Boring music...

[MartyNeilan]

Heck, if something is just plain-ol' bad-boring (to which R.D. refers), there is one sure-fire rehearsal technique:

Start coughing. Don't stop. Get worse. Set your instrument down and leave the rehearsal area until the conductor/music director moves on to the next piece.

Here's one for Bob1062 and any other trombone doublers:
Take your entire spray bottle (preferably a large one) and pour it down your mouthpiece inconspicuously, filling up the slide. Then, when the director is looking in your general area, proceed to empty your spitvalve, just as you always would. Should gather a little attention when a lake forms around you. Of course, you may be made to clean it up, but the looks will well be worth it.
Not that I ever did that in high school.

Of course, you should really be focusing on playing your boring part with the best sound and pitch possible.

[thedeep42]

i do find one of the things i struggle with the most is 'playing the rests' as some people say.. its almost like yoga trying to keep my mind from wandering when i'm counting 15000 measures of rest before playing a few notes. it's been an interesting experience to learn to deal with that...

one of the worst feelings... 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, oh hell.. he's beating in one!!!

i have played the canadian brass red book P's Canon for 16 mintues for a wedding processional. i felt like the snare drummer in Bolero. However, there was still quite a bit to think about (though no one was REALLY listening while the flower girl ran up and down the aisle)

also.. as far as pieces sucking... i really can say there is only one piece that i really passionately dislike and that's Chester by William Schuman for wind ensemble. no offence to willy if he's reading this... i so appreciate taht there's quite a lot for me to play... but if someone can explain to me what is the true merrit of this piece other than a musical joke that lasts too long. why is it such a classic? i'd really like to know!

[thedeep42]

so, i decided to attempt to remedy my ignorance and answer my own question. I guess Schuman did quite a lot of writing. i suppose we can only really assume where he was going after the gorgeous opening chorale but it seems to be a part of american wind ensemble musical heritage and therefore worthy of playing. I guess the moral that i've learned as this piece comes up is that even though I don't get anything out of it and can't imagine an audience being edified by it, it is still my job to play it the best I can and even if i don't get it. i suppose i used to think the same about primus. Maybe like kalamata olives, seaweed, and saurkraut, i'll learn to love it.

[eupher61]

For those who don't like rests, maybe orchestral playing is not for you. No "Fantastique", no "Bolero". No Liszt Piano Concerti. (ok the Eb I'll almost agree with you, same for Dvorak 9...) No "Nutcracker". No Tchaikovsky. No Wagner (too many rests in The Ride.)
Tell your BDs to avoid anything which doesn't feature the tuba prominently throughout. Anything less than running 8th notes 27 bars at a time is verboten. If they should choose to play a simple Sousa march, you'll quit, or file a union grievance.

Believe me, the snare drummer playing "Bolero" is anything but bored.

[KevinMadden]

i do find one of the things i struggle with the most is 'playing the rests' as some people say.. its almost like yoga trying to keep my mind from wandering when i'm counting 15000 measures of rest before playing a few notes. it's been an interesting experience to learn to deal with that...

one of the worst feelings... 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, oh hell.. he's beating in one!!!

I know that feeling, The IC Orchestra played Scherazade (Rimsky-Korsakov) this past semester, I subbed for the tuba player there for a rehearsal, I'd a been soooooo screwed if it weren't for the bassbone, "Kevin, its in one here, okay, now its in three, ok there are schezuras (spelling? the railroad track things) around this phrase, okay back into one etc. etc."

[windshieldbug]

one piece that i really passionately dislike and that's Chester by William Schuman for wind ensemble

Listen it in it's place in the New England Tryptich, which was originally written for orchestra, and listen to the work as a whole, with it's tunes from William Billings, and the beautiful solo euphonium part in When Jesus Wept.

[tubaguy9]

I can never understand when people say the music they are playing is boring, or too simple.

Concentrate on your technique! Take one simple crotchet - you need to consider;

1) tone (make the best you can)
2) attack (as written, or to suit music?)
3) length (not too short, or long)
4) ending (how many people end notes perfect?)
5) pitch (are you spot in tune with the ensemble?)
6) style (is it suitable for the music?)
7) dynamics (as written and balanced with ensemble)
8 ) Timing (spot on the beat)

I may even have missed something. Concentrating on all of these should keep you alert and motivated. However well you play, there is always room for improvement.

Take pleasure, from playing your very best!

Well, I'll have to say (almost) because of the way one of the movements go, the tone is almost supposed to be awful...the rest of the low brass is doing flutter tonguing.
Also, with number 5 for this song, is also almost non-applicable, since everyone else except for low brass, plays alietoric stuff.
That's sort of the way the piece is...

[windshieldbug]

It is aleatoric.

And if it is aleatoric, there certainly is a valid chance that you will make a choice NOT to follow the score, but leave the room.

[thedeep42]

Wow... even as a stand-alone piece, I absolutely LOVE Chester. The opening chorale with the huge timpani swells is gorgeous, and the long push to the end with snare drum and cymbal is thrilling. It gives me goosebumps every time.

Pray tell, what makes you not like the piece?

i love the chorale section... but then after the fermata it hits in with the clanging fff chords that seem to me to serve no other purpose than to waken the dead and slay the living... i've performed this several times and watched the looks of shock and horror as people are suddenly wrenched from their brass chorale induced spiritual bliss and plunged into a bitonal cacophony. While I find it a clever academic joke, i would rather just hear the chorale. however, it gives me an insight into how the congregation must have felt in charles ives' church when he'd play organ interludes and fugues in multiple keys. I love ives, but Chester is no ives. It has some good moments yes, but i guess it doesn't really float my boat! We're playing it currently as well as "Chester Leaps In' which is basically a witty, shorter, slightly more schizoid look at what schuman did but without all the pretty bits. basically it's a wind ensemble inside joke. ah well. to each his own really. but it's all good i can't think of anything else (other than some really crummy medley arrangements) that have left me scratching my head. I like Ligeti for crying out loud... you'd think i'd buy an ipod so i could listen to chester while i jog!

I would like to hear the piece in it's original symphonic context and i might well like it a bit more.

[Leland]

Having played some "notationally-basic" stuff probably several hundred times each over the past several years...

Eh, just play it, and play it exceptionally well. If the notes are easy, then surely it must be easy to play perfectly... correct?

We got an arrangement last week for Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, and a half-joking apology from the arranger, who said, "I tried to give you guys something interesting, but most of the time it's just quarter notes."

Well, ya know, it's the bass line that "drives the bus", as they say (sometimes it's the short bus!). It's the link between the rhythm section and the chord structure underlying all the notes that everyone else plays. Use it to lead from one phrase to another, picking up the intensity or drawing to the background as needed. It's the base -- the foundation -- of the ensemble, even if it's 12-bar blues over and over again.

There's a reason why the words "base" and "bass" sound the same.


PS -- loved the Philip Glass jokes...

[tubatooter1940]

Having played some "notationally-basic" stuff probably several hundred times each over the past several years...

Eh, just play it, and play it exceptionally well. If the notes are easy, then surely it must be easy to play perfectly... correct?

We got an arrangement last week for Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, and a half-joking apology from the arranger, who said, "I tried to give you guys something interesting, but most of the time it's just quarter notes."

Well, ya know, it's the bass line that "drives the bus", as they say (sometimes it's the short bus!). It's the link between the rhythm section and the chord structure underlying all the notes that everyone else plays. Use it to lead from one phrase to another, picking up the intensity or drawing to the background as needed. It's the base -- the foundation -- of the ensemble, even if it's 12-bar blues over and over again.

There's a reason why the words "base" and "bass" sound the same.


PS -- loved the Philip Glass jokes...

And getting a section to play a 4 beat walking bass with the correct sound and style and keep rock solid time is a cast iron b!t¢#!!! You can spend a lot of time trying to get that "simple" foundation to function as it is supposed to in the score.

These two posts hit me where I live. Playing bass with a tuba is often more expensive and difficult than with strung basses but if you can pull it off, the results can be spectacular.

[tubatooter1940]

It could be a question of team work. You may not enjoy lifting a piano, but if the team needs it moved you will man you end or die trying.
It would be nice if the other members of the group went all out to make you look good during your solo. It makes sense that you play your best for them so they may shine.
If selecting the music is not your responsibility, all you have to do is your professional best on what you must play.

[tubaguy9]

I don't really mind "boring" music, but I really dislike it when there's a not-so-good guest conductor. Especially when he does two songs every concert (along with some of the other "adults" in the community band). This guy is a percussionist and I cannot follow his arm for the life of me. Everything is a big fast swing, his arm moves so much up and down (distance) that we can't follow him and he chews us out. I think at least once during a rehearsal I just air-played cause he is almost un-followable. Sleigh Ride was just hell.

And the same feller writes some of the stuff that we play, usually in a purposefully-odd time signature. At least there's some blastissimo stuff in it

The blastissimo stuff is what I hate most, if it is in held notes (half note or longer), and the stuff above it is supposed to sound like random note stuff *cough, cough, the piece this thread is a complaint about, cough, cough*

[SplatterTone]

Well, I don't want to appear unsophisticated, but I did listen to Steve Reich's Violin Phase once.
...
Once.

And we should do all we can to keep this thread going.

[sloan]

How does everyone feel about boring postings?

[SplatterTone]

And can we really call Pink Floyds' Careful with that Axe, Eugene boring? Sure, it never achieved the popularity of Maxwell's Silver Hammer. But, the message and the spiritual content are so ... oh ... so ... indescribable, that we should stop and medidate before rushing to judgement about this ever so maligned work of art.

Boring? I think not!!


(whisper) Careful with that Axe, Eugene
(pause)
AAAAUUUUUGGGHHHH!

[Captain Sousie]

What about aleatoric posts?

"Is there anybody out there?"

*random noise*

"Is there anybody out there?"

[LoyalTubist]

I think it's time to start posting food pictures:

[TubaRay]

LT. Did you get the memo? No food pictures. This, by order of the management. Now there is no rule prohibiting talking about food....

[TubaRay]

How does everyone feel about boring postings?

Obviously, I think they are........boring.