GMG Classical Music Forum

  We seem to have a few musicians ( pro and amateur ) lurking around here, so I thought I'd check to see who plays what.

  Amateur hornist here, getting my embouchure back in the game after a long departure.  0:)

Clarinet, sing, compose, conduct ("Something else not covered here...")

(It was tempting to cast a joke vote: "I sing!" plus "I don't do anything musical" ....)

Quote from: Fagotterdämmerung on January 12, 2015, 10:57:47 AM
  We seem to have a few musicians ( pro and amateur ) lurking around here, so I thought I'd check to see who plays what.

  Amateur hornist here, getting my embouchure back in the game after a long departure.  0:)

I have some duets for clarinet and horn . . . .

-Violin/viola -- studied for a long time (I also used to play cello)
-Piano -- self-taught
-Composition -- self-taught

I've also played clarinet, oboe, and bassoon (which I really wish I took up more seriously).

  In terms of previous instruments, I've played viola ( semi-professionally, until my bowing arm went kablooey ) and been taught composition ( I can fugue like a mofo, but honestly, the song isn't in me ), and dabbled in almost every instrument in terms of playing with it for a few hours. My music school used to have a day where you could go and try to play any of the orchestral instruments and I always took advantage of it, though some instruments I found I hated the playing position despite loving the sound ( the bassoon is one I tried for a few weeks, but was just so awkward for me I realized my heart wasn't in it: it's a flagpole with a bazillion thumb keys ). Trombone seems to have the most innately comfortable embouchure of all the brass, but no to that slide thingy. The tuba is extremely fun but requires so much air it's like inflating the Hindenburg. Trumpet embouchure was too pinch-y. The horn was the baby bear option for me, and conveniently does not require an as-dexterous right arm.

Tenor saxophone and clarinet...but haven't played in years...decades, actually.

Me, senior year, 1967:

(http://photos.imageevent.com/sgtrock/feb2010/img460.jpg)

Sarge

I play guitar, bass, mandolin, piano, and I used to play percussion in school band.

Clarinet and piano here.  I was once pretty good at both; now I play poorly.

Guitar, but haven't really played in years.

Quote from: Sergeant Rock on January 12, 2015, 11:59:59 AM
Tenor saxophone and clarinet...but haven't played in years...decades, actually.

Me, senior year, 1967:

(http://photos.imageevent.com/sgtrock/feb2010/img460.jpg)

Sarge

But did you give in your uniform by Wednesday?!?! That's what we really want to know. :)

the only instrument I can play well is the Double Bass, but I can also play (with varying level of competency): Violin/Viola, Cello, Clarinet, Trombone, Piano, and percusssion

  I'd be curious how well double bass technique translates on a cello. I know with violin/viola it's largely a matter of a slight difference in bowing and of course larger spacing on the viola, but otherwise pretty much the same, but bass players seem to be constantly shifting...

Oboe & English horn; flute & piccolo; recorder; clarinet, percussion, piano, voice.  Every once in a while I get a chance to conduct, and I've written a few minor pieces (nothing like our esteemed Henningsmusick).

Like some others I've seen here, I can start with 'In my school days...' I played the trumpet first, then switched to the Bb Baritone Horn for 4 years. Really liked that one, not much career future though, unless I was in the Marine Band or something!

After that I played guitar for the next 20 years, along with mandolin, tenor banjo and a little ukelele for fun. I was quite proficient on the guitar, but time and circumstances forced it into the corner, not sure I can play a mean C chord today!

I wish the question asked further 'and which one would you like to play?'. If I was 8 years old now, I would wish to play the cello. I might suck at it, but I would sure love to give it a try.

8)

Guitar, bass guitar, compose, and pretend to know how to play mandolin and piano.

Quote from: Gurn Blanston on January 12, 2015, 04:47:42 PM
...then switched to the Bb Baritone Horn for 4 years. Really liked that one, not much career future though, unless I was in the Marine Band or something! ...

Well, you could have played all those "tenor tuba" parts in R. Strauss, Holst's The Planets, and Stravinsky's Rite, plus the "Tenor horn" part in Mahler 7. :D

Quote from: Fagotterdämmerung on January 12, 2015, 02:56:32 PM
  I'd be curious how well double bass technique translates on a cello. I know with violin/viola it's largely a matter of a slight difference in bowing and of course larger spacing on the viola, but otherwise pretty much the same, but bass players seem to be constantly shifting...

It doesn't, really. The bass is a completely different animal than the other string instruments, being tuned in 4ths (standard tuning at least), some using the German bow.

Quote from: jochanaan on January 12, 2015, 05:17:21 PM
Well, you could have played all those "tenor tuba" parts in R. Strauss, Holst's The Planets, and Stravinsky's Rite, plus the "Tenor horn" part in Mahler 7. :D

Oh great, NOW you tell me, and I just sold that horn, too (45 years ago!). >:(

8)

Quote from: Gurn Blanston on January 12, 2015, 04:47:42 PM
I wish the question asked further 'and which one would you like to play?'. If I was 8 years old now, I would wish to play the cello. I might suck at it, but I would sure love to give it a try.

I can understand that. I played viola all through my teens and then picked up horn around age twenty and found myself wishing I'd started off with the horn! It was just so much more natural to make the sound with me rather than with two objects I was holding.

I think my choice in viola was in a large part due to the charming and charismatic viola teacher I had, who often kept me motivated despite starting late-ish for a string player ( and thus being a bit slower than the army of Suzuki children ).

So much of life is due to our surroundings.

Quote from: Fagotterdämmerung on January 12, 2015, 06:09:46 PM

So much of life is due to our surroundings.

Indeed; I can't imagine a circumstance in my young life (it would have to have been in the late 1950's) which would have led to me playing cello. I was in a brass band sort of situation from Day 1...  :-\

8)

Quote from: Fagotterdämmerung on January 12, 2015, 06:09:46 PM
I can understand that. I played viola all through my teens and then picked up horn around age twenty and found myself wishing I'd started off with the horn! It was just so much more natural to make the sound with me rather than with two objects I was holding.

I think my choice in viola was in a large part due to the charming and charismatic viola teacher I had, who often kept me motivated despite starting late-ish for a string player ( and thus being a bit slower than the army of Suzuki children ).

So much of life is due to our surroundings.

The horn is my favorite brass instrument. Are you familiar with Schumann's quadruple? One of my favorite pieces.

Also, since you're a Messiaen fan, have you ever tried the Appel Interstellaire from Des Canyons aux Etoiles? I don't often listen to unaccompanied works, but I've played that movement by itself before. I like the spacious atmosphere it conveys.

Ex-violinist here... never very good; didn't play anything harder than the Bach Chaconne and the Dvorak and Tchaikovsky concerti.

Played some piano, but was a lot worse at it.

Quote from: EigenUser on January 13, 2015, 03:40:16 AM
The horn is my favorite brass instrument. Are you familiar with Schumann's quadruple? One of my favorite pieces.

It's fun! Another hornful Romantic work I'm rather fond of is Brahm's 4 Songs, Op.17 for women's chorus, horns and harp. It's light in substance, but the spare texture is exceedingly pleasing.

Quote from: EigenUser on January 13, 2015, 03:40:16 AM
Also, since you're a Messiaen fan, have you ever tried the Appel Interstellaire from Des Canyons aux Etoiles? I don't often listen to unaccompanied works, but I've played that movement by itself before. I like the spacious atmosphere it conveys.

It certainly explores a lot of intriguing horn timbres, though I tend to enjoy it more as something of a break in the work than extracted as a set solo piece ( very similar to Abîme des oiseaux in that respect: better as a movement than as a concert solo piece ). Not that that seems to have stopped hornists using it that way - and why not, I suppose... there's not much by big names for horn all on its lonesome.

I am impressed that so many play or sing or at least used to.
I used to play the clarinet for several years, but I was never good (dabbled with one rather trivial Stamitz concerto and looked at the easier bits of the Brahms quintet when noone was listening because I am really in love with that piece) have not played since around 2000 (I somehow stopped when my father died after a short illness unexpectedly and never played regularly afterwards.) I still have a clarinet but it would probably have to be overhauled... It's a pity, maybe I should really try again.

Quote from: jochanaan on January 12, 2015, 05:17:21 PM
Well, you could have played all those "tenor tuba" parts in R. Strauss, Holst's The Planets, and Stravinsky's Rite, plus the "Tenor horn" part in Mahler 7. :D

Not really. Tenor tuba = euphonium which is the same pitch as a baritone horn, but it's a tuba! A wider bore, a a uite different sound and quite different for the lungs. The part in The Planets is about as echt euphonium as you can get, but Mahler 7 has a genuine baritone horn part (German tenor horn = rest of the world's baritone horn)

Quote from: Fagotterdämmerung on January 13, 2015, 09:57:07 AM
[...] Abîme des oiseaux [is] better as a movement than as a concert solo piece [....]

Certainly true!

Quote from: Dax on January 14, 2015, 12:24:50 AM
Not really. Tenor tuba = euphonium which is the same pitch as a baritone horn, but it's a tuba! A wider bore, a a uite different sound and quite different for the lungs. The part in The Planets is about as echt euphonium as you can get, but Mahler 7 has a genuine baritone horn part (German tenor horn = rest of the world's baritone horn)

You know, I've wondered about that M7 part.  Makes sense.  And of course I know they're different instruments, but they could possibly play the same parts in a pinch...

I saw someone pinched by a euphonium once, and it was not pretty.

A euphemistic euphonium?

I used to play the trombone and piano, but now I don't do anything musical.

  I've always been sorry Euphoniums never found a place in the orchestra. They're considerably more agile than the other brass in that register ( trombones are slide-inhibited to a degree; horns are a bit sluggish on the lower end of the bass clef ). The closest we had was the century-long life of the French C tuba: really a high pitched euphonium wearing a clever disguise, leaving a legacy of red-faced, modern day tuba players trying to manage the parts on instruments an octave lower in its wake.

I use to play piano, which is my main instrument; but I can also play some percussion instruments like the glockenspiel and the xylophone.

flute, piano and violin.

Clarinet and saxophones ... started with the recorder, of course, then switched to clarinet at 11 (I think). When starting to explore jazz a couple of years later, the saxophone grabbed my attention more and more - and tenor it should be. Later on got a soprano and an alto as well, and when I did my army service as part of a lousy army band (still not all too easy to get in, but really, it was a letdown on all levels), I got me a baritone, too (which would have been way too expensive to buy myself).

All five instruments are still around, but alas I stopped playing several years back. Last time I did play was at my sister's wedding (three sax duets with a friend, two jazz tunes and the old OZ traditional "Waltzing Mathilda"), but after that I had to get a tooth implant right on front, and while things are decent enough now, I've not really picked up playing again since ...

Quote from: king ubu on February 23, 2015, 05:38:01 AM
...All five instruments are still around, but alas I stopped playing several years back. Last time I did play was at my sister's wedding (three sax duets with a friend, two jazz tunes and the old OZ traditional "Waltzing Mathilda"), but after that I had to get a tooth implant right on front, and while things are decent enough now, I've not really picked up playing again since ...

Time to try again, or so it seems.  It's never too late. :)

Quote from: Lisztianwagner on January 15, 2015, 11:30:11 AM
I'm used to play piano, which is my main instrument; but I can also play some percussion instruments like the glockenspiel and the xylophone.

You 'used' to play piano, Ilaria? Don't play anymore? You're speaking in past tense. :)

Quote from: Mirror Image on February 23, 2015, 08:41:19 AM
You 'used' to play piano, Ilaria? Don't play anymore? You're speaking in past tense. :)

No, I still play piano. :) Maybe I expressed myself in a wrong way, I thought to speak in present tense with "I am used", that it was like "I use".

Quote from: Lisztianwagner on February 23, 2015, 10:52:33 AM
No, I still play piano. :) Maybe I expressed myself in a wrong way, I thought to speak in present tense with "I am used", that it was like "I use".

Ah, okay, but to speak in the present tense, though, you wouldn't need to say "I'm used" or "I am used," you would actually say something like "I play the piano". Using the word 'used,' at least where I come from, makes it sound like someone is saying they once played the piano, but no longer play it. :)

Quote from: jochanaan on February 23, 2015, 08:00:42 AM
Time to try again, or so it seems.  It's never too late. :)

Oh, I know! I'd never consider giving away any of my instruments, the tenor is my favorite (though it's not one of the hallowed Selmer Mark VI ones, just a Super Action II from the 90s), but I love the alto as well - a 1971 Selmer Mark VII that to my ears sounds gorgeous.

Actually, towards the end of high school, I was considering studying clarinet at the conservatory instead of going to university, but I couldn't really see myself as a teacher (and I'm extremely ambivalent as far as jazz schools are concerned - would have I have attempted to become a musician, it would surely have been jazz for me, but just as surely not a jazz school).

Quote from: king ubu on February 23, 2015, 10:38:00 PM
...(and I'm extremely ambivalent as far as jazz schools are concerned - would have I have attempted to become a musician, it would surely have been jazz for me, but just as surely not a jazz school).

I'm with you on that.  The best way to learn jazz is the down-and-dirty way of going to clubs and sitting in with the house band during open jams.

Piano, but not very well. I took lessons for a long time, only I never practiced enough. I actually thought I was decent before I got a better piano teacher. You do not know fear until a sixty-something Ukrainian woman with training from the Kiev Conservatory yells at you for messing up a Beethoven Sonata!  ??? She had me go back to the easiest student books you could find. Somewhat embarrassing, but I did get better. I don't take lessons anymore,  though, and I'm sure my skills have slipped. I did compose a short ditty once that she thought was by Bartok, so that was nice, since I was trying to sound like Bartok on purpose (just to see if I could).  :P