another one? already?

Yes, I'm trying to post more frequently. No, I don't know how long it'll last, but I figure I owe it to my three (3) readers to give it a go. Maybe if I keep these short I won't run out of material as quickly.¹

Anyway. In honor of my last day at the repair shop, I present the following phone conversation.²



"So, you're calling to ask about a... red flute? What's the serial number? [Pause.] It doesn't, huh? Well, you know what the deal is with those flutes with no serial number, don't you? [Another pause.] They can only play really lame music."



Thank you and good night.

1. Does anyone else believe that? I didn't think so.[↩]


2. Well, half a phone conversation... I couldn't hear the other half.[↩]

overheard in a private lesson

"So, what are you guys working on?"

"We got a bunch of Christmas music this week."

"Yeah, it is that time, isn't it? Okay, let's see. [papers rustling] Hmm... 'Coventry Carol'... written out in pencil... and then photocopied. Awesome. Okay. A medley, that’s nice... wait, what’s this? 'Jingle Bells Forever'? [Pause.] This is... a combination of 'Jingle Bells' and 'Stars and Stripes?'"

"Um. Yeah."

"...Why would you do that?"

"I... I don't really know."

"Right. Okay. We... won't be working on that one. Ever."

"Yeah, I don’t blame you."

a manifesto of sorts

(As you can see, I’ve been sitting on this one awhile, and after you read it you’ll understand why. Some parts of this may be serious. Some may be satire. I leave it to you to decide which is which.)

--------------------------------------------------------------


I am a bit preoccupied with musicality.

Trouble is, I don’t really have the vocabulary to explain my thoughts about it. There's a quote by Steve Martin that is apropos: "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." And I certainly don’t have the ability to reproduce it yet when I play, which means that when I go off on a rant¹ no one knows what the hell I’m talking about.

This has sometimes led to the following exchange during a lesson:

"I’m having trouble with [insert piece], I need help."

"Okay, let’s hear it. [I play.] It sounds fine to me, what’s the problem?"

"I don’t know! It’s just not right, and I don’t know how to fix it."

"...Right. Let’s move on for now, and we’ll just...come back to that later."

Pete and I had a discussion once, when he was describing a recital that was "so perfect it was boring." My points were 1.) doesn’t that imply that the only way to create musical interest is to make a mistake? And 2.) isn’t boredom an imperfection? In other words, if it was boring, was it really perfect?²

I set my standards high, I know.³ In my practice I’m lucky if I achieve "well, I can’t hear anything wrong," and even if I could reliably reach this tepid form of supposed perfection I couldn’t settle for it. Ultimately I will never match my idea of how I ought to sound. Trying to explain this to others makes me appear slightly unbalanced.

So what is it I want, anyway?

...

I want the audience to be wide-eyed and awestruck. I want to break them and remake them, all in the space of an hour-long concert. I want tears and euphoria and rage and fear. I want people that are passing by, people that don’t even like the trombone, to stop in mid-step when the music starts, and I want them on their knees by the time it finishes. I want to reach straight through their conscious mind into the primal center of their brain, and I want their souls to tremble.

I want to make music that shines so brightly it hurts.

I might possibly be asking too much.⁴

...

See? I have somehow managed to take what should have been a perfectly innocuous discussion of musicality and turn it into the megalomaniacal ramblings of a mad scientist.⁵ I am not sure how this happened. As it stands it reads less like casual entertainment and more like something that would make a psychiatrist raise an eyebrow and reach for the panic button.⁶

I will drive myself crazy trying to achieve this. I can’t learn to settle for what is "good enough," even if it’s good enough to get me a real job.⁷ Instead I will wear though the threadbare fabric of my sanity while sitting in a practice room for hours upon hours, struggling towards an ideal I can’t really describe and can only barely imagine.

No, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe I just need to drink more.

1. (as I am wont to do)[↩]


2. Thanks to all my teachers for putting up with what is clearly obsessive insanity on my part, by the way. Clearly I am not the easiest student, and you all have my profoundest sympathy.[↩]


3. Stop laughing.[↩]


4. Let's not even mention the clichés I've abused here.[↩]


5. I'll show them all, though. Fools.[↩]


6. I don’t actually know that psychiatrists have a secret panic button that summons doctors in white coats to throw you in a straitjacket and carry you off, but it seems like something they ought to have, doesn’t it?[↩]


7. And right now I am so far from this that I shouldn’t even be considering what lies beyond it any time soon.[↩]

i get the best gigs

So I wrote this post about musicality the other day, and it took a different path than I was expecting, and I’ll need just a little more time to edit it into something resembling sanity.

Meanwhile, this happened.

...

I played a pops concert recently. Pretty basic pops concert fare, which is all that needs to be said about that. It was an outdoor concert, in a field overlooking the water. I wasn’t familiar with the singer we performed with, but apparently she has a significant following. It should have been a wholly unremarkable concert.

So, how many things can go wrong with an outdoor gig?

Transportation. The original plan was to have us park in a cemetery parking lot a few miles away and then bring us in on shuttle buses, because there was no parking at the venue (although a few people questioned this once we saw the venue). Anyway, the shuttle buses were an hour late.¹

Rain. We’re in the northwest, so this is a contingency that must always be planned for. The stage was covered, but was not properly equipped to deal with the possibility of both rain and wind. It was okay at first when it was barely a sprinkle, but then it started pouring, and the brass players got soaked, and the roof started dumping water on the timpani, and the string players around the edge of the stage huddled desperately over their instruments, and then the orchestra manager stopped rehearsal and sent us all to seek sanctuary in the tent that had been set up behind the stage.² We resumed rehearsal once the deluge had passed, but we watched the sky for the rest of the day, and I had to play a concert while sitting on a wet chair.

I started learning about union rules that day. I was unsurprised to learn that no one can make union musicians play in the rain, but I also learned about the minimum temperature for an outdoor gig.³ This subject came up during the performance, when I started to wish I had worn a heavier concert black.⁴ The woodwinds got little heaters to keep their instruments safe, but the brass had to tough it out. Not unbearable by any means, just a little chilly.

Also? Train tracks running behind the stage, with trains that went by at inopportune times during both the rehearsal and the performance, loud enough to drown out the music. The audience took it in stride, and I tried really hard not to laugh too obviously.

Good times.

1. Yes, this means there was a large group of people dressed in all black loitering in a cemetery parking lot. No, the irony was not lost on us.[↩]


2. A tent with a grass floor, even. I didn’t mind, but apparently people with allergies were suffering a bit.[↩]


3. It was either 60° or 65°, depending on who you asked. I’ll have to look it up one of these days.[↩]


4. If I had been smart and looked at a map I’d have seen we were next to the water and dressed appropriately.[↩]

walking the line between mockery and self-deprecation

I've been losing taking auditions lately. And while most have been unremarkable, I've come across a few things that were... peculiar. Orchestra names have been omitted to protect the innocent.¹

1. A lot of auditions have been opening with a solo lately. I had been led to believe that this was more of a semifinal/final round thing, but apparently times are a-changing. It's kind of refreshing, actually.²

2. Why would any orchestra take their audition materials out of an excerpt book? I mean, it's a good resource for students, but one would think an orchestra would want the actual parts for an audition. It just makes me uneasy when I pull out my copies of the original parts and the organizer starts to look worried.

3. In my (admittedly limited) experience, the first round of most auditions is usually less than five minutes. Between five and ten minutes seems a bit long, but certainly not unreasonable. Twenty to thirty minutes is right out.³

4. When there aren't very many people auditioning, I can see how there might only be one round. Deciding to e-mail everyone the results later instead of making a decision that day was a little unorthodox, but didn't really bother me. Announcing that the finalists from that first round will each play a trial concert with the orchestra before a final decision is made isn't unheard of, but seems a little odd for a small per-service group. When all of this adds up to an acknowledgment that a final decision probably won't be made until close to a year after the audition? Man, I dunno. I'm not complaining, just... baffled.⁴

All of these observations are made purely in a spirit of love and compassion and personal amusement, I swear. And if anything mentioned here is actually perfectly common and normal and I've been horribly misled? Please, let me know so I can be prepared for the next time it happens.

1. I mean, so far they've all been really nice people, and I don't want to imply that any of these things caused me to lose any auditions. No, that was all my doing.[↩]


2. I'd probably be happier about it if I didn't hate our solo literature so much.[↩]


3. Honestly, I should have been cut after the first five.[↩]


4. Yes, I am one of the finalists, which is how I know about this. I really wasn't expecting it after how I played.[↩]

but i don't even have a woodshed

So, how do other brass players manage to practice after they graduate?

I am currently staying with family. I didn’t think my sanity would survive this long, but somehow it remains intact. This can probably be attributed to my current schedule, which consists of hiding in my room and practicing all day. One of the side effects of this lifestyle is that I have completely lost the ability to hold a conversation with non-musicians, because I simply don’t do anything else. As for "balance" or "mental health," well, I’ll get back to you after I have a job. Mental health is clearly overrated, and I can’t do anything about it anyway until I have a job that provides health insurance.¹

I tried practicing at my father’s condo a few times, but finally one of the neighbors complained, and so now I can’t really visit him until after he finishes his move.² In the woman’s defense, she was extremely nice and apologetic about it. On the other hand, it was the middle of the day and there were no mitigating circumstances offered.³ Basically what it comes down to is that I can’t comfortably practice when I know that it’s pissing people off. As it stands, I am currently living in a house with five other people, and while no one here has complained and they’re all gracious enough to pretend that they enjoy it, I still feel a little guilty from time to time. Trombone practice is not the most enthralling to listen to, nor is it the quietest.⁴

So, what is everyone else doing? Apartment practice is highly impractical and makes people angry. Those of us that need to practice the most can’t exactly afford a house. Now that I’m no longer a student I can’t live in use the school practice rooms anymore. And the Silent Brass system and/or practice mutes are only temporary solutions and will do strange things to your playing if used exclusively, as most brass player can probably attest to.

Living with my family does make me a little twitchy, but I could go get a crap job somewhere and make enough to move out if I really needed to. However, not only would a job severely impact my current practice schedule⁵, I would also be hard-pressed to find a place to rent that I could practice in for 5+ hours a day without making others’ lives miserable. I can’t be the only musician in this situation. So... what is everyone else doing?

Seriously, tell me. I need to know.




(yes, i am still enamored with footnotes. i'll get bored with them soon enough.)

1. Although being uninsured is pretty awesome. [↩]


2. I can hear you thinking the word "obsessive" right now. Stop it.[↩]


3. i.e. “someone’s trying to sleep”[↩]


4. Long tones and slow slurs at fortissimo for an hour? Rock on.[↩]


5. and my will to live[↩]

also, zarathustra is on notice

My family has been enduring my practice schedule for months now. Overall they've been gracious about it, considering that it takes up most of the day¹ and is not exactly quiet. They'll even occasionally attempt to compliment me, which while well-meant is usually good for a laugh.

"Oh, I enjoyed your trombone playing."

"...I was playing long tones, but thanks."

I'm pretty much the only musician in the family. There are a few people on my father's side of the family that remember playing in high school band, but by and large the concept of orchestral trombone mostly escapes them. Classical is definitely not their genre of choice.

So out of the numerous orchestral excerpts, concertos, cello suites, etudes and everything else that I work on daily, what is the one excerpt that everyone comments on specifically? The one they like so much?






Of course it's the Ride. How could it not be?

As many people know, the Ride and I have History. Those of you who don't know probably shouldn't ask. No, really. You might think you are interested, but I can assure you that you are not. Besides, to some extent every low brass player has History with the Ride.

It isn't my worst excerpt.² It is simply the excerpt that pops up again and again, mocking me and my career choice. It represents hours and hours of my life that I will never get back, and I still can't play the damned thing quite right. It is also the one excerpt out of all trombone literature that everyone in the world knows (or, at least, thinks they know).

Again and again, the scene plays out. "I really enjoyed that one song you were playing. You know, the one that goes..." followed by a feeble attempt to sing something that might bear a passing resemblance to Wagner if you use your imagination. And I smile and nod, and attempt to keep from cringing.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting that anyone in my family should be able to sing it accurately. One of the many reasons that this excerpt plagues us all is because it is fucking hard to play well. All I'm saying is that if you take the above scene and play it over and over and over again throughout the years, and then add hours upon hours of Wagnerian self-flagellation dedicated practice, you might understand why trombonists sometimes feel as if no one plays the Ride correctly. Ever.³

Ever.

It has become my personal nemesis. We each have one, and it looks like the Ride is mine.

The solution? More practice, clearly.

1. It's pretty much all I do now, because what most people would call "unhealthy obsession" I call "getting things done." [↩]


2. No, you don't want to ask me about that either. See above. [↩]


3. If you enjoy living on the edge and want to make a low brass player twitch, just walk up to them while they are practicing the Ride and say, "Your rhythm's wrong." After that you should probably run away very quickly. [↩]