This may be the greatest thread
That for me I've ever read
I've driven there in my Chevrolet
and hope to do it another day

Burma Shave

Muting a tuba is especially a problem and I haven't figured it out yet. Last rehearsal, the Conductor wanted the trombone, who sits next to me, muted in deference to the chorus. Trombonist hadn't brought his mute as we are into the manyith rehearsal and conductor never requested a mute before. I ...

Gas out west here has gotten really expensive (pushing $6/gal.) so with the road salt gone, I've brought the old Mercedes diesel out of hybrination early this year. It uses 1/3 as much fuel at my Suburban. Last evening I was able to load the Mammoth in its gig bag, with stand, in the trunk and the ...

Are European orchestras in such dire straits as orchestras in the US? Is their cost structure more favorable?

I suspect most European venues are long since paid for while the municipal bonds floated for Seattle's Fine Arts infrastructure still pay me a nice dividend -- tax free. I do know that ...

I've noticed that on the Martin Mammoth. It has very tight valves and they will hold a vacuum over night. I haven't noticed it during a playing session though. I warm up playing scales and arpeggios that use all the valves. For our upcoming concert I'll have long periods of not playing so I'll be on ...

Thank you all for the information.

The intonation on my Willson 3400S is good enough that I can set the slides for a particular piece and forget it. I make a note in pencil at the top indicating 4th out or 1st out and if need be for a subsequent piece in the performance, I'll mark 4th in or 1st in ...

So far as I know none of my three tubas has vented valves. If one did, what would I look for? From what I've read here on the forums, holes are drilled in some part of the valve but where?

What is the playing advantage? What problems does this cure? Why don't manufacturers do this when the ...

This discussion reminds me of what I've read about the demise of the British motorcycle industry:
Post WWII, management refused to make any investment in the companies including even maintaining the machine tools. Workers made valiant attempts at compensating for wide variations in tolerances but I ...

The back problem issue mentioned it something to consider. I thought being a large man I'd be immune to such things. But no.

I pinched a nerve in my back (L-5 I think) sometime over the past year and picking up the 24lb Willson from the side of my chair repeatedly during rehearsal has made the pain ...

Amazon gives me a pain! But given where we live on-line shopping is our only alternative for much besides groceries. I failed to de-check the Amazon Prime button on an order and poof! I'm a Prime member. So I ordered bunch of really heavy stuff from them. That went on for several months until their ...

Long, long ago I was hired as an apprentice tool maker at Boeing. We hand filed tools that made the aluminum ribs for the fuselage. The contours were important and we checked ourselves with one of several radius gauges. When the inspector came around he checked our work with his set of Lufkin gauges ...

I have this Homelite chainsaw that I bought new in 1978. It cut firewood for me and to sell and was used one summer on a tree thinning project for the USFS. I still have it. I re-ringed the cylinder after the thinning project. It has the original roller-tip bar bar and has gone through countless ...

FWIW Linda Ronstadt hired Nelson Riddle to produce a series of American Songbook pieces for her trio of albums in the mid eighties. Skylark is one of my favorites on that effort. She does it very well.

I assume from the discussion that the store is in Vancouver despite the Rose City name, which I ...

I would not get hung up on keeping the trumpet fingering. That's unnecessarily limiting and you'll have to learn new fingerings anyway.

I've had lots of experience playing a 3+1 Eb tuba and I double on trumpet (or is it the other way round?) For trad jazz gigs I prefer the 3+1 and use the 4th ...

I had not played this piece with piano before and previously noticed no intonation problems. I was flat relative to *something* and the piano was indeed playing the D above 440. So the piano was sharp compared to the zero beat brass section? I had not realized that the equal-tempered forte piano ...

In performance last Sunday, 12/21, playing trumpet, chills ran up my spine as my 4th space E was enough out of tune to notice. Was it some odd reflection off the curve of the piano next to me? or was the trombone off? Or was it me? Many Bb trumpets will have a flat 1st valve D but open E? Two long ...

I miss nutcracker so much! Op. 71 was standard fare we played for years and I'd never seen the ballet. So my wife bought us expensive orchestra seats one year on a visit to SFO and it was delightful and captivating -- The whole story; mice in battle, Clara weeping over the broken nutcracker and on ...

Well, as of this Sunday morning I've played my last gig of 2025, unless somebody comes up with a pop-up NYE gig. That's once again possible since it snowed 6" last week and froze. The skiers haven't cancelled their reservations according to Mr. Trombone who runs central reservations. He conducted ...

@bloke Don't you dare take that eraser to the charts you were sent. That's history. Imagine if Mozart had erased his corrections. Thankfully they didn't have pencils in those days. I do have a large eraser for pit gigs. There was the time I was given a 68-page book that had all the markups from the ...

Two years ago our rock band played our last NYE gig at the Eagles club. That included dinner and drinks and we got paid well! This year no NYE gigs at the usual local places, many of which have changed hands since. The owner/bartender of the most likely place, which has a big dance floor and a disco ...