David Werden: Navigating the Intersections of Technology, Music, and Digital Permanence

Step into an intriguing world of technology, music, and digital permanence with our special guest, David Werden, a retired Coast Guard member turned online communication aficionado. Intrigued by the possibility of creating a lasting digital footprint? We're on the same boat! Join us in this deep dive into the intricacies of online content sharing, as we ponder over the concept of website permanence and the International Euphonium Summit.

Find the Video Interview at https://www.youtube.com/@LivingHistorySeries
#euphoniumsummit #livinghistoryseries #farmfordreams

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:32

Testing.

Speaker 2 5:37

Ah, I'm hearing sound. Are you hearing me? Hello, hello, good morning. Oh, I don't hear you.

Speaker 1 5:58

Let's see, maybe it's me. Well, I think I've got the microphone. I had my speaker down because when I was working on the website yesterday I had my tunes going and then putting all the YouTube links in. You know how it automatically plays sometimes.

Speaker 2 6:21

Oh yes.

Speaker 1 6:23

I've got that All that blasting back at me. I've actually got your website up and going. Let's see Internationalcom. There you go. Oh, you can't even click on that. That's funny. Alrighty, let's alter that just a touch. There you go, clickable.

Speaker 2 6:56

Okay, oh, there we are. I see Whoops. That takes me away from the meeting, though. Oh, it does.

Speaker 1 7:03

Well, you can right click it and open up another. Maybe you can't. There we go.

Speaker 2 7:11

Yeah, I've got the main website up now.

Speaker 1 7:14

Cool. I've got your infographic your creative on the main page where everybody who's listening to this portion of the behind the scenes on the podcast. We have our special guest today, David Weirden from the Minnesota area, and we're awesome to have him. I sent him over my the website before the YouTube video gets loaded up and he's going to check that out real quick here.

Speaker 2 7:46

Yeah, I'm just trying to get back to the call right now. Never, never landed appears. Oh, how can I get back there that one?

Speaker 1 8:00

Alt tab. Are you on a computer or iPad?

Speaker 2 8:04

I'm on an iPhone right now, actually. Okay, I've got a bunch of screens, let's see, there's a zoom call. No, why can I?

Speaker 1 8:17

No, it's because technology is kind of a flippant.

Speaker 2 8:25

There we go.

Speaker 1 8:28

How are you doing today? I'm quite good. How are you? I'm doing well? Thanks, I see you've got your. Is that your Adams in the background?

Speaker 2 8:37

It is, it's always close by Awesome.

Speaker 1 8:40

Awesome. Well, we, on behalf of our entire community you already, I'm sure you're well versed in, well appreciated over the years I want to say thank you so much for all the, all the contributions that you've made to our amazing community.

Speaker 2 9:02

It's been my pleasure, it's part of my fun. Actually, once I left the Coast Guard although while I was in the Coast Guard I still tried to do quite a bit what I could Distributed some tapes through the International Two-V-Phonium Association, for example, of excerpts and solos and things for free. So I reached out in ways like that. But once I left the band and was no longer playing, really my only outlet for quite a while was the internet. So I developed a website. That was actually how I got my first job outside the Coast Guard. I auditioned by designing a website for a company that wanted someone who could do that, and they wanted someone who could make it talk to a database. This was in 1996, where that was a fairly new technology. So they gave me some demos, demonstration software that I could play with, and I built a website with the only database I had handy, which was the Phonium Music Guide we had published in paper form. I remember that. So once I got the job I decided, well, yeah, I'll make that into a real website then. So that was the first draft of the dwordencom website and it grew from there, obviously, and then I'm only playing part-time now. When the opportunity comes I'll be playing part-time.

Speaker 2 10:20

Well, as far as performing, that's certainly the case. I'm in the amateur status right now. I sell them, play you a paid gig, but I do what I can and have fun at it and away. Now I can reach out to people around the world just through the website and through YouTube and the wonderful technology we have today. So even without out and about the way some people are, I still wonder and marvel at players who go around the world. Well, stephen reads a good example. He's out there all the time, everywhere, and I don't know how he has the energy to do that. I don't think I'm built that way, but even when I was back in my younger days. But with the internet now I can get places that I actually have not traveled by plane.

Speaker 1 11:04

And that's a lot of fun. I enjoyed that it is. I mean, I just took a road trip to El Paso from the Austin area, this like two weekends ago, and my body's like no, you're not doing that anymore. I mean to tell you the truth, I mean I wasn't completely hydrating myself beyond my coffee.

Speaker 2 11:29

Oh there's your first mistake. Right Got to stay hydrated.

Speaker 1 11:32

Yeah, I mean, that's one of the biggest things the military teaches us is stay hydrated. So just, I see that. So I don't know if we haven't had the opportunity to meet in person over the over the different and varying years, and I wish I could have met you in person and we'll do one day and I'm looking forward to inviting you next year to the actual, like in person, international euphonium summit, hopefully in a warmer climate. Usually going to be in December is where I'm kind of projecting it to become a standard, just to have it accessible, except for the Midwestern clinic. Maybe one year we'll choose Chicago, I don't know, we'll see, but I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. It was a small project at first, much like when you launched your website decades ago. I am completely blown away that you'd accept my invitation to be on this summit and cohort. So thank you so very much.

Speaker 2 12:54

I'm pleased to be here and I'm pleased as well that you're making something that we really haven't had before, sort of a virtual summit. I mean, we had some attempts at making up for not being able to be out during pandemic and so on, but they weren't as organized as we are now. We've learned a lot in that about a time and you're doing a good job of pulling together something that is is rather new and, again, something we wouldn't have the opportunity for without all the great technologies we have now. But they're getting better and they're pretty good.

Speaker 1 13:26

Yeah, like I just, I'm upgrading my camera. I'm currently using the Logitech 920. Yeah, the 920. And I got turned on to this other webcam. That's supposed to be a lot better. It's a Kylo razor. It has a really awesome frames per second and I'm noticing with a lot of our, a lot of the if we're going to do this summit in, so it's going to be an in person, but also hybrid function where we can have our artists from across the globe participate. And I love how Amazon sticks the label right on like the important parts of the box. So it's the razor. Oh, it's called the Kylo pro. Okay, so I got most of the label off, so I think I'll see.

Speaker 2 14:35

Oh, yes, okay.

Speaker 1 14:37

So this is actually. There's the graphics. I don't know if you can see that. I can send you a screenshot picture of it once we get off here. Oh, that'd be helpful.

Speaker 2 14:48

Thank you. My glasses is hard to see on the screen.

Speaker 1 14:52

So this is supposed to be like the top end, like out of all the research that I've been doing that seems to I haven't played with, like actually tried to play with it being recorded on zoom and stuff like that, and I'm thinking that it's the frames per second that we're losing our capabilities of lessons over to do virtual lessons, and so if we can find a camera that will keep up with the speed with the finger movements and not glitch out as bad, I think we might, because I mean, the gamers have all this nice technology but they're playing with screens and you know screens, and so I'm looking forward to installing that in some extra hardware into this computer next to me.

Speaker 2 15:52

Yeah, the frames per second will certainly help to watch fingerings. I I'm at about 30 frames per second the videos I make. Right now I've got 60 that I could do in the software I have, but I keep it lower mostly for my own sake to limit the amount of storage that I have, because it doubles the size of the file and even on my laptop, which has two terabytes of storage space, I'm way out of space. Long time ago I've had to offload a lot of comments, so I keep an eye on that. And also makes it faster when I'm editing the program and for the most part what I'm putting out. I'm not using too many blinding finger type solos or you don't have to see that much clarity there. But the other thing about the internet right now is I look for a solution when I'm doing a recital someplace and I did this recently in a recital series here locally but I want to be able to put my recording device out in the audience.

Speaker 2 16:56

And of course there's always a risk that it'll get stolen, because I'm backstage before I come out on stage, I can't see it, I may not have an operator out there to help me, so I've been using my. In the old days I used a Canon camcorder, and if someone stole that, well okay, I lost a camcorder, but I could spend a few hundred bucks in replacing it. But lately, though, I've been using my iPhone and.

Speaker 2 17:19

I use a microphone from Shure attached to it, the MV88. And I've got software with it that records, lets you set the record levels rather than doing the automatic pumping. You know, if you're recording your phone it's going to listen to that beautiful crescendo you put together and try to make it. Instead of this, it tries to make it this Because it wants to even everything out. So the software has settings for all that kind of thing and also for the spread of the stereo and so on, so it can adapt to different hauls. But if someone steals my iPhone, that's not a small deal.

Speaker 1 17:55

It's everything, that's everything.

Speaker 2 17:57

Right. So what I finally did to solve that, I bought a one version older iPhone quite inexpensively and I'm using that now and there's nothing on it except an account I created just for that iPhone and for the iCloud, but that's the only stuff that's on. It is what I recorded, so that way, if the phone happens to watch, I've not lost any personal data. I've lost the phone and whatever I recorded right then, but my personal data is not at risk. So that's how I solved the problem and it works quite well actually.

Speaker 1 18:29

You know it's kind of hearing about that and I know for a lot of smaller, more intimate settings in the older churches. It's hard to find a congregation that has a decent live stream set up for the smaller congregations.

Speaker 2 18:51

Yes.

Speaker 1 18:52

And so you know I'm thinking what if we were able to have the you certainly have a list of amazing congregations that have amazing acoustics in their building and if others put out that list of sites and locations? I mean even universities, and when I was at Northern Arizona University we had and programs throughout the world. Really they have their associated churches where they like to conduct their programs on the weekends, for recitals and what nots. What if we were able to possibly donate or make a way to add some kind of live stream equipment permanently affixed as a donation to that congregation in as a show of appreciation to their service for our players?

Speaker 2 20:13

That's an interesting concept. Certainly our church, the one we attend, is, and that's where most of my videos are made. Actually, they weren't live streaming anything until pandemic hit, and then they had to catch up rather quickly just in order to be out there and to serve the congregation, and they bought some equipment that works pretty well.

Speaker 2 20:34

It does a good job, and then, you know, use YouTube to facilitate. There's another church that I attend occasionally online it's also in our area here that has their own independent way of doing things and they don't use YouTube and it works okay when it's working. It seems a little glitchier perhaps although anything could be glitchy but it's not nearly as universal as going through the YouTube live stream setup. So that's another issue that churches face and I'm not sure I don't think YouTube charges for that, even for live streams, right.

Speaker 1 21:10

No, they don't charge anything except for I mean, they're whole charging, and that's why I upload the stuff onto YouTube, because it's free to upload and you basically give them the host of the video and so they're getting to be able to put up ads or they're putting different things inside that stream, unless you're at a certain threshold where you can turn all that off and just monetize it yourself, and so a lot of other ways to, you know, kind of go about that. In as far as your online church, they're locally a lot of. There is a potential of opening up a streaming service. That would kind of rival, and I won't say too much into that because I appreciate YouTube's platform. But RenderForce is a way you can upload a video that is caught like with a camcorder, like you just mentioned.

Speaker 1 22:21

I've been thinking about utilizing a camcorder setup. They can in, I think, the GXV7 or 4, I don't remember which one. It's that handheld camcorder to be able to do these interviews in person and catch up with people, especially as the events roll throughout the year the studio recitals, you know, itea, and all the wonderful conferences globally that happen. I'd love to be able to capture those experiences for those that aren't able to, you know, get to the US or get to overseas, and so, yeah, I'm thinking that's interesting because you can certainly utilize OBS as a platform to record and you don't have to. You can send the multiple outlets through OBS to Facebook and YouTube, if I'm not mistaken, at the same time.

Speaker 1 23:28

All right, that sounds interesting and so it hosts it all on the OBS platform and it's yeah. Obs Studio is the kind of the app that I've been trying to dabble in. I've seen a lot of others successfully apply that tech to what they do across different industries, and so I'm still learning all that.

Speaker 2 24:04

Yes, Well, the nice thing about those services, if they're smart services YouTube certainly is a smart service is that they take care of the compatibility issues for you. Back when websites used to have videos on the website, that always be questions about. Well, it doesn't seem to play properly on my Mac blah blah blah platform or my Windows blah blah blah platform, and YouTube pretty well takes care of that. You don't have to worry. They manage to make the viewer comfortable, no matter what the sender actually started with.

Speaker 1 24:36

Absolutely. You remember the days with Front Page and Angel Fire? Yes, yes, I do. I don't come across those that were on the. If you remember, godaddy was not GoDaddy, it was Wild Wild West, literally the website. They bought the domain, they bought and put all their efforts into GoDaddy. And then there was HostGator also.

Speaker 2 25:07

Yes, yeah, and that was a nice thing that there's always a worry when you're using an independent service. At least they used to be. Our church, for example, for a while looked for their website to a company that was doing church websites. They had sort of templates they could use and services they could use. It was kind of a nice bundle that they offered you except that that company went out of business.

Speaker 2 25:35

If you were depending on that, everything you put up would suddenly disappear and you had to start over again. You didn't even really have a lot of the content because it was all built on the fly through their platform. Now I think these days, as with OBS that you mentioned, if they faltered, had some financial problems, they'd probably get bought up by Google or by YouTube or somebody's. It's actually, while I'm not crazy about all the integration that's going on, companies buying up companies and just a couple of great big companies now that we deal with it does solve that problem for us. If they buy up a small service and then convert it to their service, at least the content doesn't disappear.

Speaker 1 26:18

I'll bring my content.

Speaker 2 26:21

As you are, you care about content. When you go to the trouble to put something out there, you'd like to think that it's going to be there more or less forever for people to look at.

Speaker 1 26:30

Something that's really interesting. You bring that up. Did you see that WordPress, they made their domains to be in existence for 100 years.

Speaker 2 26:41

No, I didn't.

Speaker 1 26:42

Yeah, I'm really considering moving this all over into that platform because when I'm gone and if something happens to me and I don't have my five boys taking the mantle up or they forget to re-up the domain every so often, that would solve that just announced two months ago, right as I launched into this whole project of Euphonium Summit.

Speaker 1 27:18

I gathered 10 Euphonium artists and maybe a handful of composers at the time because I didn't see I was expecting the value to be there but I didn't see the excitement on the other side because I was stuck in my own head and I wasn't getting out there yet. I'm like well, no one's going to want this and the self-defeating thoughts. Then I started getting out there. Now we have over 50 artists over 11 countries on four to five continents already part of the cohort. It's amazing to see. But it's like all this information, all these principles, all these stories, the upbrings of amazing individuals like yourself and the rest of our cohort and those that are to come if that somehow gets erased by a buyout I couldn't have imagined this ever being a possibility, even 10 years ago doing this.

Speaker 2 28:36

Right, it's magical and great, and yet there is some risk in the virtual world. I worry about students whose entire library of music is online, for example, who don't actually own paper music. Maybe it's not an issue and I have a lot of online music that I really like to use because I can print it whenever I want or I can transpose it on the fly. It's a great facility and I really love it. But I also have music that I've had owned in hard copy since high school and some of that I still perform. It's timeless music pieces that are still being performed actively. Yes, I could buy a virtual copy now if I wanted to, but these copies tend to have markings that I've made over the years, markings that my teachers have made over the years, which still means something to me sentimentally, but also practically in some cases. That's a worry.

Speaker 2 29:30

I spend a lot of time if you followed my channel much at all on YouTube storing old recordings, some of the ancient Simone Manitia recordings and the old cornet soloist from back then. I had to restore many of them to get the audio back to semi-usable quality because the old cylinder records, the old 78 records, were so badly worn when they were finally archived into a digital format. They were really not very listenable and I tried to get them into a little more pleasant sounding environment. What are you using with that? I use Audacity, what pretty much does. If you're a musician and know what you want, I think Audacity probably has a tool to get you there. It doesn't do everything, but it does a lot of things very well.

Speaker 1 30:14

You have to make decisions.

Speaker 2 30:16

There are some automatic tools that help you eliminate surface noise, but they take away a little bit of the content as well, so you have to make smart decisions about what you use. I'm doing that not just in the ancient ancient world, but only in the semi-ancient world of putting up a bunch of recordings that were made by the Chicago Symphony in 1950 through about 1952. There's one up there of a much younger Arnold Jacobs being interviewed and playing some excerpts online and some of the Adolf Hirstseth and some of the brass players from that era. They're there if you know where to look, but they're quite well hidden and in some cases the audio isn't very good.

Speaker 2 30:55

I'm trying to make those more readily available. I've asked today who have heard of the players but don't know about all these little dark corners where you might be able to find some of these things and, frankly, some of it does take a lot of searching.

Speaker 2 31:08

It does I spent probably as many hours finding the things as I did in the editing and the uploading of them. I'm trying to preserve those things because they are important performances and, yes, they don't sound like we want to sound today. Some on Mantilla nobody's teaching a euphonium sound quite like that today. That's fine. They shouldn't. That was a different era and different instruments. But the performances themselves are still something we can learn from and I don't want to see that lost.

Speaker 2 31:42

I have the same concerns about permanence that you do With my own website. I didn't know it for that long. I think I did a 10 year at one point. Now I can't remember how long the main domain, the D-Werdencom domain, is actually set for, but I want to make sure it does hang around. There's some aliases that Brian Bowman introduced me when I got the Lifetime Achievement Award he was talking about. Be sure to go to Dave Werden's he pronounces my last name wrong generally. Dave Werden's website at DaveWerdencom. Well, that wasn't it. So I immediately bought the alias DaveWerdencom, which goes to my website, and davewerdencom, just in case people didn't hear it clearly. So those I don't worry about quite as much, but the core I do want to be around longer than I am hopefully, although if it's not maintained at some point it'll fall off the planet. But maybe somebody will take it over in my absence.

Speaker 1 32:43

Absolutely, and that's kind of what I'm hoping to. Yeah, I definitely agree with that sentiment, because that's I mean, you know, after serving in the, I mean you served in the military, in the Coast Guard, for 26 years. You know I only did four years with the first cab band and then, you know, I finished my contract there and and then took me a while to come home of here and so, with that being said, I think this is the greatest work for me. This has been the most gratifyingly Complicating work I've ever done, besides raising my kids.

Speaker 2 33:32

Gratifyingly complicating. That's interesting.

Speaker 1 33:34

Yeah, there's all these dynamics that have to. You know, shift and adapt through the last couple months even and you know my sleep isn't it doesn't go back you know 20 years to you know other time periods. It goes to my next interview, my next conversation, or it replays all the conversations that I've had like that day or that week and that I'm working on on the website and how to draft content and create blogs, create this and do that and it's been phenomenal, yet it's. I Can't say that I would change that in the world, for the world.

Speaker 2 34:33

Yeah well, you're doing good work. I mean that's and it feels good and do that. It feels good when you're reaching out to other people, when you're communicating your own thoughts but also getting the thoughts of others out there. These are things that I don't know.

Speaker 2 34:48

50 years ago You'd have had to take a whole different approach to do this and you wouldn't have still reached the same number of people. Back down it was just harder. You had to reach them in print and with expensive mailings and you know things like that and that just even on television, for Pete's sake, I mean our network TV shows that we watched here Wouldn't necessarily be seen in other countries. So you know some of the I love watching the old tonight show on the band there and stuff and and the comics they'd have on. I love stand-up comics, you know, but if I lived in England I probably didn't see those, I'm guessing.

Speaker 2 35:26

I don't know if they were actually Broadcast, but they certainly weren't universally broadcast because that was expensive to do. There were licensing licensing issues In addition to the technology, technology issues that existed back then. Now we have a pretty friendly environment for that kind of thing and you're taking advantage of it, which we all should be doing as much as we can. I don't mean it a bad way. I mean you're right, you're using the tools that are available to us now.

Speaker 1 35:51

Yeah, I mean, it's For what's coming. Oh, so, when we do, there's a few things that have been developed since I Reached out to you to be a part of this cohort and thank you again, I can't thank you enough for being a part of this the About a month ago, I was like, well, what else, what other value can I offer to our community? And to be kind of the first off, and I was like, well, you know, I'm hearing that in seeing a lot of these professors and even students and the families Don't get a lot of vacation time because they have to go out and they have summer band or they have this conference or they have to travel somewhere and they don't they get to bring their family but they don't get to be with their family as much. So I was, I'm consider, I've considered and sort of working towards doing a a yearly, starting July 2025 I hope get to push off on a Euphonium mastermind cruise and springing the families together, you know, with the student artists, all the way to the professional. Coming together is seeing what's. You know going on with the funding world and what can we do to perpetuate that forward? And you know, hope others grow or Come at it with a other perspectives that those that are in the room can provide, and so I'm looking forward to Having that opportunity Take shape over the next year. As this goes forward.

Speaker 1 37:50

It's I don't know if it's going to be as big as like an actual cruise liner, like Norwegian. That'd be certainly cool because they certainly have enough food to feed all the Euphonium players. That was the big, one of the big concerns I I Listen to when I first started Putting the feelers out, especially to some of my friends locally that were in the military band with me, and then I think it's more going to be a More intimate setting of ten families total per Ex Ex toward it for each mastermind like area. So maybe a One leaving from the US, one of the ports in the US, one from the European ports and one from southeastern Asia ports there abouts to make it accessible for everyone, and then At least that's that's the idea right now.

Speaker 1 38:56

I'm still kind of flushing all that out. It's certainly enticing and intriguing and it's received a lot of really great Promise as far as the feedback and the excitement that I see on the other side of the camera, and it won't. I don't, I don't foresee it being as much as a regular. You know trip out to, you know flying to, like one of the conferences in Italy, or Driving across country with the gas prices like they are. So I'm looking forward to seeing that take shape. So I'm looking forward to seeing that take shape.

Speaker 2 39:41

So you would do something that was the first of its kind, for sure. If you could do that, I don't yeah, I'm gonna call you anything like that.

Speaker 1 39:47

On the past yeah, I was when I thought of the idea. I think the first, one of the first people, first of our cohorts, that I hear that idea on the other side was Phil SNETCORE SNETICORE and he laughed because I mean, he's a trumpet player but he's done some amazingly fantastic work as a musician across the board and so I he I think he's a Lot of the, a lot of our cohort are excited to see what. What takes shape on that, for sure.

Speaker 2 40:28

Well, it's being done certainly by all. I've seen political ads for things like that, you know, or fewer Of a particular committee political mindset. They do them. I've seen religious groups do these. I've seen right Sometimes. So, yeah, it's apparently so. I'm guessing now the cruise lines have have learned to package their services To be accessible to different groups. Absolutely they'll try to help you anyway. They can, I'm sure.

Speaker 1 40:56

I'm sure I would love to see that. I mean, that's what the old travel agents used to do, that were, you know, locally. Now, now it's all a tripadvisorcom or whatever Expedia. Yeah man, how times have changed. So what what's gonna happen is when we hit the, when I hit the record button for the video segment, we'll start out with childhood, you know musical beginnings, and Usually go get to about middle school, high school area, find a natural pause to the chapter for that segment and Then and then stop the recording, you know, say goodbyes for the video recording and then come back to the podcast segment and do any recaps and Possibly continue a shorter conversation with other bits of information for those that are listening to the podcast.

Speaker 1 42:04

This is all being recorded on my order, so it's transcribed, and all this is gonna go into a biographical sketch of Excerpts and such for each of our cohort members. So I'm hoping to have a biography when it's all said and done. Each artist, each composer will have their own biography, hopefully published in hardcover. That's one of my goals. Oh Good, hardcover book. And so we don't lose, like if we are just talking about that earlier. Is you know If it goes dark? Where's all this? Where's all this leading up to? And so certainly hope that Is facilitates to where that goes into Plates like that.

Speaker 2 43:01

Something that you and I, both as independent creators and preservers and whatever else compilers Should think about, is the permanence, and I'm I'm thinking more these days, have to figure out how I can do that, and one way seems to be although I haven't figured out exactly how to work it out but facilitating my goal with the international tuba euphonium association, itea. They're gonna be around after I'm gone, presumably, and and that's the advantage of an organization like that, so I'm trying to go there's a way to share content with them that doesn't take away my exclusivity on it or any Monetary gain I might have from you two bads and things like that, for example and yet have the you know, have it be available once I'm not here to take care of it. So that's so, as you are too, I imagine.

Speaker 1 44:00

Uh-huh. So I would assume that that would be like kind of a setting up a trust to handle that post activity there and you can set up the trust to where and I'm not a legal person at all as far as Giving legal advice and stuff like that, so definitely contact your legal representation for that. But I would assume that you'd be able to Put all that into a trust To be a picked up by ITEA and all proceeds go to a David Wharton, a Kind of scholarship or a grant. So all the monetary contributions that you are being awarded currently for all your hard work that can be designated through the trust in association to your site to be reworked into kind of a fund for those that are contributing to the Endeavourment, in a way Embediment of the euphonium to the world.

Speaker 2 45:35

Yeah, let's go thought to and thought about the trust angle. Um, it certainly won't be the size of the Harvey Phillips Foundation, for example, in terms of the money To be handled and whatnot. But trust are certainly an avenue and just have to give us some thought, and I'm sure there are attorneys that Are now dealing in this new world when it's not a bunch of paperwork sitting around or a bunch of funds invested somewhere, it's it's virtual content Is what I'm talking about me the music is.

Speaker 2 46:04

I used to publish up myself. Now that's all through similar on music. So whatever similar on music does Can keep going after I'm not here anymore and at that point my my errors would get. The royalties is how the contracts work. Right, that would keep going, even though I'm not ready new stuff. Some of the stuff will keep selling, and so on. Anyway, it's food for thought for any of us, Absolutely. How do we create permanence in a virtual world?

Speaker 1 46:31

That's. That would be an amazing Graduate-level research paper. Hint hint for any DMA student Listening to this how to create a virtual world, as per David Worden and Nicholas Hopper von Heidi conversation. So I that that would be exquisite if someone took up the mantle to put those resources together to perpetuate All that. Wow, fantastic. Yeah, it's doable.

Speaker 2 47:13

I just don't have the answer yet.

Speaker 1 47:15

Right, and I'm sure, I'm certain that someone out there that will eventually listen to this segment I'm sure there's going to be quite a few that will offer a different perspective. Hence the mastermind idea of being able to put something out there and getting feedback from those that are willing to think of the future instead of their own self ideations. I guess we could say yeah, and also being able to share the content freely without worrying of the aliases being absorbed.

Speaker 2 48:14

Yeah, that's good way to put it.

Speaker 1 48:16

Awesome. I look forward to this conversation and getting to share your journey of music and life with our world, both digitally and written. I can't wait to have a hardcover edition of each of these biographies. It's fantastic. So, with further ado, if you're listening to this podcast segment and you haven't found the YouTube content that goes along with this, or the digital video version, wherever that may be, at the point of unknowing that we're sitting here now in 2023 recording this on that amazing. I was just, you know, thinking of. You mentioned the advertisement and the publications and I was looking at that Susaband 121st anniversary of the Susaband with, I think there was 12,000, 2000 or 12,000 people in the audience.

Speaker 2 49:37

Wow.

Speaker 1 49:39

One of our I think I'm going to tangent here, I don't know, I don't think I'm going to be able to find the content just yet he's been doing some amazing research on the history of music and he had posted a picture of Percy Granger donating his folk songs to the Library of Congress and I was like I'd never seen that photo at all, and so it's really fantastic seeing all these, all the artists that are trying to create this permanence of all these records and make them known. It's just really cool to be a part of.

Speaker 2 50:40

It is.

Speaker 1 50:42

Alrighty. So again, thank you so much for being part of the cohort and this journey together.

Speaker 2 50:54

Yes, then, my pleasure. I appreciate you taking the time to do this with me.

Speaker 1 50:57

Absolutely Okay. So, and like I said, each segment is a chapter. So as much content and as many meetings and as many conversations we can capture before time runs out for this whole project, I hope to capture as much as we can going forward, because you know that's one of the gifts that we have is life, and we don't know what tomorrow brings, and so I hope we get to do many, many, many more of these to capture your each journey here on the summit, as well as the Living History series. So the site for those that aren't on the actual website finding this, it's wwwinternationalyphoniumsummitcom. You'll find that information there or at livinghistoryseriescom. I have all the links there eventually as well. And yeah, thank you everybody, and we'll go over to the recorded segment. Thank you, recording in progress. Awesome folks, welcome to the International Euphonium Summit Living History Series. I'm your host, nicholas, dr Von Ivey. Special guest today is none other than David Worden.

Speaker 2 52:36

Good morning everyone and good morning Nicholas.

Musical Beginnings and Self-Teaching Experience

Speaker 1 52:40

And thank you so much. We had an amazing content on the podcast segment before this. So if you get a chance, find your favorite podcast outlet and find the link at wwwinternationalyphoniumsummitcom or possibly on his website as well. We'll find that out soon enough. We had about 50 minutes of great pre-recorded on this conversation about permanence of what we are doing virtually and digitally and for those that are interested in that permanence ideation, you can continue that conversation with us as well, and we'd love to hear kind of your ideas. We threw some ideas out there, see what you have to think about. So, david Worden, thank you so much for joining us today. Oh, my pleasure. So with the first in series, let's hit it and start with. You know your first memories of musical beginnings.

Speaker 2 53:57

Okay, it was interesting for me. I came from a family that really didn't have a lot of music going in the house. It wasn't one of those families that always had classical music playing on the record player or the radio. The only record player on the house my sister owned and I got to use it occasionally when she wasn't around and I had a few records I liked but I tended to favor this is in elementary school now, before I played an instrument I tended to favor the trumpet, and I still do like trumpet quite a lot. So that was the first instrument I wanted to play when fifth grade came around and that's when we started instruments in school.

Speaker 2 54:40

So my dad bought me a cornet I think it was not a trumpet, probably from a friend of his, for $10. And I didn't know anything about it. The valve didn't move, so I used some three in one oil that we had around the house to get them going. But after two or three months of my band record being patient and trying to get it to work for me, notes just weren't coming out sometimes and I don't know if that's because it was an old, leaky cornet or just my amateur was not quite right for that size mouthpiece. But in any case he switched me over to the baritone is what we called it back then. It was actually a small euphonium because it was all conical bore and so on. It wasn't actually the British style baritone. It's what we use in schools.

Speaker 2 55:24

Back then Bell per forward had three valves in the front of the horn and I played it in his office and it worked much better for me and of course I like the sound. So I said, yeah, let's do this. So he loaned the school horn to me and I brought it home. My mom looked at it and said David, why do you want to play that big thing? Because it was much more wash than the cornet case that I had. But nonetheless I did like it and I kept working on it and I wasn't a kid who had to be forced into practicing those practice cards, if anyone's ever gone up with those. We had to put your hours each day and their time each, and that was not a problem for me.

Speaker 2 56:08

I always liked to practice. I listened to music on the radio and still listen to trumpet players that I liked, and back then Bert Canford was starting his round as one of the top 40 artists and he had a trumpet player. It was quite a nice soloist. So I'd buy some of the sheet music at the local store and I'd play out of that or just play it by ear from the recordings to try and learn the songs. And that was sort of my beginnings back in fifth and sixth grade of learning to play. I don't really play by ear, but learning to play within my head and to make it come out of the horn the way I just heard it on the recording. So in a way I was giving myself a lesson or letting that trumpet player give me a lesson, and that was probably a good beginning when I went into junior high school we didn't have the middle school concept yet back then.

Speaker 2 57:02

So junior high school started in seventh grade. I went there and it was fortunate for me that my band director had been a trombone euphonian player back in his college days so he knew something about the instrument and he helped me a little bit to develop sound and some of the concepts he gave us a nice hard soloist to play In ninth grade, which was still junior high school back then. It was kind of a bad time for the family. We were not a rich family anyway and I never had private lessons, for example, the whole time I was growing up so I had to rely on what was in school and I got good lessons in school and I was very lucky to grow up in Davenport, iowa, where they had such things.

Speaker 2 57:44

But my father was dying that year and we moved in with my grandparents and that was a different school system. In that school system I had Clara Beck was her name at the time A wonderful lady band director and teacher and she had me play my first ever solo with a band. I did trumpet holiday and had a good time playing that and she also taught me how to triple tongue. The contest solo that year was Stars in a Velvety Sky by Herbert Clark, which had some triple tongue in it. So that was great. I was introduced to multiple tongue in a rather early age. Then the next year my father died by that time and I moved back to Davenport and I went to a school where the band director there had been a trumpet player.

Speaker 2 58:34

So again, I was a brass player, which was good for me. Very tough guy, very gruff personality, but he was a good teacher and I learned a lot from him. And finally, about the middle of my junior year in my school he said well, and we had weekly lessons, which was a nice thing. But he said I'm really kind of running out of things I can teach you, but you always come up here on your study hall as the practice.

Speaker 2 59:00

We get a special pass, which is maybe one of. My grades weren't quite as good as they could have been, but I went up and practiced whenever there was a study hall period or free period and he said you're almost practicing anyway, so you just go ahead and do that. So I did and I worked through the Arben book, worked very hard on that. Again, I was not taking private lessons as some people did, but I listened a lot to recordings. I listened to Harry James and I listened to Tommy Dorsey and got two different sides of brass playing from those guys. And in Dorsey's case I bought myself a trombone to try and learn that and it was an old cellar Bundy that had looked horrible. It ended up stripping the lacquer off of it and then it looked a little better. Anyway, I taught myself how to play it and I had a record of I'm Getting Sentimental Over you, which was Tommy Dorsey's theme song. It's pretty valid. I didn't know at the time my record player turned slowly. It was about a half step lower than it should have been, so I learned the song in that key. Oh man, I could still play it very well in that key today. That's what sticks in my head. I have to work at it to play on the right key, but I learned the song.

Speaker 2 1:00:12

I used to go up in my practice time at school and work on that song. I was trying to get the inflections that Tommy Dorsey did, all of his phrasing, all the little pauses and the little breaks and things like that. That was important and it was good training for me as well. It was good to teach myself based on a master of the instrument Since, again, I wasn't studying with a master. I was studying with a very good, confident teacher, but it wasn't a master of the trombone or euphonium. At some point, for Mr Mortarboy who was the teacher, the band room where I practiced was divided from his office Only by a half a wall. It wasn't all the way up to the ceiling. He said David, for God's sake, practice something else for a while. You've heard enough of it, over several days I guess.

Speaker 2 1:00:57

But I was a pretty intense practicer in those times. I would take pieces that I enjoyed. We played the Italian and Algiers back in high school. I got a couple of the other parts that I borrowed from other people so I could play more of the melody than we had in the euphonium part, because I just loved it so much. Anyway, that was through high school. I had no what should I call serious lessons, but I had good regular lessons that taught me the basics pretty well. I had a good understanding of rhythms, how rhythms fit together, and a good understanding of melody, partly from my teaching and partly from all the listening I did. I listened to those players I mentioned and also vocals, and tried to play songs the way I heard vocalists play them, and that's still to this day. I encourage people to do that. It's marvelous training to find somebody who's good and listen.

Speaker 2 1:01:54

I remember a story I think it was an Arnold Jacobs story where he was teaching somebody a trumpet player at the time he was trying to find, I think, a song of the Nightingale perhaps, and if I remember the story correctly, he talked to the student and said Now, you've heard Adolf Hirste, who was Arnold's colleague, of course, in the Chicago Symphony. You've heard Mr Hirste play that several times, right? And he just said yes, I have. I said now I want you to think about how he played it and play it like him. And the kid played it and I said see, that was better. That's because he's better than you. So, which, of course, is how we learn right, one of the ways you learn. So, anyway, that was my learning experience through high school was a variety of different things.

Speaker 2 1:02:48

The lessons I had playing in band and trying to make the parts just right, listening to the other players in band. We had quite a good trumpet player in junior high school so I listened to him play these solos and I played and emulate him when I did the same music. It was a good way to get where I got. It was not until my junior or senior year in high school that I actually heard a real euphonium player in person. We had Harold Brash, who was our guest artist, and I chose one of the solos he had played then for state contest the Hungarian Melodies by Vincent Bach and really tried to play it like he did, and that taught, even though I was playing a different instrument. I was still playing one of the American style instruments. It was a four-valve at that point, but it was still the American style horn. I really tried to sound like he did and phrase like he did it, and that taught me quite a lot about euphonium, but otherwise I was listening.

Speaker 2 1:03:44

Well, we had again, I have to praise the school system we had some great guest artists. The next year we had Doc Severison, oh man. And we had a great guest artist In junior high school. We had Raphael Mendez, so I was hearing some people who were just masters of the instrument right there in the same room, where I was Not appreciating all that they did, probably at that point because my capacity here was limited by my experience, but it was a very good foundation.

Speaker 1 1:04:14

So I'm curious, what so your mom bringing the baritone home? Did you bring home that cornet that your dad bought?

Speaker 2 1:04:22

yet yes, and I think they probably sold it to somebody else at that point. I'm not sure that was gone from the house.

Speaker 1 1:04:30

Anyway, what did your dad say when he saw the baritone for the first time?

Childhood Reflections on Music and Family

Speaker 2 1:04:36

Oh, he had no complaints, he was a very easygoing guy and he didn't care as long as if I was happy and he was okay with it. And my mom actually, you know she didn't mind it either, because it did sound a little better probably, than the cornet did In my hands.

Speaker 1 1:04:51

anyway, Right, okay, so was your sister. You said you have an older sister. Yes, okay, what was her take between listening to you with the cornet for a couple months at home, then to the baritone?

Speaker 2 1:05:10

I don't recall any comments because she's nine years older than I was, okay, so around the time I was doing this not too far into it anyway in my fifth and sixth grade years I can't remember exactly when she moved away to get married. She married an Air Force guy who was stationed in Caribou, maine. So, yeah, that was so. She wasn't around and I got to use a record player for a while. That was kind of nice.

Speaker 1 1:05:37

That's really awesome. Okay, so going forward, do you remember your parents at any of your Christmas concerts or holiday concerts? More specifically, the first solo feature you had with trumpet holiday? Yeah, trumpet holiday.

Speaker 2 1:06:01

Yes.

Speaker 1 1:06:03

Do you remember their kind of takes with you playing the solo feature on that?

Speaker 2 1:06:09

Well, my parents were separated back then and I was living with my grandparents on my father's side, so my mom was now at the concert it was also a different school system, that's right and my father was either I don't remember exactly when the concert fell versus his death but he was either too sick to come, because he was bedridden for more than a year, or he wasn't there, so he was not able to hear it live. I did get a nice compliment from the superintendent of school, so we talked about what a huge sound I had. I hadn't thought about that concept at all. I just I played the instrument, you know, and I wanted it to sound nice, but I hadn't thought about the bigness of sound as a concept.

Speaker 2 1:06:49

So I had to take his compliment versus any from my parents at that point. My mom, though, earlier, in those early early years, when I practiced at home every day mostly my band parts, at that point my parents finally went to a band concert and afterwards she said to me you know, when you play with everybody else it starts to make sense. Now I see what she were practicing. So that was a revelation for her. She was relieved. I guess that it would sound like music at some point.

Speaker 1 1:07:19

That's cool that, coming from no seemingly musical experiences, for your parents to have that revelation and the picture in fullness that your parents had your music that you practiced at home, made it actual sense instead of a bunch of gibberish and notes that might come to fruition somehow. That's really cool. So Picking up the trombone your 11th grade year, or 10th grade year yeah, 11th, how is that? When you started practicing that at home?

Speaker 2 1:08:09

Well, I can't remember from whom I learned that you could equate a fingering with a position, but possibly my band director showed me that part anyway. And once I learned the math, so to speak, behind that, actually learning the instrument wasn't too bad I probably would shudder to hear a recording myself from back then. As far as intonation, you know, because the one thing in American horns the small euphoniums, I'll call them, or baritones, were pretty good at, was playing reasonably well in tune. You didn't have to work very hard to fit in with a band, and it actually was harder when I got a Bessem for the first time. When I got the big, more complex ending Bessem, there were more quirky notes to deal with. The American horns were pretty good at that. So I probably played reasonably well in tune on the horn, on the euphonium, but I can't imagine what they did on the trombone. But anyway, at that point nobody was complaining.

Speaker 2 1:09:11

My mom I was living with her by then and my stepfather was not in any way shape or form musical, so he would never comment. He liked old country songs you know was his genre, which I hadn't yet learned to love. I do now love country music a lot of it anyway, but I didn't then, so I didn't hear a lot from him and my mom really didn't say very much. She would come to concerts and not sound nice, but you know she didn't understand all the infurgencies. I don't think. I only learned through my sister, actually about 10 or 15 years ago, that my father had been a singer on the radio back in Davenport.

Speaker 1 1:09:51

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 1:09:53

Yeah, I had no idea that anybody in the family had any musical talent, because they didn't own a record player for the family. They were never playing music on the radio. The only music that I heard in the house was whatever they played on television.

Speaker 2 1:10:08

And at some point a little transistor radio that I finally listened fifth or sixth grade. I got a little about that big at the time. You know it was a monumental success of technology. It was this tiny radio he carried around on listening to AM radio stations, so I listened to music on that. But yeah, apparently my dad did have some musical talent, and who knew? I didn't know he never sang in the house that I heard, so I wish I could have heard it back when he was in good voice.

Speaker 1 1:10:33

Right, wow, that would be really interesting to see if there's any of those recordings floating around somewhere.

Speaker 2 1:10:44

Well, I've gotten pretty good at scoping things out, finding stuff that I didn't you know, from anybody else, it seems. So sometimes I haven't found one of those yet. I'm not done trying, though, because occasionally somebody would record a radio show for whatever reason, and some of those end up on places like archivesorg, places like that, and I've been trying.

Speaker 1 1:11:05

But not yet. So if anybody happens to listen to the podcast segment before we started recording this and combining that information with what we were just talking about with David's dad and singing, if you by chance come across that recording, put a drop a link where you find it. If that is available at the time of finding or uncovering that resource, that would be really spectacular.

Speaker 2 1:11:36

I'd love to hear it yeah.

Speaker 1 1:11:37

Absolutely Now getting through all the way to high school? When did you? I'm curious about going forward and stepping back, as where we first launched Euphonium Summit and doing a more fuller length recording. However, I think this would be a great segue into a post-show, so going back into the podcast and having David Borden come back on and doing another segment with his next segment of life and it looks like I have an agreement right there with that nice smile Absolutely yes, outstanding. Thank you so much for sharing your childhood with us as you're about to leave for college for the first time. Man, what a trip, right.

Speaker 1 1:12:46

I love technology, how it's put this ability before us and to share your childhood with those that have that hardship that they're going through as well, growing through. I don't know where the students are who are watching right now, but I'm sure that there are those that can resonate with your childhood experiences and share the indifference that a parent might have, not necessarily not supportive, but very supportive just not knowing how to support a musician student as far as what other services or opportunities that you can provide as far as a parent and David actually brings up a great point with listening If you're a parent that you're in a rural area, somewhere out in society somewhere, and you don't have a record player, but you have a cell phone. There are so many great resources on the podcast segments, like Spotify or Amazon Music or YouTube at the time of this recording, that you can pull from to have your student artists learn from just hearing, like David did growing up, and for those that are interested in learning from lessons. I was actually on David's website about an hour ago or well, now more than an hour ago, and he mentions some really amazing resources like going to your local church and possibly finding some free lessons by musicians there. So I did see that on his website. So you can find that on internationalinformationsummitcom, david dash word in and you can scroll down to access his website or go directly there. David word in dot com, the AV ID word in the WER, dn dot com for more information and we appreciate your patronage to watch and listen to these segments and David's beginnings.

Speaker 1 1:15:33

As we continue this another time and if you haven't listened to the podcast segment, we're going to be going back over and doing a recap of this interview segment and we'll be at the about one hour and 15 minute mark, as my four year old chimes in the background there. It's awesome. Kids are wonderful A lot of times. And he's about ready for lunch, so thankfully my mom's out there watching him and he's he's probably getting some noodles out for spaghetti. So until next time, everyone. David, thank you so much for joining us on this segment and sharing your journey with music and life.

Speaker 2 1:16:25

Thank you for inviting me and for listening to our long stories.

Speaker 1 1:16:28

Oh, absolutely it's. It's a blast, and look forward to having you on next time. Until next time, thanks everyone, thank you all.

Speaker 2 1:16:39

Recording stopped.

Speaker 1 1:16:41

Awesome sauce. Thank you so much. And then there's my dog.

Speaker 2 1:16:47

They timed it well, though they waited a long time, they sure did?

Speaker 1 1:16:52

They sure did. Wow, what, what great. That was a really awesome journey and one that I can personally relate to. Growing up, my mom was musical and my dad not so much, but they were supportive and part of the band boosters when they could. So, yeah, thank you so much for sharing that great information.

Speaker 2 1:17:28

Yeah, I sort of realized as we were talking, because I've been listening to some of Arnold Jacobs things. I Sort of fell into the what he really teaches in some ways out of necessity. I mean he talks a lot about don't focus on how to get this note or how to get the sound, focus on what the music is and that you know the this stuff will sort of take care of itself. It mostly did for me and I. That's why I partly I appreciate listening to his recordings now he's teaching you really get your head in the right place.

Speaker 1 1:18:04

You know that that reminds me of a book that I was reading just recently the way of the archer and envisioning the target Arrow hits. It's exactly how a musician, what you're just saying, that that flashed into my head. As you're saying, that is, that's the envisioning we take, as you know, each note and is the melody in which that target hits, and to envision that is the fullness of our musicianship.

Speaker 2 1:18:39

Yes, I. Sometimes I use the example of karate when, as I understand it anyway, if you're trying to break the board, you know you don't aim for here, you aim for down here.

Speaker 1 1:18:53

So I think as musician many times.

Speaker 2 1:18:57

First solo I played with a Coast Guard band was the Mozart the soon Concerto, my arrangement of the first movement.

Speaker 1 1:19:04

The first one was the 191.

Speaker 2 1:19:06

That's the one. Yeah, that G high G entrance, I think it. Anyway, I was messing that up. Why am I messing that up? It's not hard, that's not too high for me, but I thought I was focused on this part, I think, or you know, the archer on this part, not on the Holding the arrow in place. Yeah, exactly, and Choking myself up actually. So I just I didn't know, I didn't understand the follow through concepts back then, but I just I did know and all right, forget, pretend it's easy was my concept, just stand out, look like it's easy, think like it's easy, and it came out. So it's just. We have a lot of ways as musicians that we can get in our own way.

Speaker 2 1:19:55

We're good at it you know many of us are. Anyway, I'm really a master at it getting my own way.

Speaker 1 1:20:01

So we certainly become our worst critics.

Speaker 2 1:20:05

That too yes.

Speaker 1 1:20:08

And I look forward to that was a great Seeking the words to facilitate this thought the point of which a musician will listen to this interview and to hear that you had that moment and knowing that there will be a musician that listens to that singular point in our conversation just moments ago and they'll find themselves at that same point in struggle, where they're at, and realize that everyone struggles with one point or another in a solo performance or just with beginning band and just trying to get that note out and that board and, instead of working about it right there, following through all the way. And so I look forward to hearing or seeing some kind of facilitation where, hey, I listened to this awesome podcast 40, 50 years down the road maybe, perhaps, of this awesome euphonium player named David Worden talking about the struggle and it really helped me out. So, just putting that out there, I just really I think of the long-term gain when doing this and to hear the stories of your Hear or read these articles, of what we leave behind these records.

Speaker 2 1:22:15

Well, and they need to hear these things. But I think for all of us I can envision, anyway, a student hearing one person talk about the thing we were just talking about not getting in your own way Then next year hearing another person talk about it six months later, another person. Six months later, another person. And all of a sudden, oh, that makes sense, the way that fourth person said it, for some reason it rang up here. For somebody else it would have been the first person person of the second. You know, it's just hard to know how to explain something to a person, different people, especially if you're doing it like over the air this way. When I make the YouTube video kind of explain how to do something, I don't know who I'm talking to and I can't, I don't see the reaction. It's very tough to know how to say things that really get the point across.

Speaker 1 1:23:13

Absolutely. It's all the perspective and the facet in which one of our audience members happens to be viewing something in their life at that current, in particular time and to say it in such a way, or they may even come back after, like you're just mentioning the Arnold Jacobs and what he was saying and how earlier, you know, in your life you didn't hear some of these truths or take it in the perspective you are now perhaps, and to come back into these recordings and find new nuggets, it's kind of like reading the Bible or reading a book of any sort of value, and you don't capture the. You know, sometimes you don't capture. You won't capture everything the first time around, but that second, third, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:24:18

Well, and when I have different readers in church reading a passage I'm familiar with I don't have the Bible memorized, but I know a lot of the passages but they'll emphasize a word or a phrase in a different way. It's the same words. Oh wait, a minute. A different side of that, you know, will sort of all of a sudden jump up in my head and that's we hope to provide those things for students as we talk to them and for just general, both in our playing and in our talking.

Speaker 1 1:24:50

You know that you bring up a thing. So that's exactly the reason this platform, this summit, this living history series, and getting all these amazing artists to bring their childhood to life back again and to share those experiences, those thoughts and those ideals, those principles, because you know it may not be yours, it may be someone else's, or you know, coming back and listening to it at a half step down and learning it that way. Oh man, that right there learning the trombone solo half step down. That's pretty remarkable, I love it.

Speaker 2 1:25:46

It's pretty inconvenient, though, when you want to play it in the right key.

Speaker 1 1:25:50

Right, right, yeah, but you can definitely solo by yourself.

Recording, Instruments, and Mouthpieces

Speaker 2 1:25:56

You can. I finally did a recording. By the way, I did a multitrack sort of. I mean, I was playing to a background accompaniment. I didn't do a lot of those, even during shutdown. I believe in working with live players around you if possible, but I did. I'm getting sentimental over you in the right key on euphonium with the Dorsey orchestra type backing.

Speaker 1 1:26:19

I think it came out pretty well.

Speaker 2 1:26:21

That was a great challenge, though, to make as much of the trombone expression come out on the euphonium as possible. It was check it out when you get a chance. It was on my YouTube channel.

Speaker 1 1:26:33

I shall, I shall, and is that why you have that? Was that a? I didn't see the mention of the instrument that you're holding currently in your profile picture flugelbone right.

Speaker 2 1:26:45

Oh, that, that's actually an 1895, a Valtron Bone. They called it a tenor horn when they bought it and sometimes they did call instruments like that tenor horns. They were not the British tenor horn but a B flat. They made them in the early days of the American industry. They were upright instruments that looked like a baritone or euphonium shape with the valves over here, but very skinny, and they use a trumpet size lead pipe. So that's what I thought this was. It fits a trumpet mouthpiece very well.

Speaker 2 1:27:16

I've got my tenor trombone size mouthpiece stuck in just about that far Right the end so it won't fall out, and but I bought that at the Salvation Army thrift store in Davenport for five bucks back when. I was in high school and that was my valve trombone, basically for my high school intelligence days.

Speaker 1 1:27:34

Wow. So that that's certainly a different type of. I have a tenor horn and it doesn't definitely it's the British style tenor horn from the early 1900s I think I bought mine from. I want to see Baltimore brass a few years back from 19,. I want to see 1917 or 1908. Oh, it plays like. It plays so amazing. The the valves just they're really nice. I let my my son that plays the French horn play on it or or dabble on it for now. I'm looking forward to trying out. I'm curious question because I was looking as I'm creating the website and stuff like that on my platform and correlating the links, even on the lion's brass, doesn't I? I didn't read what actual mouthpiece you utilize from them.

Speaker 2 1:28:46

I used to. I've tried the DC three first, which is David Child's model, and I liked it a lot and I I chose it. After many years of struggling to find something other than the wick for AL, which I always came back to, this finally seemed to at the point of my life anyway, be the right mouthpiece. It still doesn't have that. What I couldn't find in other mouthpieces is that open singing sound the wick has. It's just for AL, the classic for AL, now the, the other SM four types or the oh shoot, what was it? The ultra heritage as well.

Speaker 2 1:29:33

None of those sound quite the same because the mass distribution is different, and so I gave up some of that in order to switch to the Alliance VC model. But it was more focused, which is what I think I need these days. So it's part of stage in life. But also, the DC three is still a pretty large mouthpiece, at least as big as the four AL, and sometimes that's a little bit too much for me, especially with the more open back board that it has. It's a more open backboard than the wick. So I've also got the DC four, which is a smaller version, and that's what I'm playing today.

Road Trip Musings and Instrument Break-In

Speaker 2 1:30:09

Actually I'll when I get my chops really, really strong again, which has been impossible. This since April. Um had to work up for recital, first of all in April, that we did for the local Twin Cities uh, master's workshop they may call it, but then we had a wedding in.

Speaker 2 1:30:31

Colorado in May to go to. These were all road trips, by the way. So the growth Colorado, and back then came Tempe, the I tech and Tempe drove to Tempe and back. Then the next month, in July in August I mean no July we visited family in Connecticut.

Speaker 1 1:30:54

Oh man.

Speaker 2 1:30:55

So that was a drive out and back. And then just a couple of weeks ago I went back to Colorado for a different purpose. So since May I put 11,000 road miles on. And when you're staying in hotels and traveling you're not practicing At least I'm not practicing. So the DC four is my friend right now because it's I couldn't handle the DC three for at least a couple of months of really hard practice again to get back into shape.

Speaker 1 1:31:21

So I'm curious um, is that a that's a large bore or a European bore, Large bore right.

Speaker 2 1:31:30

Yep, they're both a large shank. Um, I only only one, maybe two European shank mouthpieces. I have a four am. So when I go to a show, if I want, if I think I might want, to try either the Shires model that uses it or another sample of 2900 Wilson, I'll usually have that in my bag so I can try it, even though it's not quite the same as what I'm using right now. And I think somewhere I have a Kelly mouthpiece. It's medium shank, maybe the 51 D model, I can't remember which one I got, but there's.

Speaker 2 1:32:05

I'm so glad that the world is gradually switching. In one way I'm glad that we're gradually switching to the large shank because choosing a mouthpiece is so much easier. But I do. I got to say I do kind of like the medium shank. I my old Besson with the medium shank and I got I think the band bought me one in 1971 and I know they did 1971 and then I bought my own in 1975. So they're pretty close in production. But the 1975 was the large shank and the old, the 71, was the small, the medium shank, and I got a little bigger sound out of the large shank, a little more like the quality I wanted actually in terms of being a little darker maybe.

Speaker 2 1:32:57

But there was something about that small shank that was just sweeter. It was better in tune, first of all, with the medium shank and it was just the response of the instruments that would just felt nicer, more friendly.

Speaker 1 1:33:09

I wonder if it's the metallurgical components that make up the mouthpiece. I've really considered the dynamics of the mouthpiece making. It's really interesting post-military. When I got out I ended up diving into heat treating and metallurgy for a little bit of time, and the metallurgical components as well, as I think it also has to deal with our own personal kind of, in a way, vibration or harmonics that make us us. Maybe, I don't know. I think that the metallurgical components, the different metals that all these manufacturers are utilizing, may not necessarily they've been heat treated the same, but there's still kind of something with the batter that's a little bit different, like one more grain of something or another.

Speaker 2 1:34:19

I'm sure it matters partly because I found that, as I mentioned, in the WIC mouthpieces the distribution of mass matters on the body of the mouthpiece and therefore you have to think that the quality of the metal, if you make the identical 4AL classic shape out of stainless steel it's not going to sound the same as the classic shape out of brass. I believe that firmly, even though on my forums somebody was saying or maybe it was on Facebook that the density of both materials is very similar. But I don't care, stainless steel feels harder to me, like you could pound nails with it practically, and the brass doesn't feel. Anyway, I do think it matters and I think certainly in the instruments I know it matters. I have a lot of respect for Adams and for Mille-Adams opinion and I thought it a little odd at first that the instrument I've got brass off with the yellow brass and then goes to gold brass until it gets to the stainless steel, the sterling silver bell, and that made sense. The yellow brass, he explained to me, is harder and it works better for the valve section, so they want that in that part of the horn, the gold brass I like. On my sterling I had a gold brass bell that I liked. That was my favorite model of the sterling and I know it does respond differently. So that made sense.

Speaker 2 1:35:49

But the tuning slide is red brass. It's red brass on all the horns, he tells me, because they found that for whatever reason that one part of the whole travel in the instrument seems to work better with red brass. It just responds better, has a better tone. So and I don't know that I know the difference, but he thinks he does and I do respect his opinion. That's why he doesn't put the fourth valve lock on the Adams euphonium. He doesn't want that extra mass there. It changes the response of that important. That's very critical too.

Speaker 2 1:36:24

That long branch. It's something that sterling worked with for a long time to help inflammation, for example. It changed the shape of that long branch to help control the six partial sharpness and make a big bit. So all these things matter and I frankly I could believe that cryogenic freezing does something. I've never tried it, but I do know that instruments that are broken in seem to play better. It's always been the case and I've been through it way many times in my life because I had. When I was a sterling artist they would send me prototypes and they had a new change, a small change in any way. They sent me a new prototype, so I'd have a new horn to play.

Speaker 1 1:37:08

For how long For how long? How long would those trial periods be? Because you have to break them in. So what's the break-in period for sterling versus the Adams? That becomes the question, right.

Speaker 2 1:37:22

Playing for six months for a year. Basically it was about the routine. And going back to the Besson for a minute, I got my first sovereign. I kept playing one that Bob Campbell had. He was a TBA historian back in the days. He got one of the first sovereigns ever imported to this country. I didn't even know they made one. I had the new standard style. This was 1978, I had a symposium. I tried his. So immediately I worked on first of all becoming a Besson artist so I could get a horn and getting a sovereign in 1967.

Speaker 2 1:37:59

They sent it to me and it just didn't feel right. It didn't feel like the one that I played, especially in the fourth valve range. When you get down below the concert F it was stuffy as all of it. Up In fact there was a concert, the low C, that could not make it come out without several tries period as it broke in, though it got better.

Speaker 2 1:38:22

Now I'm talking about a period of maybe a month. I don't think that's enough for the metal to have changed a lot. I think the valves were just sealing better, as probably what affected that. In any case, it still didn't feel right. So they sent me another one and that one felt right but had the same problems breaking in. I still had to play it for a month before I got that low range working. So there was that. There was the fact that on all the sterlings when I got the new one it never felt the same as the one I just played. Some things were better about it intonation or tone or something like that but the feel of the horn took me a while to get into that and I think which is why I think cryogenic freezing might do something I talked long ago to one of the head guys at Merifone.

Speaker 2 1:39:05

He was talking about why their horns might be better than Yamaha's, for example, is that they're handmade, which is what atoms are from sheet, and they were very carefully formed. By the time they're put together, they're comfortable in their own skin. They're comfortable in the shape they're in, whereas when you do things by machine bending and machine hydraulic blowing, the metal has only recently been forced into shape more than hammered into shape, and it may not be as comfortable. There may be stresses on the instrument.

Speaker 2 1:39:39

The Merifone guy's thought was he said you talk to a lot of trumpet players and I had at that point who bought a Yamaha trumpet thing. This is great. And then a year later they went back to their box because the horn wasn't satisfying. He believes that's because the horn actually changed as it got broken in and become more comfortable in the shape. It lost whatever quality that they had that made it different from their old box. So I think the fact that the atoms' horns are handmade and hammered into shape and work into shape makes them more comfortable in the shape they're in to begin with and that does affect the quality of the sound. But that's a little bit theoretical. It's logical.

Speaker 1 1:40:20

Well, to jump on to that, with my time in Iraq with my Wilson 2900 that I played on and those extreme temperatures out there and then coming back home, there wasn't much difference. I mean, yeah, I had to clean my horn a lot, a lot post Iraq back in the early 2000s, but thinking about the temperature differences and especially like change of commands here in central Texas, and Then you know the winter months being Cold, I I think that my sound, the sound that I was experiencing, never really changed. I was, I was playing a Brian Bowman's mouthpiece at the time BB, I Think, a BB one maybe If I'm. That was many years ago and I don't have that mouthpiece anymore.

Speaker 1 1:41:34

But for a cryogenically speaking, with the freezing method for metals, it's kind of like how we stress test metals For the ocean, the petroleum rigs that are in the deep ocean for offshore drilling, and to stress test them with pressure as well as temperature and the variance and shifts with different Chemicals. So yeah, I would, I would it. It would definitely pop some of the Impurities that a manufacturer that isn't handcrafted. It would definitely showcase that impurity and Impede the performer into a their truest sound. I guess you could say it that way, so that that would make the most sense.

Speaker 2 1:42:52

Well, I think I've experienced a light cryogenic freezing because I live in Minnesota and Back when I was still working full-time, if I were going to go have a session with Sarah to do some recordings After work and I worked very early I started about 5 am and then I could leave about one or two. So I'd ever, you know, afternoon session with her. But the horn was in the car that whole time so I didn't typically didn't bring into the office because it was Wasn't much room in there for, you know anyway. So it got frozen really well in the car, the point where the valves didn't even move, you know. And Then they get into the war room and I play it and it goes through that next week again. So, and then the band also went through of, because of our travels, sometimes the horn, often they go in a truck it was not temperature controlled in the back.

Speaker 1 1:43:49

So yeah, they'd freeze.

Speaker 2 1:43:50

So, yeah, I suppose I experienced a little with that over my career and again. So the horn I played for five, ten years Definitely played different from how I did when it was new, and that maybe was part of it, the fact they went through all those temperature changes and as you're doing that.

Speaker 2 1:44:06

When you've got this, this u-shaped tube, it has to make this, these two tubes here. If the u-shape wants to do this, it just wants to unstretch a little bit right back to her unbend. Over time It'll get more used to the shape it's in. So when you want to start with, this joint is not going to go sprung, you know, like that. Right. But If you, if you get it in really hot temperatures and we fold temperatures, perhaps that helps it become a little more Piable into its. The shape that is formed in I don't like of this it's a theory I don't don't put a lot of. I've never paid for having a horn cryogenically frozen, for example. I've never gone that route.

Speaker 1 1:44:48

I don't know if I would either.

Speaker 2 1:44:51

Yeah, but. I see well that's kind of extreme. I mean, brass instruments are made to go through temperatures the mind of the room. They are made to go through temperatures that cold so, and brass is pretty brittle when it's cold, I think it does, but then again it's.

Speaker 1 1:45:10

It's an interesting theory, interesting conversation.

Speaker 2 1:45:17

There's a lot of those going around in the music world.

Speaker 1 1:45:20

Yeah, as have they. I've so the red brass. Is that a copper composite?

Speaker 2 1:45:31

There's more copper in it.

Speaker 1 1:45:32

Yes, so like rose, brass is tin and copper together.

Speaker 2 1:45:38

Right higher percentage of copper. If you look at a lot of the lack of version of the Chinese horns, the clones, you'll notice that the lead pipes on those have been red brass almost well since the very early days, because that hits our body chemistry so directly, or vice versa. There was more trouble with red spots developing, so they went to a red, red, red red brass lead pipe because the copper was more resistant to that. So, and Then the standard yellow brass, while it has some copper, is not enough to, apparently, so it's.

Speaker 1 1:46:18

Yes, you bring up a really because.

Speaker 1 1:46:21

So the very, very, very first Interview segment that I did was with an amazing high school student who started the organization low brass network out in California, lester, you actually did a chemical study on Kind of taking care of your horn, the all the different bacteria. We talked about red rod on that episode and Cleaning and stuff like that, and so it's intriguing that that brings to mind that conversation I had with Lester and he's he's going through a senior year in high school right now priests, spectacular kid, and so his I Think he sent me the research article and I'll put that. Hopefully I Can find it in the email he sent it over into me. Shouldn't be too hard to locate, but I'll put that as part of the PDF. Downloads are where people can download it on the website, because I think we cover some of that dynamic in With red bra, in keeping your horn clean, because a lot of these, a lot of students, especially Middle school through high school, don't necessarily clean their horn as often as they ought to or ever.

Speaker 1 1:47:51

Yeah, yeah, precisely. And so I'm curious to the red rot with the red brass. It it's. It makes the most sense, materialistically wise and aesthetically wise, because you don't want those red rot spots the Foremind your horn at all, because I mean, that's corrosion, that's just no bueno. But the salts that our bodies are Consuming on a daily basis in a variety of Beverage and foods, you know, aren't the best for the instruments that we play, so cleaning the horns are really important. Huh, fantastic. I'll send you over the link to Schedule a follow-up on your second in series. Wow, what a conversation. Thank you so much, david.

Speaker 2 1:49:02

Thank you. I appreciate the time and the the chance to do this. I'm looking forward to our next conversation to. That will be fun.

Speaker 1 1:49:08

Absolutely. Thank you so much, and for everybody that's on this and listening, thank you for sticking with us and listening to these amazing conversations, especially behind the scenes of the Living History series on internationallyufoniumsummitcom, and check out David Weardon and all his links that should be current and live, as you find them at wwwdavid-wordoncom internationalcom. Until next time. Thank you so much for joining us, david. Thank you so much, and I can't wait to do this again.

Speaker 2 1:49:50

Same here.

Speaker 1 1:49:51

Have a fantastic day and Looking forward to your content coming out.

Speaker 2 1:49:57

Thank you, bye for now.

Speaker 1 1:49:59

Bye for now you.