in the worst imaginable bind, if you don't have perfect pitch don't ever substitute voice for instrument..........unless you have suicidal tendencies.
That brings a smile every time I think of it !
BobT
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Author: Synonymous Botch
Date: 2005-03-26 11:34
My first bari sax solo (a soulful rendition of "Line for Lyons") was accompanied by a tuneful emanation out of the audience.
I don't know what was funnier - the tittering from the audience at the moment of interruption, or when the director had me take a bow after the number and then acknowledged the accompanist in row 6...
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Author: ken
Date: 2005-03-26 13:00
I once single-handedly held up a concert and 500 people for five minutes. As a Senior, I was performing the Weber Concertino for a high school band evening concert. The event was held in the school cafeteria and began with the compulsory Overture, a march next (which I left stage) followed by the first half featured solo. After leaving stage, I decided to quick-change reeds but wanted to also noodle a little. I slipped down the hall into a fortuitously unlocked classroom and made the switch. It seemed like two minutes at most but I apparently lost track of time. Suddenly, my band director flung open the door with a beat-red face and shouted, "get your ass on that stage!" I bolted out of the room, entered the cafeteria from the rear and up the center isle between the audience.
As I reached the front row I heard another out-of-breath voice cry from the rear of the room, "Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States!" It was my Dad, he was running all over the school looking for me too... v/r Ken
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Author: Melissa
Date: 2005-03-26 14:02
More pit band stories:
Two years ago I was in another pit band and was on my way to one of our performances. It was at a new theatre than the other performances, and was also at another time. However, I didn't realize that and showed up at the time the other shows started. Too bad that this show started an hour earlier and I ended up showing up 5 minutes before I had to play. It was ok though, because the conductor and I got a ride together and both showed up late
Another fun story was when spit was lodged in my c# tone hole. I forgot my papers and my rag in my clarinet case and was forced to use some money in my wallet. It didn't work very well, and my C# was now playing a C. I had a very important solo coming up that needed C# so I took off like a bullet and ran back stage to find my clarinet case to get my stuff. I ended up getting the spit clear, but that had to have been the most stressful event ever.
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Author: GBK
Date: 2005-03-26 15:46
About 10 years ago:
Moussorgsky's Night on the Bare (Bald) Mountain, 12 measure rest before the big clarinet solo at the end of the piece, I take off the mouthpiece to swab out the clarinet one final time. The entire tenon cork of the mouthpiece comes off in my hand! (probably should have been using some of Doc's cork grease)
The 1st bassoonist, seeing my utter panic (and ashen complexion) thinks quickly and rips a strip of material off her silk swab. She hands it to me and I wrap it around the bottom of the mouthpiece and wedge everything back into the barrel. Amazingly I created enough of a seal to play the solo.
I bought the bassoonist a new swab and some bassoon reeds in appreciation.
Now I always keep a second mouthpiece and reed set-up within arm's reach (and only use The Doctor's lubricants) ...GBK
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Author: sgp1010
Date: 2005-03-31 04:09
Last year, playing William Tell Overture at a symphony orchestra concert.........the cello's had just finished their big solo, playing it beautifully, and the storm sequence had started with raindrop unison clarinets and bassoons answering upper winds...the intonation, dynamics and ensemble were spot on, the tension was just right and building. I'm thinking....."this is going to be a good performance" and then in all this pianissimo my plastic Optimum ligature cap fell out my pocket and noisily clattered down a couple of rises..........
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Author: Contra
Date: 2005-03-31 04:29
I faked most of the marching band shows I've been in. Not one person noticed. Thus, I'm not marching clarinet anymore.
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2005-03-31 13:18
Like Vermont JM earlier, I banged my lower lip against a partially-opened car window, just before a 3 hour dance band gig, then played Alto sax,"loose lipped", tuned high! Most embarassing , rehearsing [symp] the "Mouldy-Do" 2nd cl part [for C clar, trans'g to Bb], I couldn't find the fingerings and timings in the "fast - river" parts, together, lost my seat !! Also in a local symp concert, a HS [good] oboe soloist, was sufficiently distracted by someone's (*&^%] kid playing in front of the stage, to forget her memorized solos, to have to stop, chide the parent, and go on with shattered nerves, did well, considering !! Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2005-03-31 13:51
It probably doesn't get much worse than this one:
Right before (as in during the oboist tuning) a concert with the Riverside Sym. I got sick. Had eaten Chinese food 1 1/2 hours before the concert and suddenly I felt sick - were talking serious gastric distress here - Montezuma's revenge.
The concert started and for the entire 1st half I was dying in my seat. I turned ash white and looked really, really ill. It was an opera concert with many soloists so nobody in the audience probably saw me at all - that was a good thing. I managed to not have an accident, but came o so close.
I proved to myself that a concert can actually be played while "out of body" as 100% of my mind at that point was on not ruining my tux and the players around me.
Now here's where it get's silly - I make a break for the bathroom as quickly as I can and managed to find an empty stall right away. All the others were full. I start (the heavens were falling at that point) and look - no toilet paper!!!!!
So I ask the stall next to me if he could please pass me a roll.
"Ok, here" was the familiar voice
it was my father
My parents had attended the concert. He said I looked like I had the flu for that half of the concert.
I was so traumatized from that experience that for the next 6 months I made certain to eat really, really lightly hours before. I do travel gigs where we get $50 a day for food - but never ever again near the concert!!!
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Author: MSK
Date: 2005-04-01 01:27
This falls more into the category of embarrassing than bad: It was kind of sweet really.... My son is way too young to attend concerts of the symphony I play with. Last year, I was playing in an informal church recital. My husband thought it would be nice for our then 2 1/2 year old son to hear me play in public so he had him in the back to watch. Before the end of the piece, my son got loose from him and came running up the aisle enthusiastically yelling "Way to go Mommy!" Fortunately, the audience thought it was cute.
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Author: clarinetist04
Date: 2005-04-01 05:18
Haha, good stories.
I was getting ready to play the beautiful clarinet solos in the L'Arlessiene No. 1 Mvt. 2 (the slow one) and I am ready and feeling good. I start to play and I can't get anything out, as the reed and mouthpiece had gotten spit lodged into it. So I'm bearing through this, not once does the 2nd clarinet decide to give me a hand, and oh, was that embarrassing seeing the conductor look at me with these "you've gotta get this going!" eyes. It was an interesting night. That concert pretty much sucked all around.
Another time I was playing the Crosse (composer) Carnival of Venice Variations for clarinet quartet at a band concert and we were in the middle of the third movement which was adagio. There is this part where, basically, the 1st clarinet is moaning, playing a tune that is supposed to be like someone crying (not literally, but beautifully). So I am in the clarion register and the progression is from G to Ab. Well, spit had built up in the Ab/G# key (in the clarion register) and when I hit it to get the Ab out, all that came out was a horrendous squeek. The other three clarinets were playing piano and I was playing forte and this squeek happens. I could have died, considering all eyes were on me. Did I ever want that to be over really quickly!
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Author: bobmi74
Date: 2005-04-01 22:12
During all-state band my junior year of HS, i was second chair. We were playing the band arangement of Morning Noon and Night in Vienna. Lovely piece. Anyways, first chair girl had this beautiful page-and-a-half solo. I mean SOLO. So, we only had like 3 days of reahearsal and such. The concert day was monday. Monday morning comes around, and the first chair wasn't there. Conductor looks at me, and asks me to play it. I fake my way through it, but better than the third and fourth chairs could. So i had to play it that night at the concert. Band directors from across the state, and college directors from all over were there. At the beginning of the solo, i had to hit a High D and decrecendo to nothing. I decrescendoed to a squeak. It embarrassed me. But i kept going and did alright after that. i figured that was the major mess-up, so nothing else could be worse.
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Author: xmisskate07x
Date: 2005-04-02 23:26
on the topic of spit stories...heres a memory from back when i was in 8th grade...
my eighth grade year we had three trombones in our middle school symphonic band...none of the three were really interested in the whole music thing and since then all three have sold their instruments and quit band...but they were always looking for something they could do to amuse themselves.
when school started in august the three of them all brought empty spray bottles to school...and whenever they emptied spit valves...they emptied it directly into the bottles...then screwed the lids back on at the end of each rehearsal and kept the bottles in their cases.
im sure the brass knew what was going on...but from the clarinet section in the front row...we had absolutely no idea.
so this was going on through the whole school year...and by the time may comes theyve all got plastic spray bottles almost filled with "trombone juice."
so it was getting to the end of the year and we were in the band hall after school having one of our last rehearsals before our end-of-the-year concert...and the trombone section decides its a good time to unleash their spray bottle secret. so when the director told us we were done...the three trombones put their instruments away as quickly as possible, then grabbed their bottles, ran to the front of the band, and proceeded to attack the upper woodwinds with them...
we were all slightly bothered...thinking it was just water but not happy about getting all wet...until the one of the french horns ran over and told us exactly what was in those bottles...
ive never been so disgusted in my life...needless to say i took a long shower when i got home and washed my clothes immediately...
major EWW...lol
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Author: Aussiegirl
Date: 2005-04-03 00:48
xmisskate07x 's story reminded me of another fabulous spit story concerning the trombones....
Our comunity band played at an OctoberFest, basically a german beer drinking festival. We played a few sets and in between they gave us sandwiches and juice for those of us not old enough to drink beer. The conductor had spoken previously about enjoying the beer "in moderation" until after we had finished playing, but one of our troms (a middle aged policeman at that!) had a little too much and got a bit silly. In the middle of the happy wanderer i was being sprayed with a spray bottle (im hoping it was only water!) and this continued on for quite awhile when he wasnt playing....
it was weird.
Damn trombonists!
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