Yeah that's exactly it... Solfege, but sort of like the speed readers who read a paragraph or page at a time... We've (I don't know how old you are..??) been reading music for so damn long that we can glance at a measure, know what the MEASURE sounds like (or a few measures sound like) and then play ...

We are determined to get completely out of covid debt (whereas we had to dip pretty deeply into savings in order to prop up a couple of adult children of ours who don't do particularly well on their own). You know, government employees all got paid, but we who own our own businesses suddenly didn't ...

Hey Data Center,
My instrument is broken. What should I do?

We have determined that you don't really need that instrument and it's now illegal to repair instruments for people who don't need them, but - since it was made of plastic and printable, you can pay a $10,000 unneeded instrument ...

Mary Ann

yeah levers

I haven't found any piston F tubas that can easily be played in tune.

🤫

I play E flat on dixie jobs, but I never practice playing it.
It seems to know which notes to play without me telling it...
... and I've never developed any really good reading skills with E-flat ...

Into the '00 years, all I owned was my F tuba. It's a remarkable instrument, which is why I was able to get by only playing that one instrument (along with playing bass...but whatever on that).
I had owned some C instruments (one at a time). I'm not going to discuss why I was disappointed with each ...

I have a USPS account and a FedEx account.
A long time ago I had a UPS account... Maybe I still do, but I just consider it to be redundant.
Whenever I type up a label, if I just put in the customer's email address or phone number, they're going to text or email the correct tracking number to them ...

I like the way they use not-barbershop sonorities, and then they dive into barbershop sonorities.

You know what Wade and I would say, @LeMark

ROAD TRIP !!!

(parents and student)

You got to go where the tubas are, and you can't buy a tuba from a picture.

- Buy a stem from Allied.
- wrap a piece of "soft wire" (steel) into a circle (which fits tightly around the new stem)
- silver-braze the wire onto the stem
- (probably) a little bit of filing and clean-up
- install
OR
- make one out of some stock cylindrical (1/4 inch) brass, as 1/4 inch is large ...

My tubas will also do 11.

OK...You've been warned. :bugeyes: :gaah:

Someone (a horn customer - someone who lives about two hours away) gave me a custom/one-off/never-plated F tuba mouthpiece today.
It was made (years and years ago) by a craftsman known for superb (French) horn and rotary valve building - a very pleasant ...

I'm the (when it's actually a "song" - with more than three chords) "better mostly follow Bach chorale writing rules, yet with some style-appropriate stuff" type of guy.

Pop tunes - such as in the "four types of bass players" video you just posted - if I didn't play what the guy played on the ...

Onto another school.
This one only has 11 sousaphones, but they have about 18 or so (not an exact count, because we repaired some of their stuff several weeks ago and I forget how many there were) marching brass...only two woodwinds.

These sousaphones are a mixture of 20K, King, and Jupiter ...

I have finally played through all 120 of the Rochut/Bordogni vocalises. (I had skipped past some of them, and have now gone back and played all of them).

You know, when I'm on road trips and ghost fingering sort of complicated melodies In somewhat remote major and minor keys, that stuff pays off ...

We repair hundreds of instruments in a very short time during the summer, and have to spend a couple thousand or more on parts and pads (not including parts and pads that we already have in stock which get used up).

Because fiscal years start on July 1st (yet high school band camps all start around ...

Could it be bent back?
That's what I usually do.
(I believe you would have luck straightening Olds or King stems and what do you think, but probably not with any of the new ones which hold those plastic valve guides on to the tops of the pistons. All of those newfangled ones are really fragile and ...

I sold a really nice one of those a while back.
I was very impressed with that one as well.

I believe they're useful, and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings nor discouraged sales.

The only thing about adding something like this on to an instrument is that sometimes (whether or not deservedly so) some things can function as red flags - another such thing being a main tuning slide ...

I'll take it if you don't want it.

:coffee:


off-topic:
I sold that really nice 1970s lightweight King fiberglass that I had. I'm not sure why I sold it 🙄, but - after selling it, and wondering why the heck I did that - I went up into the attic, looked through a bunch of boxes, and found ...

It's also missing the lower mouth pipe tube and receiver as well as the bracing system for the lower mouth pipe. It's actually missing several hundred dollars worth of parts, but there's still no reason to "scrap" a sousaphone, because of all the other parts are worth so much money.
I distinguish ...