Much to our chagrin as musicians, our performance hall was originally built as a chapel for the University, so it has terribly random hot spots, completely inconsistent temperatures and textures that bounce the sounds all around until they are a jumbled mess. Our rehearsal room, unfortunately, is also not the best acoustically. Everything just swallows up the sounds and it is very dry.
Doc was lamenting this fact during rehearsal one day as a percussion player tried (unsuccessfully) to cover his part. However, the guy that he is, Doc largely understood that it was more about the room than the player. "We need a big cathedral for the cymbal crash right there. Here, it's just dying like a bug on a rug."
Which is, of course, when I envisioned a cymbal trying to crawl around on the floor until upending itself onto it's back in death grips, trying to figure out how on earth it would twitch. Perhaps it would unravel the metal like loose strings instead? If anyone else has any better ideas, I'd love to hear them.
One rehearsal, Doc pulled out a new piece of music. The main theme skipped between several different instruments in small doses until it rallied the band as a whole towards the climax. Which, of course, is when the trumpets took the melody - with all of it's idiosyncratic rhythms and note leaps - up an octave.
There are six trumpet players in our wind ensemble. That's generally two to a part, 1st, 2nd and 3rd, unless there are additional parts for a piccolo trumpet, cornet and/or flugelhorns. (from left to right in the picture above, the instruments are: flugelhorn, trumpet, cornet, and the piccolo) So in essence, there should have been six trumpeters belting out this grandiose part.
Should have being the optimum word there. Instead, nearly everyone gave up, staring at their music in a confused horror.
Doc cut the group off and looked to the back row, to Patrick, the principal. "Patrick, sounds like you were left holding the bag there!"
Which only reminded me of a woodwind quintet rehearsal at least two years back, perhaps three. Woodwind quintets are groups of five individuals (obviously): an oboe, a bassoon, a clarinet, a flute, and a french horn. All of us were students, with 4 girls and 1 guy, not counting our director (Doc) who occasionally filled in the french horn slot, especially since woodwind quintets perform without a director.
Anyway...so we were rehearsing one day, Doc wasn't there, and man oh man. What a day. Everybody was having some kind of trouble. Either there were giggle fests over nothing, music flying off stands at page turns, screws popping off the flute, reed issues for all three of the reed players, tempo issues, I mean you name it, it happened. Finally our clarinetist (who will kill me if I put his real name here...hahaha...so we'll call him Welsh) just gives up. "Sorry guys. I think I just killed my clarinet. I sound worse than a five year old in a burlap sack!"
There was silence for a second as we all got visuals (mine was rather like a snake charmer, except a baby with a mouthpiece pops out), and then we packed our instruments with laughs so hard we all got instant six-packs.
One for the record books, eh?
We still remind him about the burlap sack anytime he squeaks in rehearsal. XP
Hobey-ho!
