 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: ChrisArcand
Date: 2007-08-06 03:21
A recent thread has made me think of something interesting; perhaps it's been posted before. What's the most interesting location you've practiced? Or rather, interesting circumstances? A few of mine could be... (and these really aren't THAT odd; I know there's more interesting stories amongst you seasoned players...)
I recently visited a friend in northern Minnesota (aka: Middle of Nowhere. I mean, no postal-code sort of nowhere.) He has a cabin on a lake in the middle of the woods. Not wanting to disturb him and his other guests while they relaxed (I didn't want to play adagio all day long...), and seeing that the day was FANTASTIC (not too hot, not too cold, not too much sun, light breeze, etc...) I walked a ways out in the woods and practiced. (You know I'm a music major; I even bring my clarinet with me if I know there's no where practical to practice.)
When I was a junior in highschool I was between shows in a 2-show night in a musical; There was no real good place to practice around the theatre we were performing in, so I made my way across the school down to the basement where the gym is; there I found a dark gym, the only light being the light coming through the door I had come from. Late at night, that's a pretty cool place to play! Obviously MUCH too live acoustically (and too dark to see manuscript), but I played some exercises anyway. Then I heard some janitor somewhere and I packed stuff up and ran around the corner. He looked very confused.
I have a friend that claims he practiced in a newly-build house in his neighborhood - a house with complete walls, fireplace, etc, but no doors. How would you like to be the owners, coming to see the progress of the new house with some dumb horn player playing in it? "He comes with the house, obviously!"
CA
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Author: donald
Date: 2007-08-06 03:34
places that come to mind in my life....
- outside the Tom Bradley terminal at LAX (down stairs to the right if facing from entrance)
- under a tree on the side of a volcanic cone (Mt Eden/Mangawhai, Auckland) with a view stretching out miles to the western hills.
- in the front passenger seat of a car (many many times- only while car stationary)
- on the shore of Lake Taupo (centre of NZ North Island)
- Sydney Airport, transit terminal, gate 51 (for about 3 hours)
- Karori Shops (Wellington, NZ), at bus stop, 9pm at night... Conductor Marc Deccio Taddai (sp? oops) heard me playing Pines of Rome from affar and hunted me down...
- Ran through an entire Ritchie concertino (20th cent) for a colleague at the Courtney Place intersection opposite the Embassy Theatre (where all the Lord of Rings films were premiered) one sunny afternoon.
keep playing the good tunes
donald
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Author: Morrigan
Date: 2007-08-06 05:39
When I was a kid, I was so obsessed with the clarinet, I pretty much didn't stop playing. I used to play in the back seat of the car when we were going places: supermarket shopping, to drop a sibling off somewhere for something, etc. etc.
Not weird necessarily, just annoying for them!
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Author: Ski
Date: 2007-08-06 06:02
I was out running errands with my wife and the first stop was to pick up my clarinet from the repair shop. Afterwards, she had to go to Staples, and given the choice between staring a paper clips or playing my freshly fixed clarinet, the clarinet won out. Couldn't wait, actually! Good thing she was in there for a long time too. So, in the car in a parking lot at Staples.
Other than that, I practice in my studio where my two dogs are my audience. They're too polite to boo, but they often leave the room surreptitiously...
:-)
P.S. "he comes with the house" ---- LOL!!!
Post Edited (2007-08-06 16:34)
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2007-08-06 07:03
In an airplane bathroom. we had 4 hours of waiting before takeoff - I practiced for 1 hour in the crapper.
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Author: marcia
Date: 2007-08-06 07:38
Glad to know someone else has tried the bathroom. Although I suspect the acoustics in the airplane bathroom were not quite as good as in my hotel bathroom.
Marcia
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2007-08-06 12:02
I was giving lessons at a school that didn't have a place for me to teach.
So.........
They put me in a spare un-used Girls Locker Room which was right next (door was there) to the girls bathroom/other locker room.
It was creepy for sure. Worse was that I could hear (if between lessons) the bathroom echoing the talking which was going on (gossip, etc) as the door was right next to the sink area.
It wasn't cool, I complained and was eventually moved into the kitchen.
It wasn't a used kitchen except for when they would have pretzel sales - then the moms would be in there too packaging the pretzels while I was trying to teach.
Operative word is "trying".......
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2007-08-06 13:02
Two years ago I was moving my girlfriend (now wife) from Illinois to Virginia.
Getting off of the Pennsylvania Turnpike going into West Virginia she took (or didn't take) the proper exit and got BACK on the turnpike...leaving me with the truck in West Virginia waiting for her. Because of the exits, and her having to turn around at some point, I had about 30 minutes pulled over at a rest stop.
Absolutely gorgeous day. Perfect temp, and I had my bass newly tuned up by the Brannen's. So I found a picknick table away from hubub, and started playing "On the Trail" while looking at the mountains. My only concern was if someone were to come bother me with my $$$$ horn.
Lo and behold! someone does come down from the parking lot...and I'm thinking to myself about what kind of small talk I'm going to have to make with someone who thinks I'm playing the sax!
Mark my surprise when the man I met was Kevin Schempf, prof at Bowling Green St U, and bass clarinetist of the Toledo Symphony!
James
So the long and the short of it is: a rest-stop in West-by-god-Virginia.
Gnothi Seauton
Post Edited (2007-08-06 13:03)
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2007-08-06 13:54
A few decades ago I used to practice piccolo while a pillion passenger on a motorcycle, travelling along Mt Eden RD, a main street in Auckland, on the way to rehearsal.
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Author: William
Date: 2007-08-06 15:52
On an old abandoned logging trail in the Nicolet National Forest near the White Deer Lake campground in northern Wisconsin. No small animals were harmed...........
Post Edited (2007-08-06 15:53)
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Author: EuGeneSee
Date: 2007-08-06 16:25
When I was about 10 or 11, in elementary school band at Fairfax, VA, I used to practice in my treehouse . . . to get away from all my younger siblings and their constant racket (not that my playing sounded any better).
Eu
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Author: FrankM
Date: 2007-08-06 18:53
When my wife and I were first married, we lived in an apartment where noise was an issue to the neighbors. I could get away with clarinet occasionally, but tenor sax was always out. My in-laws had a dairy farm, so I used to go over to the cow barn and practice. I didn’t effect milk production one way or the other, so I guess my bovine audience didn’t mind.
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Author: Cindyr
Date: 2007-08-06 19:36
I take my clarinet up to the recreation hall where we vacation in Wolfeboro, N.H, making sure the coast is clear so I don't bother the other cottagers. What more could you want, with a beautiful lake view, and playing the clarinet? Summertime....And the Living is Easy!
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Author: ChrisArcand
Date: 2007-08-06 20:01
I almost forgot to tell my Eastman story:
If you've ever been to Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, you know the downside of the school - the practice rooms SUCK. Not the quality, but the quantity, and accessability. There are a very limited number of practice rooms, with only a few on each floor (ie: Narrow hallways, everything goes straight up). With many, many enrolled students and many, many auditioners trying to get a practice room on the same day, finding a room to warm up in was horrible; I spent 20 minutes running up and down the stairs trying to find something. Yes, even the bathrooms were "taken". After much searching, I found a maintence closet on a very high floor which had its doorknob locked but the door was cracked open - therefore, I warmed up for my audition in some dumb closet at Eastman.
CA
PS My audition for that school was successful!
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Author: Bubalooy
Date: 2007-08-06 20:05
A friend of mine used to practice at 3am, when he got off work, in the entry to a local bank which was open so people could access the ATM. It was a small town and nobody ever interupted him.
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Author: joeyscl
Date: 2007-08-06 20:30
"In an airplane bathroom. we had 4 hours of waiting before takeoff - I practiced for 1 hour in the crapper."
What did the other passengers think?
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2007-08-06 20:35
joeyscl wrote:
> "In an airplane bathroom. we had 4 hours of waiting before
> takeoff - I practiced for 1 hour in the crapper."
>
> What did the other passengers think?
More important - where did they go when mother nature called?
--
Ben
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Author: ChrisArcand
Date: 2007-08-06 20:40
Yes, I think the bathroom on the airplane and the atm entry are the two best ones so far.
CA
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Author: bob49t
Date: 2007-08-06 21:20
How about a small enclosed bamboo grove on a farm in the northern foothills of the Pyrenees in France's Lot valley. Interesting acoustic.
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Author: marshall
Date: 2007-08-07 02:04
"In an airplane bathroom. we had 4 hours of waiting before takeoff - I practiced for 1 hour in the crapper."
This one wins. ^^
Mine isn't that weird...but occasionally I would go practice in the woods in a park newar where I live. It's actually very relaxing and you can get twice the work done that you would normally get done in a practice room in the same amount of time. When you get frustrated you just lean back and listen to the sounds of nature and within two minutes you're relaxed enough to the point that everything just flows.
Oh yeah...and in the bathroom at Union Station in Chicago. I was waiting for a train to New Mexico and we were stuck there for seven hours. I was practicing in the atrium but one of the Rent-A-Cops thought I was playing for money and said I'd have to stop.
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Author: Dano
Date: 2007-08-07 04:19
As a teenager living in an apt. where people complained when I played after 6 or 7 pm, I would go down to the laundermat down the street and play in a corner. Later in life when I took up tenor sax, I would play in laundermats that stayed open all night. They were empty and acoustics were to my liking.
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Author: Malcolm Martland
Date: 2007-08-07 10:28
In my office (a wooden hut) at the bottom of my garden looking west over the Atlantic -accompanied by my howling spaniel - he is getting quite good at duets but the tuning need to be improved - mine that is!
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Author: Old Geezer
Date: 2007-08-07 15:12
While in high school in the summers I would sometimes hike to a concrete railroad bridge nearby (in the countryside) and practice under one of the arches. The delayed echo effect was fabulous, after stopping I could still hear my fumbled scales coming back to mock me.
Clarinet Redux
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Author: Brenda ★2017
Date: 2007-08-07 19:06
These are SO interesting!
My story is from Peru. We were there to attend my brother-in-law's wedding and several of us stayed with the bride's parents for several days. (That's only possible because they hire someone to cook and clean!) Because there's scarcely ever any rain at all in Lima people use their flat roofs for extra living space. So to be away from the crowd I practiced on the roof, with airplanes departing from the Lima airport flying overhead. The clarinet stayed put when we went to Machu Picchu, however. The altitude would have made that an experience!
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Author: MC
Date: 2007-08-07 21:20
My husband enjoys fly-fishing. Me? Not so much. (OK -- not at all...) Our compromise: we find a remote location (typically Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but this year we'll add Montana to the mix) where he can chase trout while I serenade him from the back of the truck. It seems to work well, although we're never sure if the trout are running TO the (not always) lyrical sounds of the clarinet or AWAY from them...
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Author: Burlingame Bob
Date: 2007-08-08 00:42
I once put my alto sax on the back of a horse for a week in the High Sierras. I played it in the evenings while looking over a beautiful lake at about 10,000'. I took the sax because I was not sure my clarinet would fare well with the temperature and altitude changes. I will have to remember hotel bathrooms.
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Author: Peter Spriggs
Date: 2007-08-08 02:26
in a laudromat in the middle of the night.
In a round plywood grain storage bin about 25 ft wide and 10 ft tall in the middle of the prairies next to railway tracks. Quite an echo though!
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Author: ginny
Date: 2007-08-08 03:05
I have practiced while my husband drives, the glove box made a fair music stand.
When I was a youngen my little band would rehearsed in a men's room before an audition once. Lovely accoustics, flush for applause.
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Author: ChrisArcand
Date: 2007-08-08 03:41
"In a round plywood grain storage bin about 25 ft wide and 10 ft tall in the middle of the prairies next to railway tracks."
That's another pretty good one :-)
CA
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Author: DAVE
Date: 2007-08-08 04:09
In my car....driving. A long time ago. Very stupid.
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Author: donald
Date: 2007-08-08 08:33
Peter Spriggs post reminds me, i went through a phase of refacing mouthpieces while waiting at the laundromat... a decade later the couple who run the laundromat still remember this- they saw me for the first time in quite some years, and asked me how the clarinet was going!
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Author: TheButler
Date: 2007-08-08 09:43
Attachment: 35194786_6_HoFH.jpeg (125k)
On my own I haven't practiced in odd places, but last year I went on a concert trip to Valencia, Spain with a symphonic wind orchestra, and we had an outdoor rehearsal at the paddle court of the hotel.. it was quite an odd sight as you can see on the attached photo. Notice how the harp couldn't make it on to the court because of the cage construction.
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2007-08-08 12:05
My later years of College I got paid to practice.
Was a security guard for a big (empty) estate which was empty except for a room full of antiques. I was there to make sure that nobody broke in and that the house seemed still occupied.
So I used my shift to practice - 4pm to 12am with a bunch of breaks.
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
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Author: leonardA
Date: 2007-08-08 20:07
Took my clarinet with me on a recent visit to Germany. Stayed in a small locally owned hotel and practiced in my room. The kitchen people downstairs commented that they enjoyed it, and there were no complaints from other guests.
Leonard
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Author: joeyscl
Date: 2007-08-08 22:24
"My later years of College I got paid to practice.
Was a security guard for a big (empty) estate which was empty except for a room full of antiques. I was there to make sure that nobody broke in and that the house seemed still occupied.
So I used my shift to practice - 4pm to 12am with a bunch of breaks."
Heh, sounds like a sweet job. So you COULD HAVE technically done anything while you were there, right? I mean, you COULD HAVE recorded yourself and played it on a boom box and then be reading newspaper right? haha
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Author: Carol Dutcher
Date: 2007-08-09 00:51
A few years ago we went to visit a friend, Bert, in La Manzanilla, Mexico. Bert's house was right on the beach. Bert and I with our clarinets, and Enrico, a guitar player, took chairs out into the water and with the water lapping around our ankles, played for a good hour or so. It was quite different. My husband waded way out in the ocean up to his waist and took pictures of us playing. People eating outside at the restaurant next door thought we were being filmed for a movie.
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Author: rsholmes
Date: 2007-08-09 11:11
Not rehearsals but lessons: most of my very first lessons back in elementary school took place in a large janitor's closet.
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Author: donald
Date: 2007-08-10 08:20
when i was teaching at University of Oklahoma (as the TA for Dave Etheridge) i taught some lessons outside under a tree. One poor guy called Andy Taylor endured this torture for at least 2 weeks in a row- very good for tone...
donald
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Author: mankan
Date: 2007-08-11 09:13
When I was only 10 och 11 years I shared bedroom with my older brother. He didn´t appreciate my clarinet practising (dont really blame him, me being a beginner doing all that noise).
He suggested that I should try the sauna so he could do his homework - or rather have some privacy bringing home gilrfriends. I agreed. Took my clarinet and practising book to our new sauna, sat down at the bench and began playing. The acoustic was pretty good but after a while my instrument felt "stuffed" and much harder to blow. But I kept on playing, thinking it was normal as I was only a beginner being to weak and having a poor ambochure.
I felt warmer and warmer. Sweat poured down my back and my face. Sweat! Sauna!! Hmmm ...
Yes, big brother really fooled me. When I turned up the door and looked at the termo-control, it was turned to 110 degrees Celsius (about 230 fahrenheit).
So learn this: Never use the sauna as practice room if you have a irritating big brother with no sense for cultural activities.
Magnus Börjesson
Buffet S1, Vandoren Optimum, V12 2,5
Örebro, Sweden
mankan
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Author: Kruzi
Date: 2007-08-11 21:05
The Ocean - a very odd place to practice indeed: Warning! Don`t try this at home,kids - at least not with a wooden clarinet;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q2TK-gefio
For me, I used to practice playing the alto recorder or clarinet on the back of a horse sometimes. The horse was an Andalusian named "Cadenza" and musically talented, providing an excellent rhytm section with the stomping of its` hoofs and elegant body movement. It was always great fun for both of us. Ah, and for those concerned - no, I never played in the clarino register while riding because I didn`t want to hurt the animal. Cadenza passed away at age 26 in March 2003, may she rest in Peace.
Greetings,
Kruzi
Take what you`ve got and make the best of it!
Post Edited (2007-08-11 21:08)
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2007-08-11 22:16
Birmingham New Sreet Station. I've also practiced in a tiny broom cupboard
Peter Cigleris
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Author: MichaelR
Date: 2007-08-12 01:07
The chicken coop. The chickens didn't seem to mind. One even responded.
--
Michael of Portland, OR
Be Appropriate and Follow Your Curiosity
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Author: Sarah Elbaz
Date: 2007-08-12 09:10
One of my friends, a pianist did his military service some where in the middle of the desert. On his first vacation he bought a piano, took it with him, put it on the sand and prcticed like that for three years!!
He is now one of Israels best pianists.
Sarah
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Author: Laurie
Date: 2007-08-13 16:57
I've practiced in the car, (passanger of course) while stuck in traffic on the Cross Bronx.
At school we've had to get creative at times. A few time we'd have quartet rehersal on the roof of the school of music, and during juries we'd go as far as to practice in the elevator. Always an amusing time.
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2007-08-14 05:14
One more... While waiting for the street cleaners in NYC (2 hours, twice a week) I would practice in the car.
Anyone that has live in NYC and owned a car knows that these are the most horrible 4 hours of the week.
-
So far my favorite is the piccolo on the motorcycle!
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Author: jane84
Date: 2007-08-15 19:55
Hehee...I loved the one with the horse!
Once I practised some scales while on the (empty, as I thought) train. Unlike most of the other stories here, it wasn't very successful, as the woman selling tickets came in and told me to please stop, and then sat down next to me for the rest of the trip, looking at me like she thought I was completely mad... Many years ago.
-jane
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Author: davyd
Date: 2007-08-21 01:51
A former quartet colleague was manager of a music store; we practiced there after hours on Sundays.
Before a chamber group gig at a retirement home, the only place to warm up was the kitchen. Fortunately it wasn't meal time.
My swing band used to be allowed to practice after hours in an adult day care center. We tried not to think about how soon it will be before we return to the place as clients.
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Author: Firebird
Date: 2007-08-21 13:02
Ok, here goes. In a library, and no one seemed to mind.
Forgot to mention it was an arts library.
Chan
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Author: MichaelR
Date: 2007-10-29 21:47
For me at least ...
On a gravel bar beside the Rogue River in southwest Oregon. My chair was driftwood tree trunk. We didn't see any salmon swimming up stream. My wife did report that as I played birds would respond. Sounds like I need to go back when the ospreys are around!
--
Michael of Portland, OR
Be Appropriate and Follow Your Curiosity
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Author: clarinets1
Date: 2007-10-30 00:29
in a stairwell near the basement of a large utility building at the Iowa State Fair.
i was in one of the on-site performance groups and i was trying to prepare for college. the dorms were off-limits so i had to go somewhere!
for being part of the fairgrounds, it was kind of creepy...decent acoustics though.
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Author: SVClarinet09
Date: 2007-10-30 01:37
I didn't practice here but at an audition for a summer program last year, a saxophone player walked into one of the unlocked bathrooms and was practicing in there. The designated warm up area was the auditorium. One of the coordinators kicked him out however. The acoustics of the room had his sound bouncing off the walls you could hear him from 1k miles away.
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2007-10-31 10:25
Nope, I put it down for that day!
James
Gnothi Seauton
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Author: EuGeneSee
Date: 2007-10-31 19:48
My marriage didn't last very long . . . maybe I shoud have been practicing rather than going to the wedding ceremony? I might have spared a good girl a lot of grief. Eu
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2007-11-01 12:30
I guess my oddest practice experience happened when I was in high school, during a summer vacation with my parents and brother to our grandparents' farm in Oklahoma. The small family farm might seem like an ideally remote location, but the joint was jumpin' with relatives and I've always been squeamish about people hearing me practice. I took the clarinet off to an isolated corner outdoors, to what used to be a pigpen years earlier before they stopped keeping pigs, but was by then the dumping ground for some old tools and machinery. The pen no longer had a gate to close--it'd been salvaged for some other fence.
Working on memorization, I set up the music stand but then played with my eyes closed--until I heard, "Ssssssssssssssssss!!!" Opened my eyes right quick. There stood one of my grandfather's geese, glaring at me with his beady, stupid, enraged little eyes, with his long neck thrust forward, his head lowered down toward me, his bill wide open, his pointed tongue sticking out and his wings spread out from his sides and waving menacingly. "Sssssssssssssssssssss!"
Uh-oh.
'Scuse me, Mr. Gander. Didn't know I was in your space. Uh, I'll just grab my stuff here and--hey, I'm going, I'm going! Let go of my shoelace! Aaaaagh!
Do. Not. Ever. Bother the dad-gander.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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