So, I've probably talked about this around here before at some point, but what the hell, it's my website, I'll repeat myself if I want to.

When I was in the fourth grade, toward the end of the school year, the teachers rounded us all up and put us on buses to go over to another of the three elementary schools we had here in town at the time. We were pretty used to that kind of thing at Katahdin Avenue School at the time, since of the three K-5 schools, only Granite Street had a proper gym, so we had to bus over there twice a week for phys ed class anyway.*

The reason for this particular trip was not gym class, although our destination was still the gym. Rather, we were going there because it was the only room in the school system big enough to get all six classes of fourth-graders into at once for assembly purposes.

This particular assembly was to introduce us to the idea of joining the school band, which was a thing that started in fifth grade in those days. In retrospect, the way they did it makes more sense to me now than it did at the time. At the time I thought it was odd that they'd have a school band for only one year at the elementary level (since the schools here ran, and still run, K-5, 6-8, 9-12), but now I understand that it was to weed out the kids who wouldn't stick with it before they got to sixth grade, so that the middle school band director would only have to deal with students who were at least slightly taking it seriously.

Anyway. Sorry, I digress. Late in fourth grade, there we all were in the gym over at Granite Street, while the music teacher (we'll call her Mrs. Nash, on account of that's her name) explained the school band, introduced the various instruments we could choose from, and asked anyone who was interested in signing up to stay at the end. Once the crowd was down to just the kids who wanted to join, she went around asking each of us what instrument we'd like to learn, and there was a guy on hand from the music supply place the school system had a contract with who would hook us (read: our parents) up with a rental instrument and so on.

There's an important detail you need to know, which is this: very shortly before this assembly, the school department had a new rubberized floor installed in the Granite Street gym. So shortly that, when we went there for the band assembly, the place still reeked of the glue they'd used to stick it down.

I've always been vulnerable to solvents for whatever reason, so by the time the end of the assembly rolled around, I was high as a damn kite.

This is probably why, when Mrs. Nash asked what instrument I wanted to learn, I told her, "Baritone, definitely."

I mean, who ever heard of the baritone horn? Not me, until that assembly. I went in there planning to pick the saxophone so I could be a Cool Jazz Dude. Instead, on the spur of the moment, I chose an instrument unknown to laypersons outside of English colliery brass bands and German-American oompah bars. Other kids got to be Cool Jazz Dudes. I embraced my inner Bavarian.

(OK, to be fair, in high school I did also take up the trombone to play in the jazz band. If you didn't know, the common-or-garden tenor trombone plays in the same dynamic range as the baritone, with sheet music written the same way and using the same mouthpiece, so it's a reasonably easy transition apart from learning the slide positions as opposed to valve fingerings. But still.)

The strategy in having the assembly at the end of fourth grade was that we'd all have the summer with our shiny new rented/borrowed instruments and the introductory music book we were issued by the school, to learn the fundamentals on our own recognizance, and then we could get stuck right in on learning the ensemble part once we were all together for fifth grade in the fall.

This worked out about as well as you would expect with a pack of fifth-graders, but still, we had a good time.

Anyway, I played the baritone in the schools' concert band for the next seven years, and the pep band in high school. (You didn't really have a choice about being in the pep band if you were in the concert band. They were the same thing. This was kind of a special purgatory for me, since I couldn't be arsed with either football or basketball, and suddenly I had to go to all the home games. And gods forbid we should make it to the state tournament, which still happened most years back in those days. Fun fact: my high school alma mater used to be a Sports Powerhouse renowned throughout the state, and that was still echoing in the late '80s when I was there, though even then the writing was on the wall in re the shrinkage of the community and consequent drying up of the talent pool as far as student athletes went.)

I had been using an instrument borrowed from the school system the whole time—most kids had to rent their instruments, but those of us who chose the bigger and less common ones could borrow them from the school—until for Christmas my junior year, my father bought me a euphonium. A euphonium is like a baritone that went to college.

Well, OK, that's mostly a joke. The real difference is mainly down to the bore geometry—baritones are mostly cylindrical, where euphonia have a markedly conical bore—which makes the sound of a baritone brighter and "brassier", though they have identical frequency ranges. Euphonia sound more "orchestral" and baritones more sort of marching band-y, if that makes any sense.

Most, but not all, euphonia also have a fourth valve, which most, but not all, baritones lack. This is used to access lower pitches, giving the euphonium more overlap with the range of the tuba so that the band can have a richer low-end sound. (I had to look that up, because in the time I owned that euphonium I never actually had occasion to use the fourth valve.)

The euphonium and I had a couple of adventures my senior year, including a state-wide invitational music festival in which I was chosen to play second chair, and then we were off to college. Things kind of fell apart then. Partly that was my fault—I got distracted from basically everything at WPI, including, um, the actual school part—but partly it was not. You see, the year I arrived at WPI, Alden Hall, the building that housed the performing arts department, was being renovated, which meant the Institute's concert band didn't have access to its normal practice space.

Instead, it had been banished to a dismal storeroom in the basement of the George C. Gordon Library, where—and this is the really important part—there was no secure storage for instruments. This meant that every time the band gathered to rehearse, which happened in the evenings, I had to carry the instrument about half a mile across campus from Morgan Hall to the library, and then back again when rehearsal was over.

A euphonium, if you are not aware, is not a lightweight musical instrument. Including its (really quite lovely) hardwood case, which was the size of a biggish stereo speaker of the period, mine must have weighed at least 20 pounds, probably closer to 25. Dragging this a mile round-trip at night in the fall and winter in New England gets old... pretty fast. So I stopped going, and stopped playing (because who plays solo euphonium?), and the next summer allowed the instrument to be sold to defray some of the expenses incurred during my (from an academic standpoint, and my father's) completely wasted year at WPI.

And that, well, that was the end of that.

Until the other day, when this arrived at my door.

This, gentlepersons, is a 1974 Besson three-valve compensating euphonium, and it has seen some shit.

(NOTE: The photo above is one I took with my phone when the instrument arrived; the rest below (and others in that folder) are from the eBay listing I bought it from.)

You will note that it has zero lacquer finish remaining, and that it doesn't quite go with that case. Oddly, in the auction listing, it's shown in a different case, which it also didn't quite match with. Why the switch, I don't know.

Apart from the condition of its finish, or lack thereof, the most arresting of this horn's battle scars is this one:

It looks like at some point, someone had to replace a whole slice of the instrument's bell. Whoever it was did a good job; you can clearly see it, but the surface is smooth there. If you run your finger across it, you can't feel the seam.

Interestingly, although this is only a three-valve instrument, it is a compensating one, which I've never had the opportunity to play before.

That means it has those extra little loops of tubing on the Nos. 2 and 3 valves, which are there to compensate for their tendency to play a little sharp in the low registers. It also has bottom-sprung valves, which is cool. Every other horn I've ever played has had valves with concentric springs, which makes the cylinders shorter, but doesn't have quite as smooth an action. And despite the fact that this instrument is battered and worn, the valves still work perfectly (or they did once I oiled No. 1).

All the tuning slides work, too, even the little one on No. 2 valve (and those things are always stuck).

Now, for about the same money I paid for this, I could have bought a brand-shiny-new baritone or euphonium, non-compensating but with four valves. I chose not to do this and go for an old warhorse like this one for a few reasons. One is that I like my things to have a bit of history, even if I don't know what it is, the same as with my gun collection. Another is that I have no idea what sort of quality to expect from new-construction student-grade band instruments these days,** and anything costing less than, say, a thousand bucks will have been made overseas. Although I am not a rabid "buy American-made" guy, I do think things like musical instruments should be sourced from factories that only make musical instruments, and not, say, musical instruments, industrial plumbing supplies, and tractor parts.

So anyway. I've got me a euphonium again. I also bought a collapsible music stand and the first volume of Hal Leonard Band Essentials for baritone (because, probably for reasons of cost, virtually nobody starts out on the euphonium; they almost always do what I did and start on the baritone, then switch it up later if they want to go upmarket). And on Monday, I sat down and made the first noises I've made with a euphonium in 29 years.

They were, of course, terrible. Oh my God fugeddaboudit, as Jay Leno would say. Surprisingly, I still remember most of the basics—I can still (kind of) read (bass clef) music, and my fingers remember most of the fingerings even if I don't. I can still, after all this time, play a B♭ major scale without having to think about it. But my wind and my embouchure have both gone completely to shit. I have effectively zero attack and no control over my intonation. I sound like, well, like I did in the fifth grade.

This was fully expected.

I had no illusions that I would be able to just pick up a horn after 29 years and sound like I did at my best, or even my not-so-best. I entirely expected to suck, and to do so for quite some time. This presents a problem, because one of my worst psychological quirks is the fact that I hate being bad at things, to the point where I would very much rather just not do them if that's the alternative.

But, dang it... I miss it. Even though I'm not in a band, have no prospect of ever being in a band, and really don't want the logistical tsuris of all that anyway, and even though the euphonium is not what you would call a radiantly soloist-oriented instrument, I miss being able to Do the Thing. In some other world where I was less risk-averse about my career prospects, and/or forewarned that they would be a smoldering shambles anyway for most of my adult life, I would have gone somewhere with a proper music program, possibly even majoring in music. I might even have learned to play the piano, too.

Oh yes, the piano. We'll get to that some other time as well.

So, anyway, kind of a shaggy dog story because that's as far as it goes: I bought an old euphonium, which I am terrible at playing, and which my agèd and decrepit body finds tiring even to play badly for more than 15 or 20 minutes at a time. But I'm giving it a go, anyway, and may the gods have mercy on my neighbors.

NOTE: I am not going to be putting my efforts on YouTube. I'm not that brave. :)

--G.
* Katahdin Avenue had what they called "the All-Purpose Room", which was just a big empty bit of the basement, and for the first couple of years I was a student at that school, they tried to do PE in there. Trouble was, it wasn't quite an empty room, because the building dated to the 1920s and they hadn't really worked out how to have big basement rooms in brick buildings without a support column every 10 feet or so. Have you ever tried to hold a gym class in grades K-5 in a room that has a reinforced concrete pillar every 10 feet? Even with ridiculous padding wrapped around all the columns, it didn't go well. Like, at all. They stopped doing it partway through my third-grade year.

** Actually this is only semi-true. I did buy a new-construction trombone recently, which I'll get into in another post later on, and it was junk. I admit I'm not exactly a concert-grade trombonist myself any longer, but even so, trombones should not feel so flimsy you're afraid you might break them trying to put them together, and this thing did. It went back to the seller tour de suite and I'm trying again.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

She's beautiful, Gryph. Congratulations. Almost makes me want to dig my clarinet out of storage.

On the topic of buying used, that decision has lead to you having something of a badass euphonium (which is a word combination that may never have been tried before, and is certainly not likely to have occurred often.) Now the scar just needs a suitable story so your horn can flirt with the cute French horns at the bar.

As for the rest, my lack of knowledge of music prevents pretty much anything meaningful from coming out of my fingers. I will say you are far from alone vis-à-vis hating being bad at things and avoiding them rather than dealing with being so, so I hope your efforts to recapture a bit of your school days joy and skill goes well. I suspect all of us suffers of 'What, I'm not innately great at this? F@ck it!' syndrome are rooting for you.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "Huh, you can acronymize that to WINIGATFI syndrome, which sounds vaguely like some actual rare diease.."

>On the topic of buying used, that decision has lead to you having
>something of a badass euphonium (which is a word combination that may
>never have been tried before, and is certainly not likely to have
>occurred often.)

"You're trying to conceal a euphonium. Guiltily. Has that ever been attempted before?"
- Amy Pond, Night and the Doctor 2: Good Night

>"Huh, you can acronymize that to WINIGATFI syndrome, which sounds
>vaguely like some actual rare diease.."

I've seen it characterized as Gifted Kid Syndrome (as in, one who was labeled as such in grade school, not necessarily claiming I was particularly gifted, but that's what the tests said), and, well, there may be something in that.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

So, as you're no doubt aware, we trumpeters can take advantage of a mute - a little doodad that fits into the bell of the trumpet to make what is normally an extremely in-your-face sound and mellows it out and quiets it, at the cost of greater backpressure for the player and requiring specific jazz music to sound -good-.

Do they make those for euphonia or baritones?

LAST EDITED ON Oct-08-20 AT 04:03 PM (EDT)
 
>So, as you're no doubt aware, we trumpeters can take advantage of a
>mute - a little doodad that fits into the bell of the trumpet to make
>what is normally an extremely in-your-face sound and mellows it out
>and quiets it, at the cost of greater backpressure for the player and
>requiring specific jazz music to sound -good-.

Those are also a thing for jazz trombonists. I had one! OK, it was actually a sink plunger with the handle removed. Worked, though. When you absolutely, positively have to make that sarcastic waup waup waaaaaa sound, accept no substitutes.

>Do they make those for euphonia or baritones?

They do, although they're quite expensive, and I can't really see the point of trying to practice with one in. You're certainly never going to get a decent read on how your sound is coming along. Well, I mean, there's the Yamaha Silent Brass, which is a mute combined with a mic and a sound processor so that the horn sounds correct to the player, but, uh, the euphonium model is 360 bucks.

(As an aside, check out the performers Yamaha have demonstrating the euphonium and tuba variants of the Silent Brass. TubamanShow. Masked low-brass players. "They came from the Tuba Planet to protect the peaceful tuba life on the Earth." They also have a YouTube channel. Japan is a wonderful country.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>"They came from the Tuba Planet to protect the peaceful tuba
>life on the Earth

Dude, you stopped before the best parts there...

>They don’t kick , nor punch the evil, but blow tubas to make them happy.

>No electricity is needed, no roof is needed. They manage their copyrights by
>themselves.

^That line right there just about got a spit-take out of me.

>They come to you as fast as sound wave whenever you need tuba sound.

>Wanna be like us? CDs and sheet music is available.
>But remember,with a great mask comes great responsibility.

And that one definitely caused a snort. Not the derisive kind, mind, more like the "OMG these guys are PRICELESS" kind.

>>So, as you're no doubt aware, we trumpeters can take advantage of a
>>mute
>Those are also a thing for jazz trombonists. I had one! OK, it was
>actually a sink plunger with the handle removed. Worked, though.

My dad, who was a trumpeter foremost among the several instruments he played, had both a cone-shaped mute and an odd aluminum derby hat which also was a mute -- I kid you not, it was similar to this one, only not as cylindrical-looking; it was shaped more like a real derby. It also wasn't felt-lined like that one, although it did have a cork band around the opening, I guess like the liner to make it vaguely wearable.

>>Do they make those for euphonia or baritones?
>They do, although they're quite expensive, and I can't really see the
>point of trying to practice with one in.

Huh. As a former baritone player, I never knew such a thing existed -- and if I had I would have thought there was no point to or demand for it. Shows how much I know.

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

Presented for general enjoyments and/or suffering:

MUSICAL TERMS
ALLEREGRETTO: When you're 16 measures into the piece and suddenly realize you set a too-fast tempo
ANGUS DEI: To play, with a divinely beefy tone
A PATELLA: Accompanied by knee-slapping
APOLOGGIATURA: A composition that you regret playing
APPROXIMATURA: A series of notes not intended by the composer, yet played with an "I meant to do that" attitude
APPROXIMENTO: A musical entrance that is somewhere in the vicinity of the correct pitch
DILL PICCOLINI: An exceedingly small wind instrument that plays only sour notes
FERMANTRA: A note held over and over and over and over and...
FIDDLER CRABS: Grumpy string players
FLUTE FLIES: Those tiny insects that bother musicians in outdoor gigs
FRUGALHORN: A sensible and inexpensive brass instrument
GAUL BLATTER: A French horn player
GREGORIAN CHAMP: The title bestowed upon the monk who can hold a note the longest
PLACEBO DOMINGO: A faux tenor
SPRITZICATO: An indication to string instruments to produce a bright and bubbly sound
TEMPO TANTRUM: What an elementary school orchestra is having when it's not following the conductor

	-={(Astynax)}=- "The Internet throws ever so vaguely relevant content at me now and then."

This reminds me of P.D.Q. Bach, whose Music for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion we did some bits of one year in high school. (I particularly recall performing the "Simply Grand Minuet".)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>SPRITZICATO: An indication to string instruments to produce a
>bright and bubbly sound

I thought this was the indicator on the score to inform the brass instruments that it's safe to empty out their spit valves

>>SPRITZICATO: An indication to string instruments to produce a
>>bright and bubbly sound
>
>I thought this was the indicator on the score to inform the brass
>instruments that it's safe to empty out their spit valves

No, that's "alla Spitsbergen".

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>I thought this was the indicator on the score to inform the brass
>instruments that it's safe to empty out their spit valves

Honestly, given the tone of all the other entries, I'd have expected this one to involve punishing a misbehaving feline, but whoever wrote these elected to skip the obvious joke I guess.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "This Space For Rent."

One of my friends at university in 1st year was a trombone player. He talked about a rarely seen document (pre-Internet era) called the Low Brass Player's Creed which was supposedly entertaining in a large ego kind of way. I hadn't thought about it much since then, but this discussions brought it to min. Some search engine fu later we have:
(NSFW) https://web.archive.org/web/20061013003054/http://students.washington.edu/jhbell/LowBrassCreed.html

Are any of you low brass players familiar with this? Is there any other document that purports to be a low brass players creed? I have (very) vague memories of how it was described to me, and it wasn't quite this strong.

-VR
OTOH, he was a preacher's kid and it had possibly been toned down when described to him
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."

>Are any of you low brass players familiar with this?

Never heard of it, but then, if it originated in 1999, I'd been out of the game for nine years by then.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I first heard of it in '84-85, assuming there isn't more than one.

-VR
The benighted pre-Internet era, where memes got lost forever.
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."

....

That thing is one gigantic run-on sentence.

It must be read by someone that can imitate The Scotsman from Samurai Jack.

Along similar lines, I bought a brass instrument cleaning kit that arrived today, and it included this list.

Useful Musical Terminology

Allegro
ask your doctor if it's right for you

Andante
walking tempo

Andantino
a man named Tino, walking

Da Capo
a large Italian man who issues traffic citations

Diminuendo
gradually becoming boring

Espressivo
to be ordered at Starbucks

Forte
loud,to be used sparingly, such as every note ever written

Largo
boring, I almost fell asleep just writing the word

Legato
legs stuck in gelato

Maestro
a mean, bossy man who drives a 1979 Toyota Corolla

Marching Band
nerds in formation, loud

Piano
zzz... zzzzzzzzz... see 'Largo'

Staccato
separated, like musicians from money

Viola
a bowed string instrument, aka "kindling," "the ugly stepchild," "the dream crusher," or "Ursula"

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Viola
>a bowed string instrument, aka "kindling," "the ugly stepchild," "the
>dream crusher," or "Ursula"
>

Which brings to mind: what's the difference between a violin and a viola?

The viola will burn longer.

>Along similar lines, I bought a brass instrument cleaning kit that
>arrived today, and it included this list.
>

I would not at all be surprised to discover that's where the list I ran across originated as well (well, maybe not specifically brass instrument cleaning, but some sort of musical accessory or supply item anyway.)

>Forte
>loud,to be used sparingly, such as every note ever written
>

This word will always remind me of the perennially forwarded band story about the tuba section and the 4 Fs on the sheet music.

>Viola
>a bowed string instrument, aka "kindling," "the ugly stepchild," "the
>dream crusher," or "Ursula"
>

This writer was rejected by the Ursula of their dreams and this is petty revenge. Or so I choose to believe.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "This Space For Rent."

Here is that story, for those who’ve never seen it:

--------------
Lime2K
The One True Evil Overlord
the tags only make the post better

OMG THIS ONE.

I recognized it the moment I saw that meme at the very top.

One of my most favorite things from Tumblr, and something I will reblog happily the moment I see it in my dashboard.

That's the classic. I'm not even a music geek and I appreciate the humor. Particularly Colossal Foghorn Noise, which also seems like a band name of some sort.

I am fairly certain that 24 fortes would require a weirding module and a killing word though.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "This Space For Rent."

Given I've been getting back into playing the violin I sorta want to defend the Viola's honor, but...nah.

>Given I've been getting back into playing the violin I sorta want to
>defend the Viola's honor, but...nah.

Maybe we should have a movement to rename it the "tenor violin". It would seem more respectable then. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Psssssh. If they wanted to be respectable they'd be cellists.

LAST EDITED ON Oct-11-20 AT 10:03 PM (EDT)
 
>Psssssh. If they wanted to be respectable they'd be cellists.

To be fair, cellos are insanely expensive. Might as well just be a pianist at that point.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I've had much better luck carrying my cello around on my back, though. Hong Meiling, I'm not.

dbrandon

>I've had much better luck carrying my cello around on my back, though.
> Hong Meiling, I'm not.

I would be incredibly paranoid about carrying around something so expensive but also fragile on my back. Or anywhere else, really, but especially on my back.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>I've had much better luck carrying my cello around on my back, though.
>> Hong Meiling, I'm not.
>
>I would be incredibly paranoid about carrying around something so
>expensive but also fragile on my back. Or anywhere else, really, but
>especially on my back.
>

Friend of mine is a fairly serious cellist who has taken them - yes, plural! because I don't know sane people - on aircraft before. Apparently the best way to manage this is to buy your cello a seat.

"No - no, sir, the seat is for my - yes I understand it's not - no, sir, it doesn't have a passport - well no, sir, it's not going in the hold - because the last time I flew anywhere you guys burst my durasteel-framed suitcase - if you'd just let me - because it's worth more than the plane-"

Kaitlyn Hutchins, having this conversation in my head for some reason despite not to my knowledge being a cellist.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

>Kaitlyn Hutchins, having this conversation in my head for some reason
>despite not to my knowledge being a cellist.

"And that is why I don't fly commercial any longer."

"You also know how many people with their own starships on hand?"

"That's beside the point."

--sofaspud
--

>"No - no, sir, the seat is for my - yes I understand it's not - no,
>sir, it doesn't have a passport - well no, sir, it's not going
>in the hold - because the last time I flew anywhere you guys burst my
>durasteel-framed suitcase - if you'd just let me - because it's
>worth more than the plane-"
>
>Kaitlyn Hutchins, having this conversation in my head for some reason
>despite not to my knowledge being a cellist.

She isn't, but Devlin Carter is. :)

(To be fair, she could be having the exact same conversation about one of her vintage synthesizers.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>"No - no, sir, the seat is for my - yes I understand it's not - no,
>>sir, it doesn't have a passport - well no, sir, it's not going
>>in the hold - because the last time I flew anywhere you guys burst my
>>durasteel-framed suitcase - if you'd just let me - because it's
>>worth more than the plane-"
>>
>>Kaitlyn Hutchins, having this conversation in my head for some reason
>>despite not to my knowledge being a cellist.
>
>She isn't, but Devlin Carter is. :)
>
>(To be fair, she could be having the exact same conversation about one
>of her vintage synthesizers.)

.... You said "vintage" and my brain automatically went to the most Vintage of Vintage.

The Moog Modular.

And thus I had the hilarious mental imagery of Kaitlyn trying to get that much kit into even two seats on a spaceliner. Heh.

That said, though, I can't imagine Kaitlyn not treasuring a Moog Modular. Especially if some of the the modules were custom built by Corwin and/or Gryphon.

>.... You said "vintage" and my brain automatically went to the most
>Vintage of Vintage.
>
>The Moog Modular.
>
>And thus I had the hilarious mental imagery of Kaitlyn trying to get
>that much kit into even two seats on a spaceliner. Heh.

Heh. I had in mind her ARP Odyssey, or possibly the Wavestation, but that is also a pretty amusing image. (As would be a Fairlight CMI or early Synclavier.)

>That said, though, I can't imagine Kaitlyn not treasuring a
>Moog Modular. Especially if some of the the modules were custom built
>by Corwin and/or Gryphon.

Somewhere, she almost certainly has a setup as exactly like the one on the cover of Switched-On Bach as possible. (She... may also have the costume. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>That said, though, I can't imagine Kaitlyn not treasuring a
>>Moog Modular. Especially if some of the the modules were custom built
>>by Corwin and/or Gryphon.
>
>Somewhere, she almost certainly has a setup as exactly like the one on
>the cover of Switched-On Bach as possible. (She... may
>also have the costume. :)

Given how much she loves the pageantry involved in putting on a show and combined with her sense of humor? This does not surprise me one bit.

Though given her figure, she'd make that shit look good.

>>>I've had much better luck carrying my cello around on my back, though.
>>> Hong Meiling, I'm not.
>>
>>I would be incredibly paranoid about carrying around something so
>>expensive but also fragile on my back. Or anywhere else, really, but
>>especially on my back.
>>
>
>Friend of mine is a fairly serious cellist who has taken them - yes,
>plural! because I don't know sane people - on aircraft before.
>Apparently the best way to manage this is to buy your cello a seat.

I did in fact do that myself once, on the way out to college for the first time. Expensive. There are also extremely heavy-duty cases designed for shipping, but they're almost as pricey as a cello. Well, as expensive as my cello, anyway.

dbrandon

> I mean, who ever heard of the baritone horn?

<raises hand> My dad owned one when I was a kid, and I played it in elementary school band for a couple-three years. It's still in the family -- my sister all but demanded it when my dad passed away in 2009, and to the best of my knowledge she has it to this day, even though she's primarily a keyboardist.

That said, yours is in better condition, mostly, than ours is -- the bell on ours had seen better years and was a bit crumpled around the edge. And it too had lost all its lacquer; the only places it still shone was where my hands (emitting my metal-eating acidic sweat) regularly gripped it.

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

I don't do bariton horn, but I do play baritone ukulele.

Why?

Because my fingers are too short and stiff to play guitar properly, too fat for narrow-neck guitars, and other ukes are tuned differently (about a fourth high, so a G chord becomes a C.)

So now I play the Dark Uke. Four strings are a lot easier to manage and remember fingerings for than six, even if the F chord is STILL a b***h and a half to play. (I end up faking it half the time it's needed, and play in OTHER KEYS as much as possible.)

I'm a folkie, not a band guy, so I play mostly to accompany myself or others singing, and it's a lot of fun. We used to have a group that would meet every Saturday at a really nice little Irish pub to sit down for a couple hours of jamming. (Can't get together anymore, of course, and meeting online is just asynch enough that you can't have people play and sing together which was nine-eigths of the fun for me.)

On the other hand, I went ahead this summer and sank a bit of our federal largesse into a new toy -- an eight-string baritone uke. It's kind of like playing a 12-string guitar, set up the same way, only with four doubled courses instead of six. Freaking beautiful sound.

Seen today else-forum, presented without further comment:

"From the author of My Dad's Lipschitz, But My Ass Doesn't Sing!"

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

"In conventional trombones, you will find a pea in the spit valve. For the purposes of this playing technique, you will need to replace that pea with an aitch."

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

i am not even a little bit sorry