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Jun. 15th, 2002 01:50 amTime for a trip down memory lane… I played French horn from 4th grade through my first semester in college where I realized that being the best French horn player in high school in Kerrville is a long, long way away from being the best French horn player at UT Austin. I realized that to make a career out of playing French horn I would have to spend so much time working on it and practicing that it would effectively suck all the fun out of playing. And I quickly lost my drive to be the best at everything when I got to college and away from home, and didn’t feel I had to prove anything to those damn cheerleaders. Well, I never had anything against the cheerleaders, but my niche in school was being smart and musical. That’s what I did. But in addition to discovering sex in my senior year of HS, I also found that in college people are generally friendly and open-minded, and there isn’t the same need to form cliques as there was in high school. So I went from being a somewhat brittle, humorless, disciplined, perfectionist to only the mild worry-wart that you see before you today.
After changing majors I put the horn away for several years. When I lived in the hell that was Killeen for a year, I signed up with a community band for a bit, but the director was a horrible, angry man who threw temper-tantrums on a regular basis. I left without playing in a single concert. When I moved back to Austin (thank the gods) I found a much more mellow community band, where there wasn’t even an audition and it was made of a mix of music majors, retired band directors, and just average joes that still enjoyed playing, but there was no pressure to be Great. Even though we played an over-abundance of Sousa music (grumble), it was a really cool band. I got busy with other stuff and dropped out a couple of years ago, but still played the Christmas concerts. I managed to miss this past year, for various reasons. I’ve been missing playing.
The other night hub and Bob and I were sitting around, and though I knew all these facts before it suddenly dawned on me- I play horn, hub plays trumpet, Bob plays trombone… that’s a decent brass trio! I hadn’t ever seen a lot of brass trio music, but I figured it had to be out there. An internet search showed that it was, of course, but I wanted to buy music that I’d had a chance to look over. Bob practices every so often still, and I felt fairly confident that I could handle easy to intermediate stuff, but hub hasn’t played in years.
So I went to a music store today to find trio music, and thought maybe some duet music would be nice too, in case one or the other of them got sick of it before I did. I figured I’d get some horn duets and transcribe them if I had to. But lo, they had a series called ‘Trios [and Duets] for All’. It’s 20 or so pieces as a book for each instrument. So I could just buy the horn one, and play horn trios (if I happened to find 2 other horn players) or have the trumpet or trombone transpose. Or, what I did was buy the book for trumpet, horn, and trombone and that way we can all play… and since each book has all parts, we can play them however we want- me taking the 1st part on one, 2nd on another, 3rd on another. And I got duet books for each of us too- they’re pretty cheap, fortunately.
Hub and I tried to play a bit tonight (Bob’s out of town) and it was a lot of fun. I forget how much of my brain I devoted to music for such a long time. My lip is way out of shape, and so is hub's, but we managed to limp through Verdi’s Aria from ‘Rigoletto’ without scaring the cats too much. I hope I can keep playing; it’s sort of how I feel about doing magick/ritual work. I think about it a lot by myself, but I get a lot more motivated to do it when there’s other people to do it with.
After changing majors I put the horn away for several years. When I lived in the hell that was Killeen for a year, I signed up with a community band for a bit, but the director was a horrible, angry man who threw temper-tantrums on a regular basis. I left without playing in a single concert. When I moved back to Austin (thank the gods) I found a much more mellow community band, where there wasn’t even an audition and it was made of a mix of music majors, retired band directors, and just average joes that still enjoyed playing, but there was no pressure to be Great. Even though we played an over-abundance of Sousa music (grumble), it was a really cool band. I got busy with other stuff and dropped out a couple of years ago, but still played the Christmas concerts. I managed to miss this past year, for various reasons. I’ve been missing playing.
The other night hub and Bob and I were sitting around, and though I knew all these facts before it suddenly dawned on me- I play horn, hub plays trumpet, Bob plays trombone… that’s a decent brass trio! I hadn’t ever seen a lot of brass trio music, but I figured it had to be out there. An internet search showed that it was, of course, but I wanted to buy music that I’d had a chance to look over. Bob practices every so often still, and I felt fairly confident that I could handle easy to intermediate stuff, but hub hasn’t played in years.
So I went to a music store today to find trio music, and thought maybe some duet music would be nice too, in case one or the other of them got sick of it before I did. I figured I’d get some horn duets and transcribe them if I had to. But lo, they had a series called ‘Trios [and Duets] for All’. It’s 20 or so pieces as a book for each instrument. So I could just buy the horn one, and play horn trios (if I happened to find 2 other horn players) or have the trumpet or trombone transpose. Or, what I did was buy the book for trumpet, horn, and trombone and that way we can all play… and since each book has all parts, we can play them however we want- me taking the 1st part on one, 2nd on another, 3rd on another. And I got duet books for each of us too- they’re pretty cheap, fortunately.
Hub and I tried to play a bit tonight (Bob’s out of town) and it was a lot of fun. I forget how much of my brain I devoted to music for such a long time. My lip is way out of shape, and so is hub's, but we managed to limp through Verdi’s Aria from ‘Rigoletto’ without scaring the cats too much. I hope I can keep playing; it’s sort of how I feel about doing magick/ritual work. I think about it a lot by myself, but I get a lot more motivated to do it when there’s other people to do it with.
