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giant pipe organ crankin' behind me...
timpani pounding to the right of me...
amplified choir singing at the tops of their lungs...

BB-flat FB cuts right through (introit) PARTICULARLY in the key of C (cylindrical tubing boosting the timbre).

Lift High The Cross.. Many of you have surely played it.

The other two are a rock-'n'-soul (range up to G above the staff) and a percussive/snarly bass 'bone part, so F cimbasso for those two.



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Also, virtually 0:00 of practice time, lately (too many repairs...but (more important than that) my health is good, right now

room is c. 80 w. X 45 h. X 200 d.

full of peeps (w/balcony all the way around), this morning

@bloke so how FAR was this bastard?

tubatodd wrote: Sun Mar 01, 2026 9:27 am @bloke so how FAR was this bastard?

I only know the distance in angstroms.

He means your title…

bloke wrote: Sun Mar 01, 2026 11:17 am

tubatodd wrote: Sun Mar 01, 2026 9:27 am @bloke so how FAR was this bastard?

I only know the distance on angstroms.

“Far” in today’s English comes from feorr in Old English. Back in those days “far” could mean a sheep, evil passion, mischief, or a dangerous illness. @bloke frequently comments on his advanced years so perhaps he can remember the appropriate context.

I recently hacked my odometer to make it read in furlongs. When you express your fuel efficiency in furlongs per gallon you feel good about your role in saving the planet.

Is that the E pull on the trombone?

Before COVID, I’d pull mine just to keep the queens behind me inline.

towards a less mirthful topic... though I'm more than happy to accept additional ribbing...

I haven't really been sick, but I haven't really been feeling all that great, lately.
Over the last week or so I've been feeling considerably better.
I also haven't been practicing all that much lately.
I fix a bunch of horns, I type a bunch of quotes and invoices, address others concerns, daily concerns, and blah blah blah, I eat dinner, I think about practicing, and then I crash.

I believe I have self-observed that feeling well has more to do with playing well then does practicing a whole bunch...at least perhaps after a person (having blown into these things now for 58 years) has sort of figured out how to play.

I believe I've also observed that - if I expect to be able to do any practicing, I'd better do it during the work day, because it isn't going to get done after dinner.

I'm also reminded us to how lucky I am to have built a cimbasso (not knowing what the hell I was doing) and having it turn out to be such an amazingly plug-and-play instrument, whereby I pull it out after months of it sitting in the case, I blow into it, it sounds good, it plays in tune, (and - if need be - makes a hell of a lot of racket).

It really is a big room to fill with tuba sound, as well as competing with that epic organ up there...

YouTube of today's live stream:

https://www.youtube.com/live/MNuj1ms95bw
11:00
47:38 (personally I would have picked something else. There are quite a few written parts missing from the orchestration.)
1:24:00



@the elephant
@tubatodd

My vision is so crappy, I didn't even see the typo until I got on my laptop.
(I was wearing my 2-feet-way music-reading classes, and not my 1-foot-away words-reading glasses.)

Schlitzz wrote: Sun Mar 01, 2026 11:59 am Is that the E pull on the trombone?

Before COVID, I’d pull mine just to keep the queens behind me inline.

I didn't even notice that until you pointed it out.
Yeah, maybe one of his parts featured a low B natural or something...??

That's my friend Greg who plays principal in Memphis.
He's a Bach loyalist - being from Chicago, and having studied with those fellows up there.
A couple of years ago, I took his 36 - along with both of his 42's - and made them all to where their F attachments and main tuning slides could be taken off and put on any of them interchangeably. It requires a lot of careful measuring and careful building to make that many different tinker toys all fit together.
He has tried out some of the new types of valves... and reports that he really can't hear nor feel any improvement in low range response, including standard rotor traditional wrap verses open wrap. (I personally have observed that some of these rotors that appear to have a round bore through them are actually more restrictive than run of the mill rotors, but it's hard to convince people of that.) Maybe (as with Greg), when you put the right information into the mouthpiece, you don't need any extra help...??

He and I are both old. He's in considerably better physical shape, though he's just about deaf in one ear... I suppose from trumpet abuse from all those decades of playing principal in various orchestras.

I can never remember this timpanist's name.
The church owns this set of timpani, but it's nothing more than a set of Yamaha fiberglass - and due for a new set of heads, but he always plays very well in tune. Those of you who've had to fight to keep your lips vibrating sitting next to an out of tune timpanist will appreciate the compliment and expression of gratitude I'm offering to him.