TrumpetBoy
Trumpets, Music, Gadgets, Web Dev. and any other nonsense I feel like mentioning…
Posts tagged instruments
Good To Be Back In The UK!!
Oct 19th
I’m just back in from playing a Rat Pack show in Darlington this evening. It’s really been a pleasure to get back and play with one of the British bands. The last two weeks have been an eye-opener in terms of the cultural differences between UK and US musicians; it seems, in short, that as I suspected over here we’re very good at playing things straight off and making them convincing, while in the US they tend to warm up to the music over a longer period. Therefore, despite having some great guys around me, we never really got the show up to the musical level I’m accustomed to in either San Antonio or Des Moines, before we had to move on. Conversely I went back in with a band comprising many friends, but who don’t necessarily play the show that often, and we roared!! Many thanks to Andy Flaxman, Keith Hutton and Bruce Douglas (aka The Trombones) in particular, who have frankly restored my faith in that instrument. Unusually, I’ve found the Trombones to be the weaker of the sections over in The States thus far.
None of this should be taken as any kind of negative by anyone looking in. I’m intrigued to see how the musical experience rounds out across the country as we visit different cities in the coming months. I certainly hope that the musicians we’ve met so far prove to be indicative of the general standard nationwide. If so, the coming US tour dates will continue to go as well as it’s started!
Not My Lucky Day(s)
Jul 19th
It’s been a couple of unlucky days. We flew over to Hamburg with the Rat Pack Tour yesterday and, in a bid for a quiet life, I packed my small trumpet case in my suitcase. I find that, since I’m also carrying my laptop bag, I’m often faced with an argument about Carry On Baggage regulations. Whilst most will let me carry on my Trumpet in addition to my other bag when I’ve explained the situation, this isn’t always the case. So, on this occasion, I packed the Trumpet, in it’s hard case, within my suitcase and travelled with only 1 carry on.
This shouldn’t have been a problem but when I arrived in the hotel in Hamburg, I discovered that my Trumpet had sustained a crease in the bell. This ruined the sound and the playability and made for a miserable show last night. I’m pleased to say that my friends at The Brasserie; Hamburg’s premier Brass emporium, have done a great repair job today and that it’s not now looking too bad. Hopefully it’ll last until I get home and I can get it looked at properly.
Pleased with how this had gone, I stopped in at the local supermarket on the way back to hotel for some supplies. It seems that my bad luck had not entirely finished as I managed to drop a large bottle of soft drink at the checkout which exploded and soaked the place, me and the person in front of me. I apologised as best I could in my broken German but the check-out girl was not best pleased. She called the Manager and I’ve been barred from the store!!! How rock and roll is that?
Let’s hope that nothing else goes wrong…
The Ophicleide
Jan 18th
This is the Ophicleide; a weird, old Brass instrument that we encountered today at Musik Bertram in Freiburg, Germany. I had never heard of this instrument but was enlightened by the accompanying poem:
The Ophicleide, like mortal sin
Was fostered by the serpent.
It’s pitch was vague, it’s tone was dim,
It’s timbre, rude and burpant.Composers, in a secret vote,
Declared its sound non grata.
And that’s why Wagner never wrote
An Ophicleide sonata.Thus spurned, it soon became defunct.
To gross neglect succumbing.
Some were pawned, but most were junked,
Or used for indoor plumbing.And so this ill wind, badly blown,
Has now completely vanished.
I nominate the Heckelphone
To be the one next banished.Farewell, offensive Ophicleide,
Your epitaph is chiseled.
“I died of Ophicleidicide.
I tried, alas, but fizzled!”
One of the odder poems I’ve read…