What did you play today?

[prairieboy1]

The Holton Mammoth was the horn of choice today. After at least 10 days off from my Prairie Music Residency experience that I wrote about previously, it was time to get back to the woodshed as my three Community bands begin in a little more than three weeks. I played from our Brass Band hymn book and it was very useful in getting the horn and myself focused again. On a whim, I pulled out my Pt-50+ from the tuba and put in my Stofer-Geib mouthpiece. I have not used this mouthpiece in a long time and I was amazed at how well it did inside this HUGE horn. Everything was crisper, including the bottom end and the sound was much more direct. It will continue with the Holton "Mammoth"! A great discovery today!

[Mary Ann]

I was hautgirl in a WW5tet today. We did some stuff that sounded pretty good and also some stuff that sounded pretty bad, but we had FUN!

[sdloveless]

I worked on some of the low tuba parts for TubaChristmas. That is all.

[gocsick]

Great weekend... did a 2 hour set at Columbus Oktoberfest... A mix of traditional American German times y, 80s music, and New Orleans Brass Band stuff.

$2000 raised towards our goal for the year of $35,000 for the Children's Mental Health Foundation.

[Dopey]

Weekend of rehearsals and playing at a local festival. Performed The Bombastic Bombardon, and overall very happy with my performance. Ofcourse made mistakes and painfully aware of them, but also played some parts best i've played. Grateful they ever ask for me to play a a soloist, and really pushes one out of your comfort zone.

On the stand now is Connotations for brass band, and Snow Island. My own goal is to actually play all the dark notes and not just fake it by November. Slowly getting there. Aside from that is trying to improve the tonal quality above the staff for the short solo. Which is also coming through slowly but surely.

Does anyone else have a few melodies they play as a means to extend ones range? To 'spend time up there', I find myself playing amazing grace and trying to make it sound as nice one can. Or Hallelujah up an octave than normal, etc. My non-musician partner is great feedback on my progress 'That sounds better the other way..'

[arpthark]

Two hour klezmer band gig yesterday. Had the privilege of playing alongside Gary Buttery who is one of the best of the best. Since I knew he was coming, I laid back and actually brought my Besson baritone and improvised some harmony parts and noodled along with the tenor sax most of the time (no tbone on this gig), although Gary and I did play around a bit together. He was playing on his Piggy CC. It was fun, on a pavilion right on Saybrook Point*, overlooking the mouth of the Connecticut River, and we had some nice middle eastern food at the break.

*


(Katharine Hepburn's house is located right on the water near the bottom of the image, south of "Yacht Club Point." Privately owned but nice to drive up to and gawk at. It's a pretty ritzy area.)

[gocsick]

Last night was the first rehearsal of the season, and my first rehearsal ever with the group, for the Scioto Valley Brass and Percussion.. Read 2nd baritone... some very challenging music.. and some very good musicians.. I think it is a sweet spot... I got my butt kicked on sight reading.... I think I can hang if I put in the time and effort... but can also learn a lot from the group.. Thanks to @MikeS for the introduction.

[the elephant]

Playing the opening outdoor Pops program for this season. We already had a string/WW chamber orchestra program, but the rehearsal for tonight was my first service this season, and tonight will be the first performance. Some tough stuff, some easy stuff, some tacet sheets — same old same old. Year 33 is off and running!

[arpthark]

I spy a Beatles medley...!

[the elephant]

There is one he did that is a rental, and it is EXCELLENT! This one is for retail sale and is also very good, but the rental one is a bit better. This one has a stupid-hard lick in "Can't Buy Me Love" (if you have to play it on a CC tuba). We are also playing the "Superman" overture, which is a lung- and chop-buster, and the "Liberty Fanfare".

Most of my parts are pretty easy, otherwise. We have three other Pops programs coming up next week, and one of them has "Hungarian March" and the "Ride" back to back. Gee, thanks, boss…

The other one has a bunch of middle-weight excerpts as well as a medley from "Far and Away", which is hard AF, people.

I swear, professional orchestra tuba audition excerpt lists should be focused on John Williams and stuff like that. It is more realistic than page after page of Mahler, Bruckner, Prokofiev, and the like, which are being programmed less and less often. It would be an excellent way to thin out a pool of candidates and find a winner based on what they will likely play most of the time on the job.

[bloke]

I was all over the place yesterday and finished up with a little 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. gig and a snazzy private art gallery with large grounds at a fraternity dinner of a bunch of successful businessmen. (Dinner was 6:00 to 7:00 and speechifying began at 7:00 sharp.)

It was with my 82-year-old banjo playing friend (who is actually a member of the businessmen's fraternity and ate dinner with them after we played), and my 77 year old plays-everything (and played trumpet, clarinet, flute, and sax on the gig) friend. We just played some Dixieland stuff... Stuff that doesn't require lead sheets, but the banjo player brought a huge book of lead sheets anyway. I had offered to bring my valve trombone, but frankly forgot because I had so much stuff loaded for so many errands that I had yesterday that involved travel...so they got to hear a whole bunch of tuba solos.
I met one of the very wealthy Loeb family sons. He's probably a couple of years younger than I am, one of the really handsome silver haired types with a trophy wife. His family started out with a chain of laundry cleaners and barbecue joints and then moved into commercial real estate later. (I actually outbid them at an auction for the place that was our last brick-and-mortar store location in Memphis.)
My Dad - back in the sixties (a Sears executive as well as president of the Sears Credit Union in Memphis) - used to have his white suit shirts cleaned, pressed, and starched there. Once a week he would have them done and they would come back wrapped in a box shape with heavy paper around them taped up like a Christmas present. When he came in after stopping there on Fridays to pick up his shirts, he handed them to me and allowed me to slide the package down the wood floor in his master bedroom straight down to his dresser and stop right in front of it - as if I was bowling. On the paper was a bunch of printed black and white pictures of the children of the Loeb family. The man I met last night was one of those children whose face is appeared on that laundry wrapping paper. I think they hand out an award once a year, and he was the recipient this year.

https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=d ... 4&dpr=1.75

[North]

I played my highschool part 1 - 4 and its generally easy, especially part 1-3 to remember because its simple and easy to remember and play for my marching band... but I have actually beef with part 4 like its my actually opp. the beginning is somewhat easy, but the rest is like ghfghjknbdvctsyuhdcuivyfgbhweckinpcioafghyudikewjahsxyvcgdhjkqnbasvgctyduaiskmasnxzhuzdisakjwehrytrueqiopqopxn9dobo7tc8egiucksahhlnxubiagcdiw7xunadbyq7uinsudiskwjns. ya know

[humBell]

Tchaikovsky's 5th!

Note i took liberties with the subject line, as i am heading out the door...

It just might be a different day before inpost again...

[arpthark]

3 hour jazz trio gig in a bar: trumpet/trombone/me. I was filling in, sight-reading 25 or 30 tunes… did pretty well besides a few hiccups (really borked the tempo of Limbo Jazz, yeesh), but free food and beer and the cash made for a very enjoyable evening. The best part was the patrons LOVED it. It’s so much fun playing for an engaged audience.

[bloke]

the wretched euphonium

[prairieboy1]

Today's rehearsal time was spent preparing for our first Brass Band concert this coming Friday, October 17th at 7:30 pm at Centennial High School, here in Saskatoon. The concert will feature both of the city's Brass Bands. Our band, the Bridge City Brass Band, will be the first half of the program. Here are our selections:
Barwick Green (A Maypole Dance)-Arthur Wood
Invictus March-William Hines
Repton-Michael McCourt
St.Austell Suite-Kenneth Downie
Several "itchy" bits to continue to work on, however we have one more rehearsal the night before the concert and everything should be in place. Today's rehearsal was played on the "Mammoth" Holton tuba and after two hours I was finished!

[Mary Ann]

Today I practiced my truly awful 7/8 cello, useful for trying to establish a bow hold that works and things like shifting and extension patterns, but a major battle to not try to get more sound than it is capable of. I have, hopefully, a Haide 7/8 coming on trial in a few weeks, and sent immediately back another brand I had on trial, which arrived with a bridge significantly too high and pegs that I could not turn by hand either direction. Why these are sent out on trial like this is beyond me, except that the vendor either is too stupid to set them up so that someone who has a clue will actually be able to trial them, or the vendor figures eventually, since they aren't spending any money, there will be a buyer who is dumb enough to buy it anyway. Had it been wonderful, I would have bought it. But it wasn't even playable for play testing. (And I am out $250. What is WITH these music stores, who theoretically specialize in cellos?)

And I spent some time with the new-to-me beautiful A series Loree, because my Rigoutat is in the shop and got SIX pins put in. And, I have a Fox 300 on the way for trial, since maybe I do not have the wherewithal to keep a wood oboe from getting destroyed somehow. Although the Cor Anglais, in the same environment and with the same care, has no cracks and plays as nicely as it did when I got it.

[Dopey]

Time to start preparing for Musikhälpen - December 1st - 7th.

I play through the whole book, noting which songs sound decent then prepare them into a binder/sleeves. During the week of musikhjälpen I play each day randomly through the city, people passing by can see it is for musikhjälpen and donate to the event.

If anyone has suggestions for other lead sheets or books, feel free to suggest this has proven to be a good source for building a binder full selections.

[bloke]

I'm probably going to receive a list of Christmas tunes that are pop/secular pretty soon in an email (two gigs that are a week apart), and it will be time to get the bass guitar out again, go to YouTube, and make certain that I can play along with them.

[1 Ton Tommy]

I did not know there was a Hal Leonard Real Christmas book. That could solve some chart problems except we'd have to buy a bunch of them, at least one per key. What are they these days, $35 bucks?

I spent this morning practicing the traditional carols I expect the brass will play from "the inner above" in our concert hall as the crowd files in. One of the rules on this one is "No rehearsals." Two years ago I led off unexpectedly with "You're a mean one Mr. Grinch," then we went traditional. Better to ask forgiveness than permission sometimes. It did get some laughs. Way more fun than Handel.

Our brass quintet did 15 minutes of traditional carols last year during the Christmas concert. It was a hit. Perhaps we'll just reprise that if everybody can find their charts. I don't need the charts to play 1st trumpet but I'll be playing tuba and for that I need charts, which I saved from last year. Unfortunately not everybody does, apparently.