Update Update

[opus37]

I go to head election judge training this morning so I can be ready for the November election. I expect chaos and angry people this year. I sometime wonder why I do this.

[windshieldbug]

I go to head election judge training this morning so I can be ready for the November election. I expect chaos and angry people this year. I sometime wonder why I do this.

For the glory and the money. Same reason you play.

[bort]

Bort fun fact... Al Franken lives around the corner from me (no joke).

[bort]

Today is my son's first birthday!!

[bisontuba]

Congratulations!

[alfredr]

Congratulations on having a good time and spreading it around. Hope you do get to do it again and often.

I wish a quick and full recovery for the trombone player's wife, also.

[boobentuben]

-- .- -.-- / .. - / -... .-. .. -. --. / ..- / -- ..- -.-. .... / .... .- .--. .--. -.--

[opus37]

Starting our season with the Two Harbors City Band tonight. I've played with some of these folks for 50 years. We are a good but not great city band. It is fun to make music with old friends.

[tofu]

' just received in the mail a DVD of a little concert from c. two weeks ago.
I believe there were eleven microphones on stage (small auditorium / seven musicians).
All I could hear on the audio track of the recording was "the PA system"...if you know what I mean.

We had a sound engineer running our sound board (95 piece group) at our outdoor summer venue who was an opera singer (never made the big time) and taught voice at a local university. We thought there was a problem with the sound board. Turns out he had a strong dislike of brass instruments so he pretty much zeroed out the brass and whenever there was a singer he turned them up to the point where you could not even hear the group. When told not to do this he still continued doing so, but also shut off our monitors. When we complained that they weren't on he told us we were wrong. He no longer is our sound engineer.

[Michael Bush]

with Al Hirt once (1984)

Three years earlier I played (guitar, in a jazz band) with him leaning on the rail of the bandstand. The whole story is better told on a trumpet forum probably, because the rest of us were just props. But the long and short of it is that the first trumpet recognized him, the second didn't, and first put second in a really bad situation when it came to an improv solo, such that second learned when it was almost but not quite too late who was leaning on the rail... Chaos at the upper end of the trumpet section ensued. The rest of us just played the chart and wondered what was going on over there.

[Three Valves]

I was surprised that he played alto sax that well, by the way...

I saw him recently on an old re-run of The Andy Williams show and I too had no idea he could play the sax.

[Three Valves]

Sight reading by ear??

[Donn]

Aren't saxophone and baritone horn the instruments assigned to the band students who place very low on those pre-beginner-band aptitude tests ...??

1/ blow
1a/get sound
2/ mash button
2a/change sound

As a real question, it's kind of interesting. Starting with the validity of the assessment - do kids generally live up to predictions based on their test scores? But anyway, you have a kid who wants to be in band - and likely has an instrument in mind? The least damage instrument might really be the flute, because you can barely hear them whether you want to or not, but (speaking as a former flute player), it might not be a very rewarding choice if your real desire was for example tuba. There's some evidence that such kids are put in the percussion section, but we know the down side of that choice.

When I was inducted into 6th grade band, I don't think we even had baritones? and the story I heard was that saxophone was not an introductory option, you had to learn clarinet first. They would lend you a nice old leaky clarinet for that purpose.

[Three Valves]

Least likely to get to out of High School without being arrested??

The drumline!!

[Donn]

The post was a troll, but I do believe those two instruments offer the best chances for very early success.

Well, real early, there isn't much hope for any band instrument, but happily you can start a half grown person on a "song flute", some kind of plastic fipple flute that literally does respond to your description - blow in it and get notes out - and yet is a real musical instrument of the woodwind family. I don't know of a brass equivalent.

As most people seem to view "public schools" as a good idea (so they're here to stay) I'd like to see "piano" be taught to as elementary school students as possible...particularly as electronic keyboards w/88 weighted keys and sustain pedal, and wooden stand have dropped below $500. Those who have concepts of "pitches", "note names", "chords", "bass", "melody", etc... have so much less to learn when encountering other instruments.

Accordion goes farther - on one hand you have a piano keyboard, and on the other (literally) you have an education in chords and circle of fifths.

[tofu]

As most people seem to view "public schools" as a good idea (so they're here to stay) I'd like to see "piano" be taught to as elementary school students as possible...particularly as electronic keyboards w/88 weighted keys and sustain pedal, and wooden stand have dropped below $500. Those who have concepts of "pitches", "note names", "chords", "bass", "melody", etc... have so much less to learn when encountering other instruments.

In my area the public school starts the kids playing the recorder in 1st grade and the piano in snd grade on electronic keyboards they have in a lab next to the computer room lab.

All joking aside, more piano-players-I-know-who-started-out-on-accordion are able to play without music (and without ever having looked at "the music") than pianists who only play the piano.

Is that because of the times (most of them are approaching 70 or 80), or because of the nature of the instrument?

I had an uncle that fits that description as professional accordian/pianist. He started on accordion in the '30's and then piano. He was a studio musician in Chicago back in the heydays of the 40's-60's until all of that work pretty much moved to CA. It's too bad the accordian gets such a bad rap these days. At least Cajun and Zydecoe are keeping an interest in accordian alive.

[Donn]

Well, possibly doubling back on the notion of piano instruction in school - how many piano players do you think started with a teacher, vs. accordion players? Maybe something like 90%, vs 50% or fewer? That's where it starts.

But I don't doubt the accordion's left hand Stradella "bass" system has a lot to do with it. Might even help that you can't see it. At any rate it's a simple, logical accompaniment instrument that comes along with the piano keyboard on the other side, so it's very supportive for someone who is trying to work out a satisfactory intro level performance skill on his own, or cope with a jam type situation.

It's too bad the accordian gets such a bad rap these days. At least Cajun and Zydecoe are keeping an interest in accordian alive.

I think it might be better than that. Not that I really have my finger on the pulse of any kind of music, but my impression of Cajun and Zydeco is more people my age, but many young people are getting a lot of Eastern European influence, and that's about real accordions, not the push/pull diatonics that Cajun music uses. People my age may still remember Lawrence Welk, but maybe younger people think Gogol Bordello.

[bort]

I went to a 4th of July parade today for the first time in about 11 years!

[Three Valves]

Fascinating stuff...

Wikki;

King Cotton is a military march composed in 1895[1] by John Philip Sousa, for the Cotton States and International Exposition (1895).

The expression "King Cotton" in general refers to the historically high importance of cotton as a cash crop in the southern United States.

[Three Valves]

Amazon is deliberately delaying my "free" shipping in order to convert me to a "Prime" member.

Bastards!!