Exploring the Intricacies and Techniques of Music Creation and Performance

How often do you consider the intricacies of music creation? This episode invites you on a journey through the captivating world of music, performance, and the surprising techniques that bring sounds to life. We kick off our conversation discussing rather unusual gadgets like a breather fit and a lip vibrator - tools that help budding artists enhance their performance skills. Switching gears, we delve into the technicalities of migrating a website to an SSL site, drawing upon our own experiences and challenges faced.

As we venture further, our focus shifts to the realm of music education, exploring diverse methods employed across different countries to elevate musicianship. An intriguing discovery is the importance of lyrics in a song, even for brass instrument players, highlighting the role of musicality in creating a holistic sound. There’s more to explore, as we discuss the complexities of performing unaccompanied pieces, improvising music on the spot, and dealing with time constraints. Through it all, we discover how various instruments aid in playing lower ranges on the horn and delve into the nuances of preparing for encores.

Wrapping things up, we emphasize the significance of warming up, particularly while playing high-range notes. Techniques like the buzz and whistle method are our focus, enabling seamless transitions with no breaks in buzzing. As we navigate the world of Euphonium, we learn how to maintain musicality and create improvised music on the fly. Lastly, we touch upon extended techniques in music and discuss their impact on creating captivating music. Through this episode, we hope to ignite your curiosity and deepen your appreciation for the intricate art of music.

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

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:04

you. David Warden series in second in series October 5th 2023. David Warden Weirden. Where are you, youirden? You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you you, you, you, you, you you you, you, you, you you sticky bottom on it.

Speaker 2 15:46

It's a nice soft rubber and, of course, if you don't have a lid on it it would spill. When you did that.

Speaker 1 15:52

Of course that's cool. What's your go-to beverage today? Water, water.

Speaker 2 16:00

Yeah.

Speaker 1 16:03

Hey, I have a question Just off kind of topic, and I've seen you leave reviews and stuff like that. I ended up getting in a. I should have brought it with me. I should have brought it to this room. It's in the other room. It's called a breather fit. Have you heard of it?

Speaker 2 16:26

A breather fit? No, I don't think so.

Speaker 1 16:29

I'm going to send you the Amazon link real quick. It's something that I had seen an ad for and I'm like you know what. I'm going to go ahead and grab it and to test it out myself. Here's the short link to it.

Speaker 2 16:50

Okay, I'll pull it right.

Speaker 1 16:54

I put it on Amazon. Oh, you want me to send it to you on Facebook.

Speaker 2 16:58

Sure Okay, I got that on the website there.

Speaker 1 17:03

Unfortunately it only has the inhale and exhale component to it, but it's only up to like a six on exhale and a five on inhale. I believe I'm like well, my lungs are a bit more. I guess I could do more of a workout or a series with that to increase, but I was just. It takes place kind of of the whole putting the PVC in the mouth to open up the throat and to get that deep air into the lungs.

Speaker 2 17:54

Okay, yeah, there it finally came in. Oh, that is interesting.

Speaker 1 18:04

It is. It looks just like that when you get it. It has a detachable mouthpiece to it, which is really interesting.

Speaker 2 18:18

I'll take a look at that later and have a chance to read about it more, but yeah, it does look interesting. Yeah, I do a lot of fun gadgets. Somewhere I've got a oh shoot, what was that called? It's a lip vibrator. It's like this little oh I don't know like a small cell phone size box has a fitting for a mouthpiece in it. So I put my euphonia mouthpiece in that and then throw a switch and it vibrates. The unit itself kind of vibrates your chops.

Speaker 1 18:49

So like a massager.

Speaker 2 18:51

Yeah, exactly, you set up for different speeds. You know faster, slow vibration. I tried it for a while. It seemed to help a little bit. Maybe when your chops are tired after a long rehearsal, just to sort of loosen up the muscles, to get kind of tight. You get that a lot of playing and the upper register, things like that.

Speaker 1 19:09

Does that come with a self-contained heater? Don't worry about people up there.

Speaker 2 19:15

Especially on cold days. Right exactly, I don't know if they even sell it anymore. I bought it from I think it was DF Music. At the time they were selling mouthpieces from all brands and they were the first ones to carry the John Packer line of instruments, for example, One of the shows I was at, and I purchased it from them. I don't think. Well, I might have put a blog post up about it. I can't remember. It's been a long time ago. I'll have to go digging.

Speaker 1 19:44

Talking about your blog site, did you get it back up and going again?

Speaker 2 19:49

Yes, there was apparently something I couldn't quite get a totally straight answer from the server people that I think a setting got changed, possibly because of an upgrade. When they upgrade software sometimes things happen you don't want them to. In this case, they set the site up as an SSL site. It's not, it's just a state. You type HTTP with no use because I don't do any financial things on there. No reason to secure it. I would have done it just to make Google happy because they like SSL sites. That means I've got to go through and track about 3,000 files down that all have hard coded HTTP references and modify each one of those and just more work than I wanted to go through. It still is more work than I want to go through. It doesn't cost that much to do it.

Speaker 2 20:39

The form itself is just a switch you throw. It's pretty easy to change that over. It's the whole life that I get messed up by. Anyway, it was forcing when you follow a normal link to the site. It was forcing it into HTTPS when the browser sees that it doesn't like when you have mixed content. A lot of the stuff I call for, like the style sheet that makes this form look right, is served from HTTP, it says no, we'll ignore that. It was goofy. I don't have the total answer, but I'm going to assume it was a software upgrade. I don't think anybody messes?

Speaker 2 21:16

up, they sell you the server space and they do the server maintenance. They don't go around switching things on or off for you usually.

Speaker 1 21:24

I noticed on your website on one of the pages I think it may have been off of your BioSite it was a PowerPoint video file. I'll have to go and check that down again. I'll send it over to you. I was wondering if you'd be able to throw that into a YouTube video format.

Speaker 2 21:53

Probably sure you said something I linked to from the site.

Speaker 1 21:56

No, it's something on your website. I am, as far as let's see, trying to think of where exactly it was on your website.

Speaker 2 22:14

I do A push button thing you can do to show you how the compensating system works. It changes things in real time.

Speaker 1 22:21

It might be that. Do you think you'd be able to flop that into the YouTube?

Speaker 2 22:33

I could somehow I'd have to probably do it narrated, because the part of the purpose of that is you push down a particular valve, as I control a valve, and it shows you what changes in the air flow as you do that.

Speaker 1 22:48

I guess you could screen share and while you're narrating it, you can demonstrate it live.

Speaker 2 22:54

Yeah, that's a good idea, though I hadn't thought of doing that. You can do it. It's so important to stand alone Demonstration you can do to your heart's content. You can push whatever valves you want, but I could obviously choose some and that'd be a useful thing to do. I should have thought about that myself.

Speaker 1 23:07

Not a problem. You can use one of the really cool features. You can do a loom-leaf. I'll send you over the link Loom. Sorry, loom, delete, copy. Put it over there you go. There's the website. It's like a. You can do a free screen recorder up to like five minutes, I think, and play around with that. I used the free and then I'm like oh, I started to get used to it and I actually used a few recordings through up on YouTube at one point. It's a really cool integration. You can move your bubble where your face is around or not even have it on there. It's a pretty useful tool.

Speaker 2 24:03

Yeah, can you send that in the Facebook Messenger too? I did Great. Thank you, I'll watch for that.

Speaker 1 24:11

Yeah, and I'll put it in here as well just now. But yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing that, because I think if someone doesn't know how that like that interactive portion of it they're just going to go. Oh well, that's not a YouTube and I don't really know what's going on here. For the new users and those that are familiar with the compensating system, they can play around with that and see how you do it. Oh, you could probably put that. Once you record it on Loom and let it do its thing, you can upload it into YouTube and you can put that video right below that link to the PowerPoint.

Speaker 2 25:02

I'll work on it.

Speaker 1 25:03

Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 2 25:05

Also, Windows has a screen recorder. You can use as well the DUD videos, and I can do it on my phone or my tablet too.

Speaker 1 25:12

I've got a screen recorder function on that and I just have to do the narration, which I could even do after the fact if I wanted to In fact, I probably would, because I tend to.

Speaker 2 25:21

Unless I script it out, it's going to be 15 minutes long. Right, that's how most of my videos that are. You might see a how-to tip on this two or three minutes. Well, start out at 15, then I just top it down to whatever it is I want to say.

Speaker 1 25:37

That'd be a cool short, though, to do for your YouTube channel.

Speaker 2 25:43

Yeah, it would. Actually I could do it short because, just without going into great detail, it could go by pretty quickly. The shorts I've seen are all vertically formatted, which is not too bad.

Speaker 1 25:55

I could have my face in one half and the other half my phone set the record only, mic only, and then have it going on your phone while doing it and then upload it from your phone, just like the shorts most shorts are nowadays. Okay, so hold on, Let me clear my background because this doesn't like when I start putting other stuff on here. So if you're to go screen record, like on my Samsung Note, it pulls up no sound, media sound and media sounds and mic. It just records the screen and not the actual, the video camera looking back at me.

Speaker 2 26:52

Okay, I'll play with it. I'm sure I could find I've got an iPhone so I don't have that particular app, but I'm sure there are others that are comparable.

Speaker 1 26:59

Well, iphone seems to have a bit more technology. Like my friend was sharing me how you can remove like complete backgrounds off of anything on your phone, I'm like, yeah, my Samsung doesn't do that.

Speaker 2 27:14

Interesting. I should look at that too, because that'd be handy sometimes.

Speaker 1 27:17

For sure, for sure. Wow, I really appreciate you booking your second in series so soon after our first. I really do appreciate that and appreciate your time.

Speaker 2 27:32

Oh, no problem at all. It seemed like the smart thing to do. I've got stuff coming up later in the month getting ready for the brass in church to start cranking again, so I've got to get rehearsals organized. I've got to finish arranging a piece for us to use before we can do that, and then, you know, it gets kind of hectic around there. So I thought let's do this while I still have some bandwidth in my head left over.

Speaker 1 27:52

Right, I appreciate that and I'm sure, on behalf of the audience that is listening to the podcast segment here, I'm getting the tips beforehand, like last time, as I am almost done uploading the videos for most of the speed, most of those on our cohort, and moving forward. I really do appreciate your time. Well, same here.

Speaker 2 28:18

I know it's a lot of work from your end. I've done enough of this to know what's involved.

Speaker 1 28:24

Absolutely, and so it looks like we're going to kind of jump back into the junior year of your high school, leading up to post high school and into the Coast Guard.

Speaker 2 28:39

Yes, Now, do you like the lighting I have? I've got just natural light and now. But is it bright enough? I think so.

Opportunities for Rising Artists in Music

Speaker 1 28:46

I think we're good. Okay, there's others that have much darker lighting, so I'm not too terribly worried or troubled with that. I'm just going over a few notes, especially the Hungarian melodies notes, and a few things have really kind of developed between the last time we talked and today with my rising artists in community to include rising composers in community and being able to afford opportunities to students and through the professional level from like middle school to professional horns for each level, so like beginners would be able to earn toward a free like stencil horn like John Packer or like one of the stencil compensatings and upgrade as their time goes, as their musicianship grows as well, into a more professional model and then final stages would probably be like in Adams or 842 or something for them to like, be elated by and to go crazy with. It's really cool.

Speaker 2 30:19

Yeah, you get pretty pricey when you get up on that range. Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 1 30:24

But I mean, with that becomes the more quality recordings of the compositions from the composers on our cohort and I should in all reality include your works to go to for those that are wanting material to showcase in our cohort students on up. So I'm currently looking at and I was talking to James Blackford yesterday and we're going over how the Australians, even in the UK, their musicianship guidelines on how they elevate their each year and progress with music theory to the complexity of solos they perform, to scales and such like that. So kind of correlating that with my US brain and how to kind of plug that into this idea right now of the rising artists and community and gauging where it goes in fits into the program.

Speaker 2 31:54

Yeah, it's a lot to coordinate, and especially when you can take advantage, of course, of learning from the other countries how they do things, which is a good thing but takes a while, and in my case, I'd have to actually talk to somebody, I think, and have them explain a little more about the system, because it's different from ours.

Speaker 1 32:15

It is. I got to talk to James a little bit about it and then David Thornton is just he was re at one point I think the week before our first in series he was having to rewrite some of the standards or a new book. So they have a book of solos, like how we have PML lists here in the States. They have something similar but they have each instrument has this book of sorts where it lists three levels of solos that you have to pick from one from list A, one from list B, one from the sea, and then you have scales and a few other things to test off at the end of the year.

Speaker 1 33:09

And so if you're listening, for anybody in our audience have a copy they could like take a picture of, and they say they update this list more than the PML. So that's a good thing. And so I was thinking well, I mean, we have the youth toads for professionals and we have, you know, phil's network in our cohort, and so that's certainly amazing. And then Ian Lester has a book of middle school, high school solos, kind of like how the trombones have the trombone gems. So that takes care of some. But I would love to see more composers in our cohort and maybe I haven't dove quite deep enough to see if each of our composers have, or arrangers have, stuff written for the middle school level so they can progress toward that free instrument.

Speaker 2 34:16

Yeah, the orchestration is part of that. I've focused the last well for a long time, actually going way back, but for the last several years anyway, I've focused on making sure I got some solo material out that was younger player compatible.

Speaker 1 34:33

Oh, that's awesome.

Speaker 2 34:35

Yeah, I just did well. The last year I published through Simaran a book of songs called the International Songbook for Euphonium and it's got songs from seven different countries. There are a couple that are difficult the Mozart Alleluia I'm sure you know that one that's a little notey and it takes you know, more experienced player. But a lot of them are just beautiful songs that aren't that hard to play. And yet the idea was for the student to learn musicality.

Speaker 2 35:09

You could listen to fine players or fine singers actually perform these songs, because they are songs you know. There are people that are singing them on YouTube and singers interpret different from the way brass players do. They make the words fit where we often, unfortunately, brass players may tend to ignore the words totally, for some very unfortunate breaths breaks a word in half if you were to mentally follow the song, even though it's very convenient to do for the brass player. So the idea was to help people learn how to make the music work with the words and when you're. I do instruct people that when you're playing a song you better do it right for the words, even though you're not singing them, because there are people out there who know them.

Speaker 1 35:57

So you're singing it through your horn.

Speaker 2 35:59

Yes, yes, and you want your phrases to match what the song is trying to say. First of all, this is the mood of the song it's just a happy song or a sad song or an energetic song that obviously I won't name names, but a conductor I played under I was doing Danny Boy.

Speaker 2 36:18

We were preparing that for Encore and it got to the end. It's big retard at the end and it's mostly just me on the melody until then. I get to a last note and then the accompaniment comes back in softly. So the last phrase what up a doctor? And he was going to have me breathe.

Speaker 2 36:50

Well, you say it kind of like a pickup. Well, yeah, the words that said, oh Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you. So so even there, this was a school of person, not just a hack, massive that kind of stuff in music. So it's something, and I confess I've been guilty of that occasionally in my past. Anyway, I try to get around it now to not do it. But I've been ignorant of the words, and especially if they aren't in English to begin with. That makes it a little more challenging.

Speaker 2 37:34

But the way vocal parts are written, they give you hints, even if you don't know the language. You can tell about where the breath is going to be and certainly where they shouldn't be Well anyway. So the whole purpose of that song book was to get younger players, whose musicality really hasn't matured much yet, to hear some fantastic singers sing the song, or even average singers. They're still going to sing with good word references, good word awareness, and make yourself do the same thing then on your instrument. And we should do that.

Speaker 2 38:11

I, the first time I performed in during young charms, I didn't, I had not yet looked up the words I should have, and I'd never heard it sung by that time in my life and I performed it and this nice little old lady came up to me afterwards and said oh, that was beautiful. I could hear the words as you were playing. So I thought, oh good, I must have done the right thing. Then you know, I must have guessed right on where the phrases are and that kind of thing. But I decided to take a more intelligent approach after that and actually know what they were. So anyway.

Performance Challenges and Horn Range Exploration

Speaker 2 38:43

So this is that one and I've written a book of unaccompanied solos that should be published very soon now and that will have, I think, 32. I think is what I targeted for the number of pieces and most of them will also be fairly easy to play. And unaccompanied solos teach us a different thing about playing. There are solos that would sound fine. With most of their songs I'm like well, or the movement from the Bach cello suite. That's not a song, but many of them are. Shenandoah is one of the songs, for example. So performing them without the accompaniment is a whole different kind of challenge for any of us. I like having a piano player, I like to support the piano gives me and the way it fills holes and it makes something interesting. When I'm holding a whole note, I don't have to work quite as hard to make it interesting myself, but doing it as an unaccompanied and I'm thinking well, in many cases I've done on-cores where I had an on-court planned and then they wanted something else. They kept plotting, so I had to come up with something without having rehearsed. So I've always had a few things in my head that I could just play off the cuff. And part of the idea with this unaccompanied book as well is to provide some of those things for you, including some that I've used. Last Rose of Summer is one I used.

Speaker 2 40:03

That was on the Japanese tour. We had two or three on-cours already prepared, but that wasn't enough. For one night especially, things had gone very well. I was going to be in trouble if they kept asking because I was getting tired. I had played the Arpeggio on that already, which is very demanding all by itself, and the Clausemith Rondo, which is a high-range extravaganza, and some other things that were quite difficult, and I thought man, what am I going to do? So I played a slow song, and that proves to be a good thing, because they like it, it's pretty and they like the musicality, but it doesn't energize them quite so much that they'll keep yeah, more, it's just oh, that was nice, and they'll let you off the stage at that point.

Speaker 1 40:43

Usually, I think we're going into a time I don't know if you've seen it more recently or not in your experiences, but those that are applauding for an encore they don't understand. The bands don't prepare for the encore, or an encore at that, and so they just get a lengthy applause and that's that, and I think a lot of the audience doesn't know that that is a possibility either.

Speaker 2 41:20

Yes, Well, in some cases it isn't. I mean, if the symposium I played last year the regional that I played we had a very strict limit on time because we were sharing one hour time slots, which are really only 50 minute time slots because they have to be passing in between clearing the hall out, repression the hall with the new folks coming in. So we had 25 minutes each as a hard cutoff. So in that case it didn't matter what they said, I wasn't going to play an encore because that would have been rude to the first new follow. I happened to be first on the recital and it would have affected things somehow or other.

Speaker 2 42:00

I would have been chopping to their time a little bit and they probably still would have played their whole recital. So, either way, I would have been chopping into the time with Queen to let people out and get to the next event they may want to go to and let whoever is coming in. They have to set up for the new recital, they have to move the piano and things like that.

Speaker 1 42:16

So yeah, it's not always an option.

Speaker 2 42:22

And our band. We always had at least a couple things ready that we could play, and if we still wanted something we could play on March. I mean, the band had all kinds of marches we could play off the cuff without any problem at all. Absolutely, they could all do that. So we never got stuck for an encore. As a soloist with piano especially when you're hiring the pianist for an event you're not going to probably prepare for three-on-ports for example Right, unless you have three-on-encumbered solos out of your book of 32.

Speaker 2 42:55

Right, so we could do that. Yes, but I have a few solos. After two they're probably not going to ask for another one. They're more exciting with the piano.

Speaker 1 43:05

They are. They are Unless you've got all these extended techniques and you pull out all the stops on those.

Speaker 2 43:13

Oh, there are a couple in there that are pretty adventurous, yeah.

Speaker 1 43:15

Oh, that's cool.

Speaker 2 43:17

I've tried to include some in there. Shenandoah again is the example. I made sure the range doesn't go too high In the case of one which was the last Rose of Summer. The way I play it it goes up to a third above the tonic. And when you play it in E flat, which is the key the Arvin book has it in, that's where I first learned it. Anyway. Now I'll put you up to a G concert or an A which at the end of a. If you're already tired, playing that expressively at the end of the piece is a little bit tiring. So I included a version in that key and also went in B flat. So that sounds pretty as well that I've learned now.

Speaker 2 43:57

I think it's a little more friendly to me since I got the Adams instrument. It's more responsive in the low register than I was used to on the British made horns that I had before the Besse and then the Sterling. I mean, obviously a lot of people do a fine job there, but that's a weakness I think of my chops is that range has never been easy to produce. Dependably. It is easier on the Adams. So now I started to learn to take advantage of that range where you can play down there and get this more resonant, warm sound which fits a lot of pieces very nicely. So that's, it's a useful tool I now have in my tool belt when I plan a concert or a recital.

Speaker 2 44:38

Yes, I could program something low and not be afraid of what happens when I get down with the lowest notes and so on. But then the fourth valve register, the compensating register, on those are so darn. Any of the compensating horns is stuffier on those notes than any other note on the horn. Because you're going through all these contortions, the areas you know to get through all the passageways and find the up. And now I'm getting to feel that I can do those, even though that's always been a weakness for me. If I have to pop off a low C, I can generally do that, you know, and things like that, where that's almost that's the second stuffiest note on the horn, the B being the worst.

Speaker 2 45:17

So anyway, so that's been, that's been a great experience now to have the whole range of the instrument available, and I've always had shouldn't say the whole range, but I've always had a good pedal range for some reason, because I reset my chops when I go down there. I use you, yeah, and I can. I've learned finally to play scales through the pedals into the normal range. So there was a I have to accommodate somewhere in there because to get down to a pedal C which I've used ever since I was in college actually I've had that the lowest about my standard. I've had that low pedal range solidly, but then the octave right above it was not good, so I've had funny chops all along.

Speaker 1 46:02

Yeah, I, a couple of years ago I had taken a lesson from a master of instruments. She, up in Vermont, did a zoom lesson with the name escapes me now but she had challenged me with buzzing and then playing scales and she noticed that I had reset it. She's like you don't have to do that, you know that right. I'm like well, that's kind of why I hired you and saw after you, because I wanted to see if I could like stop moving, because it was just literally a hair that I had my mouth piece. My man at the time for many decades, it was a Shilke 51D.

Speaker 1 46:52

I would have to go over, just like a hair, to go into the pedals and then readjust as I hit like a certain, literally a certain note and then I could play everything else. And she's like, yeah, you don't have to do that. And you know, try, try, try a certain mouth and try this certain mouthpiece or this instance. Or I think she's like well, it sounds like you need something with the cup. And so I ended up researching all the diameters and the measurements and I'm like I ended up settling on a wedge, the 102E, and she's like it's going to take about three weeks to settle into a mouthpiece, kind of how like we were talking about breaking in a horn, kind of breaking in that mouthpiece also, and I've never had to reset since then.

Speaker 2 47:57

Well, that's handy it's. I watched a lot of players over the years and Trumpet and Euphonium they're the most similar, I think. Getting down to tuba it's harder to compare. There are differences in tuba, but we don't have any particular greater challenge than trumpet players do, except that we go down lower in the range than most of them will choose to do. Anyway, I've watched, like Alan Vazzuti, for example, trumpet player, and he's just amazing how fast he can go between the low and the high range without moving. In fact he can double-tongue between those two extremes. Oh, wow, yeah, and it's just, it's kind of astonishing to hear Now he's the most stable player I think I've ever seen on either instrument. He just things just don't move, which enables that kind of stuff. But other people who do move, I've noticed, can also play things with great facility and yet they just they've learned to move quickly. If they go, some go sideways, others go up a bit, which we think would be awkward. Well, and it is.

Speaker 2 49:08

I mean definitionally, it's awkward.

Speaker 1 49:12

Well, yeah, because it's different for you.

Speaker 2 49:14

It's different from everybody. Oh, there's that, and there's the fact that you're moving. So a movement takes time. I mean, an actual physical alignment takes more time than just a little adjustment here with muscles. And now some of them will play the last variation of the Arban Carnival of Venice where they're popping the low notes. It's back to the little register and you'll see the move though the one I saw I can't think who it was now Somebody famous on the spot probably shouldn't name them anyway, but had a sideways motion to do that and which is? I've always seen vertical motions before, so it reminded me when you were talking about your sideways motion. This was much more dramatic, and yet it didn't seem to interfere with the facility at all. It's just a matter of getting used to what you need and how you do things, I guess.

Speaker 1 50:03

I wonder if that would be like kind of the term that I hear, split tone, like, for instance, a trumpet player, a French horn player. Sometimes they can do, or maybe sometimes you phony them or two, but they can have two apertures developed and that's just their kind of go to to. Really, if they're fatigued on one aperture, they go to the second aperture as a backup.

Speaker 2 50:36

I've heard of that. I've never actually known someone who does it. I know the way back when Harry James was famous for doing that no-transcript. Was it Maynard Ferguson or some other trumpet player who said they got tired over here, they just moved a little bit?

Speaker 1 50:51

Oh wow, no, I didn't know Maynard. If it was Maynard, I'd never heard that one.

Brass Instruments

Speaker 2 50:57

I could be wrong about that one, but I know what Harry James is, one I heard about. I just never. Oh, and Arnazzeca was mentioning that too He'll dump now with a tuba mouthpiece so you don't have as much. You're not going to get a whole new range by moving. I don't think because the mouthpiece is wide you'll get part of a new range of lip. But anyway, he's demonstrated playing in different positions on his mouth, usually with buzzing the mouthpiece, and that's fine.

Speaker 2 51:25

And I think if you are a low pressure player that helps a lot. I use a little bit more pressure so I can get a dent that will develop quickly. That makes it much harder to move sideways. It does because you're set in. Yeah, it's like when your tire gets stuck in a rut, you know you're going to go back into that rut. Anyway, we all have this meeting.

Speaker 2 51:49

I've never heard a player yet go. I consider a perfect brass player because I know the brass instrument is the best. I can always hear something. Jim, I'd like to have done that slightly differently, or greatly differently sometimes, but sometimes it's a matter of taste, but other times I think it's. No, that was a limitation and we all have limitations.

Speaker 2 52:16

So I heard one of our well established players back a few years go up into the high range that you might have for the end of Carnival of Venice or the cadenza in the Gordon Jacob Fantasia goes up to well. It used to go up to a D, now it goes up to a C sharp. That was a correction apparently they made in Gordon's writing. But anyway, up into that range but it was not what I call solid. I mean as far as players point of view.

Speaker 2 52:49

There was no doubt the note was going to come out and it did, but it didn't have that locked in sound. It sounded more like an amplified buzz. I talk about that on one of my tapes that you want to see. I'm old fashioned, one of my videos where, when you really have it, and again the difference in trumpet players between a Doc Severinson and a Maynard Ferguson, maynard had a range that was kind of like this up high, but it was very fluid, but it was you go from this note to this note, kind of this way. Doc would go from here to here to here, like that.

Speaker 1 53:23

Instead of sliding into it.

Speaker 2 53:25

Yes, he'd use more air, and I've learned from myself now if I can get well. Back in college I would have said that the high F is probably about as far as the overtones really mean anything to you, and in fact I had an octave over that, a false settle. I could do with my chops. Just something shifted. I don't know what it was, I can't repeat it today, but I could shift and get up. Actually I can do it.

Speaker 2 53:50

My last note I got was a D-flat concert, so that'd be two octaves above the Gordon Jacob C-sharp. Now, way up in the range can't do that any. Anyway, as I developed more higher range though to where I could actually play on a normal embouchure, I got as far as A-flat without changing much and I learned that there are overtones up there and that is what value push things like that if you're doing it right. So you're using the instrument, not just a megaphone, that's a resonating tube still. Anyway, there's I'll hear that kind of difference in the way somebody plays and, if you don't care, a couple people who played the hot canary on euphonium and they go up under the high register, kind of a mandolin, kind of a sound with it. They wiggle the valves and play the melody and that's going up into the high B-flat, double B-flat area.

Speaker 2 54:48

Well, yeah, I don't care what you do up there, it doesn't matter. But I'm talking about a note that I might use in a national piece of music, be able to go off as part of a canenza perhaps. So what you might hear. Well, they go to soprano, do? They'll get up there and they'll really have a nice pitch and nice tone. And I want to do that. I'm not there yet.

Speaker 1 55:11

I was close. So that makes me curious, and maybe you've experienced this yourself when, in regards to whistling and the overtone series, while you whistle you notice maybe you've noticed how I'm not going to try to ink my lips with my pen here but as you're whistling like up into the higher octaves, you feel like the sub-muscles of your inner lip start to kind of. When you get into the dog whistle range I like to call it as such, I feel a secondary muscle group within my lip system start to really form and I start to kind of think on working that just with the whistle. And then, as it relates to like buzzing on the mouthpiece, I find myself being able to hit those higher pitches with working the whistle. It's really interesting.

Speaker 2 56:31

It resonates in my memory in a way, in my physical memory, with my falsetto range yes, Very well, although I can't whistle my whistle is nothing works I can sort of whistle through my teeth a little bit.

Speaker 1 56:48

I've never been able to do that.

Whistle Technique and Musical Styles

Speaker 2 56:50

So I can't. It's hard to relate for the whistling part, but for the playing part yeah, that was a shift. I was talking about that put me up into that falsetto range it was. I mean, my chops were actually. It wasn't a vocalization, my chops were actually working Right. Something changed to get me up there and I couldn't play up in a scale. I could go up an octave like that, but I couldn't do a scale up there smoothly. That'd be a break at some point. So that's maybe that's what you're talking about. That sound familiar.

Speaker 1 57:18

Yes, and I've been working at it, like in the car rides and working on my glathondos and just buzzing I call them siren calls going from down as low as I can and work the kind of the lowest range and make sure I don't have any breaks in the buzz and my aperture all the way up top. But then when I get up top, if I haven't worked my whistle into that as you would, it makes more sense to call it the falsetto of the whistle, right? So if I haven't worked on that, like the day or day before, I find myself not being able to really hit the top part of my buzzing, kind of the hot air balloon, of my buzzing on the top echelons and going into that, the higher octaves, and I can get pretty high. And this is before I started noticing that whistle consistency, the relationship that I've been kind of toying with in my mind and seeing if that is indeed where the correlation finds itself.

Speaker 2 58:48

Well, that's interesting. I think I'm inspired now to go try some buzzing myself and see if I can. Well, first of all, I think I do have a small break when I buzz, and I don't mean down the low register, I mean somewhere in the middle. I can hear it when I try to buzz a glissop.

Speaker 1 59:05

And they're doing the same thing with the whistle, like I haven't worked on the whistle at all today. Yeah, and that's not going to come out right now as we're doing this video. My chops aren't waiting up. I've drank too much coffee to where it's kind of kind of. I went to IHOP this morning when coffee is not the it's kind of like, on the lines of like Folgers and Maxwell's. You get that woody type of where the moisture wicks out of your mouth.

Speaker 2 59:40

Yeah, it's more acidic.

Speaker 1 59:42

Yeah, yeah, and so, yeah, we're not recording right now are we. Yeah, it's on the order and so this will be part of the podcast and I don't mind, because a lot of people know me as the coffee guy. I mean I put two of my coffees in all the 7-Elevens in the US, so I'm not worried about IHOP coming after me. If they want, I can get them better coffee. I have a few connections.

Speaker 2 1:00:12

I want to take about a 30 second break. I've got to refill my water here. Oh absolutely Go ahead. Go for it. Okay, Now that's about my comfort level. Quite a bit, I think. Awesome, I do drink a lot of water during the course of a day. I get kind of used to it, which is great. I'm going to drink a lot of water. I need to drink a lot of water for things to work the way they're used to work.

Speaker 1 1:01:08

Right, Absolutely agree. I have a curious question for those that are listening on the podcast portion. A few questions. But for those that are listening on the podcast, I'm not going to ask this during the recording, but your book of unaccompanied, your 32 pieces, did you try? Chance? Put in the half step lower version of your. No, I didn't, it was an interesting thought, though I'm not the half step part.

Speaker 2 1:01:44

But I wonder if a song like that would work unaccompanied. There's not a lot of long notes in it but it moves along. A person could almost get away with that. But that did get into the ring a little harder than I was going for in the book. Overall, gotcha the hardest piece in that unaccompanied solo book are not all that hard. A really good high school player could play them. If they had a college person or a professional it could make them sound snappier, kind of like Arnold Levenus. I mean there are kids who play that in high school. If I hear David Childs play it it doesn't sound like a high school player. It's got a whole different sound about it even in these simpler parts of it.

Speaker 2 1:02:29

Before we get to the last variation I try to I don't want to under-push the people In both the song book and in the unaccompanied book I've got some pieces that will let you push a little bit if you're a high school player, in terms of just being able to play it to get the notes out. Then you can work the music into either one of them. After that, of course it would be the idea but also include a lot of pieces that you can almost sight read if you wanted. A range of Well, like Beautiful Dreamer is in the song book. Well, there's no technical challenge in that. If you can sight read any music at all, you can sight read that song. But of course the idea is not playing the notes, the idea is making the music Anyway. So that's the concepts I've gone for. I think I'm getting sentimental over. You would be pushing it slightly outside that. Well, in a trombone book maybe, but in the Iphone book now that's a whole special skill, I think, to get the style right in that.

Speaker 1 1:03:37

It is, and Gail talks about the type of styles of musicality and stuff like that. So I think it really resonates with our whole cohort in developing that musicianship quality and those that are just starting out, even with Euphonium. I think that's going to be one of the most fantastic things that I've realized within our cohort and as Euphonium players and composers, musicians is to see that bedrock of what we would love to see and experience going forward, that search for permanence that we talk about in a way for what we do now and to lay that foundation for those that come after us. Where does that permanence lie with those younger performers now? Is the clues that we leave in stuff like this?

Speaker 2 1:05:01

Yeah, life is not all contained in the Arben book. It's a great book and I will never, ever bad mouth the Arben book. It's my Desert Island book. If I could take one book to a Desert Island music book, it would be that one. It does a lot of things really well and you could entertain yourself for a very long time if you really played all the pages. Grab a whistle, but it doesn't teach you. In fact, I would say never. I like to qualify everything I say, but I can probably say never tell a student to cut off a note with their tongue in legitimate music. However, if you're going to play jazz, you better be able to do that.

Speaker 2 1:05:55

It's a different sound, it's a different style, as Gail might have mentioned. That's perhaps what she was going partly. You need to appreciate that. Anyway, with a ballad style, like a jazzy ballad or a torch song ballad, something like that, it's not the same as playing the last Rose of Summer. It's a different kind of style, a different feel to it. You actually have to bend some rules a little bit to do those things correctly, the way a singer in that style would perform them. I try to.

Speaker 2 1:06:29

For my whole career I've tried to shine a little bit of light on that side of things. It's not just about Carmel Ovenas and Danny Boyd. There's a broader world out there. I don't feel it's as necessary today because our original pieces written for euphonium have expanded so much what they ask of us. The technical range and the style range has greatly increased over what it was back in the 70s when I was first thinking about some of these things. It's so good to realize that there's a well. I put up a video recently on how to do a gliss, like you were trying to whistle how to do a horn. Right now the only piece I can think of that literally called for that was Flo. I think it was the Falcomi piece. Last, there were actually glisses written between them.

Speaker 1 1:07:24

Michael Goodman's newest work that he just finished yesterday or was it earlier. It was either yesterday or today. He put pictures of it on his face. He's actually part of our cohort, if you got a chance to see who all made it. It's called Emotional Spectrum and I'm going to do this real quick. Take a look at your Zoom chat I'm going to. I just downloaded it onto the computer. That's one of the pages.

Speaker 2 1:08:04

Oh yeah, yeah, that looks a little tricky. Yeah, a little tricky, right. It's funny because I'm in the oh shoot. I'll get back to you again. Let's see Back here, I think. Oh, I had to start with the other day. I can't get back to the video screen.

Speaker 1 1:08:25

Yeah, I don't know about Apple products. There we go.

Speaker 2 1:08:29

There we go. Oh, there we go. So one of the Facebook groups I'm in is the Sibelius users group, the Notation Software, and a piece like that comes up pretty often. Can it do that? And well, yes, the finale in Sibelius now and Dory Coe is the new one can actually do things like that. That would have been, you know, finale version one probably didn't allow much for that.

Speaker 1 1:08:55

Or version two. I was on finale 2.0.

Speaker 2 1:08:59

Oh, okay, yeah, Really, yeah, yeah, yeah. My director of the band Coast Guard band, the guy who took over in 75, bought the version one of finale that came on floppy disks, you know, costing $1,000.

Speaker 1 1:09:17

You're talking about the big floppies, not the three and a half disks. No, it's not a floppy disk. Oh, it's a three and a half. Okay.

Speaker 2 1:09:24

Macintosh products. So that was. Macintosh has always had the little three and a half disks, but a lot of them and it was. He went through a lot of pain for the sake of the rest of us, you know, to use all. The pioneers paid a lot of money and suffered a lot of grief just to get the thing working. He wanted to produce parts one night for a band, the range when he had. So he put his yeah, he put his Mac in the closet and just let it run all night and then he went about his business. So it was a different world.

Speaker 1 1:09:57

But anyway, you're talking about the, the Mac. That was like kind of like what we would consider a paperweight nowadays.

Speaker 2 1:10:04

Yeah, yeah, well, an iPad size screen on it, you know, and stuff not that wide.

Speaker 2 1:10:10

And yeah so it was. That was painful, but it's apparently an important topic because I've seen a lot of traffic about it on the Sibelius site and that's the only one of these that are really frequent. But a lot of people are trying to do that now. You know, you're right, it goes around in a circle on a page and things like that, that's. These are concepts that weren't done much in the, the era we were raised with, which was our venue, my place at Mozart, and things like that, and your beginning books anyway and anyway. So it's.

Speaker 2 1:10:42

It is a whole new world now, and the, the glissando, was one that I tried to show people. This is how you do it, and I put up a tip already last year about the particular places in flow where you can do that, and this tip was more general. And then I put a couple of examples at the end of commercial recordings. I didn't put up the old recording of Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White, which I think was Pres Prado's orchestra made one of the biggest versions of it was trumpet solo.

Speaker 2 1:11:12

That starts out Ba da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da.

Exploring Extended Techniques in Music

Speaker 2 1:11:18

So it's like a little mini cadenza with a big band in it. That's really a gliss. But I put up a couple that are. One was over an octave gliss I think that Bert Canford used in Wonderland by Night, just a sort of wow, something like that Shout on the trumpet. It was a half valve deal and another one from Doc Sermonson on a piece where he actually did an octave gliss. It was a pretty darn sound, darn good sounding gliss. I mean it was pretty note sounding as he went up at pitch levels, just tone as he went up and that's the idea.

Speaker 2 1:11:50

So I tried to show people how you learn from pushing the valve. While you sustain the note, you'll feel it start to affect the tone a little bit, and that's when you want to try to move it. You don't want to go more than you have to to distort the tone If you go halfway down. Yeah, you can play a gliss pretty easy, but you have no tone From. Half valve gliss is actually a misnomer. I think it's a quarter valve gliss or something like that.

Speaker 1 1:12:18

I would classify that as a quarter.

Speaker 2 1:12:20

yes, so it's just. These are things that we should know. There's no reason we can't do them. Certainly, if a trumpet player can do them, we can do them. Technically speaking I don't mean artistically there's very little other than the fact that the opponent is larger bore and more conical. That might make it a little harder to get a smooth gliss than on the more cylindrical trumpet. But we can certainly do it and we can do bends obviously very easily and we should do those.

Speaker 2 1:12:50

I'd refer listeners to go find my version of Crazy, the old Patsy Klein hit that was written by Willie Nelson, also reported by him. But it's a country song, soft country ballad, and I tried to put in my version. Listen to Patsy Klein and then listen to me because I tried to do as many of her inflections as I could, including the rhythmic inflection. But again, it's something where it's not just country singers who do this. You'll hear a classic musicians do it as well. But we are never taught that To get to a downbeat late, for example, we're never taught that that's oh, you broke the rule, you did it wrong. Things do it all the time and it's kind of like a suspension, four or three.

Speaker 2 1:13:38

Suspension is about us in theory class Right and the listener for just a minute. You hold their attention because they're waiting for you to do something you haven't done yet. So you attract little many bits of their attention as you go through the song, doing these kind of things. And it's I don't know, in 1978, it would have been the band reported their chamber music album Stolos and Chamber Players. So people who sold with the band were on there and chamber groups were on there the brass quintet on there, the woodwind quintet and the tuba quartet were on there and the flute player did a solo and we were fussy about the recording. So we did a lot of rehearsal and I got to hear a number of times to hear her play the solo and it's the first time I'd noticed before that she bends notes and I thought I know I did. But I came, as I mentioned to you before, I listened to Harry James and Tommy Dorsey when I was growing up, those are the examples I had to listen to, and of course they would.

Speaker 2 1:14:46

But someone who was a flute player for Pete's sake, I mean, they're classically trained and pretty straightforward you would think about such things but she as a vocalist would do. She learned to sort of ease the pitch up into a little bit of your moving to it and stuff and it makes it sound a little more interesting and it draws you with her toward that note as opposed to suddenly hearing the note. And so I talked to her about that and it was very intentional and it involved a little bit of technique but not hard for either a phonium or a flute to do it. But no one ever taught me that. No teacher's ever talked to me about that and I'm not sure teachers today ever do. Do you know of any instances where a teacher would talk about such things?

Speaker 1 1:15:26

Yes, I'm sure a few of the teachers on her cohort even I know Marina Bozelli more than likely teaches about this in Italy. She has all sorts of extended techniques that sides over into the extended techniques, I think. Yeah, and so her what was?

Speaker 2 1:15:51

that. I'm glad to hear that that people are teaching. I just hadn't heard it myself, but I don't see why we wouldn't show people all the tools that they have available.

Speaker 1 1:16:04

See, I don't think the education is there yet. To be honest, with the middle school and even into high school, I think the I don't think we're there yet. Like as far as getting that knowledge base of here's what's possible. Even speaking with one of our cohort composers, dr Don Sondog, and talking to her about her choral works and transcribing them for euphonium and stuff like that, to have more material for the euphonium players to access and be a part of in the rising artists and community, and she's like well, I don't know, I've never heard what the euphonium could do until Travis Scott like and let's see Travis Scott, and it was her time at Hiram College that she was asked to write for euphonium but she didn't know what the capabilities are.

Speaker 1 1:17:17

I think a lot of composers don't know, that are outside of our world, and hence the reason why I love being able to do this, because this brings it into kind of the outer scapes to capture perhaps those intrigues of. Oh well, they talk about this in this episode. David Worden talks about bending pitches here, or tongue pops, or flutter valves, or playing with the third valve, lead pipe, tuning valve removed, like in Edward Nogarala's piece, so many other different techniques even. Wow, my word banged, just went bloop.

Speaker 2 1:18:27

Was this my backward? I do.

Technique Limitations and Musical Concepts Discussion

Speaker 1 1:18:30

Yeah, we're Multiphonics, and talking about multiphonics even that wasit's interesting because I talked to a few others as I even started this project. They're like, yeah, we don't really talk about extended techniques that much. I'm like, well, why not? Well, it's because I can't do them. I'm like, well, that's not. I mean, that provides accountability, sure, but it kind of shortens up the capabilities of potential within a student's mind.

Speaker 2 1:19:13

Yes.

Speaker 1 1:19:16

And.

Speaker 2 1:19:16

I think Go ahead. Well, there are limitations. In some cases the Schoenberg theme of variations calls for flutter tuning and I actually had a student, who was quite a good player, who just couldn't flutter tune.

Speaker 1 1:19:32

Could, there be a course like in Mexican, like Spanish.

Speaker 2 1:19:36

I went that road and they could do that enough. Oh okay, perhaps the way the chops were shaped and maybe he just didn't work on it enough. But he was a hard worker in general and was working out for an audition and obviously that piece was on it and he just couldn't do it. So in any case, it's harder for him, certainly, sure, but it's much harder to accomplish a technique.

Speaker 2 1:19:58

Going back to Doc Severinson again, he does something I hope they never asked us to do, but you know how we flutter tongue. I think the only time I've done that in a piece is when I did it ain't necessarily so on my double belly phonium. I'm using a little bell with my hand over it to wow-wah, oh yeah.

Speaker 1 1:20:19

I remember that video.

Speaker 2 1:20:20

In fact, I just put up a video on my social channels recently. I'm just a short bit of that. I showed, I think, three different techniques that are labeled as.

Speaker 1 1:20:27

I did them.

Speaker 2 1:20:28

Flutter tongue is one of them. I also did a do-da, or a full stop and then open do-da On that one. By the way, I stopped the note with my tongue. I didn't mention that, but I did a tremolo Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh on that phrase. Instead of tongue, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I did a da-ba-da-ba-da my third valve, and it actually came out very nicely. It was very clear distinction between notes, even though I was just holding the note and moving my finger Right.

Speaker 1 1:21:01

So there are things like that that I can do.

Speaker 2 1:21:04

There are things that I probably can't do, and one of them is what Doc Severison can do is growl. So it comes from here, not from here. You can do it a little bit like that. If you want to sound like a dog, he'll use that in the same kind of solo I was just talking about, where you want that nasty sound, but it's more subtle and it doesn't take over the tone quite so much. He can do it at will and go anywhere with that, and I can't do it. It hurts my throat, it literally hurts my throat. And so there's one that I probably would not be able to do or work up to being able to do, I think, not without possibly damaging my voice. So there are probably some limitations. But in the case of where we talked about the partial valve technique, we'll call it for glissando. That's simply a matter of motion that we're already doing. It doesn't involve changing your armature or anything like that. So it's that kind of technique anybody should be able to do. And bending pitches, anyone should be able to do, because we already have to, don't we? Unless we play trombone, we have to bend pitches to play tune a little bit, right. So there's just a matter of going further with that.

Speaker 2 1:22:17

So my colleague in the Coast Guard band, the first, as I mentioned, the band had been an academy band and had mostly local folks. Many of them hadn't been to college, they just played the instrument pretty well and they were in the band. We were doing mostly ceremonies and just weekly concerts for the local people. But when it became a national band then it became more crying. We had auditions and stuff like that that you had to go through.

Speaker 2 1:22:46

Dennis Winter came in. He was from Ohio and his teacher there, dennis, by the way, was playing a con constellation. When he came in and had the prettiest sound I'd ever heard. Just pretty, I don't know how else to describe it. This is musical flow as vibrato and everything else combined, just like a pretty sound, and he had a good core tone. He later got a Wilson and again just his basic tone was so good on the horn. It didn't matter which horn it was, what was under there you could hear was very good. His teacher had taught him for a whole semester. He played with his tuning slide, pushed all the way in for the entire semester and the idea was he wanted the teacher, wanted the student to find the lower edge of the note where the tone is different. So if you push sharp, you know, and raise the pitch but you add a little more intensity to the sound. He wanted to have him pull the other way to give a more relaxed quality to the sound. Now I don't know if that's a standard. I've never heard of that technique as a teaching tool. But in Dennis's case, for whatever reason, then maybe it was only Dennis he used that on because he really definitely needed different students, depending on how things work when you tried it once in a lesson. But it worked for him and gave him this great relaxed sound when he played and beautiful tone. And so there are.

Speaker 2 1:24:09

It's so hard for us many times to think outside the box that we were raised in right. I grew up in a box, we all did, and Dennis his box had a different side to it than mine did. So that taught me an interesting concept and I have actually been working with that, not to that extreme, but to get out of the habit of I'd rather play sharp than out of tune, out of that habit. So I'm pushing my slide in now more because I learned over the years that as I went further and further into my practice session after the horn was warmed up, I do the typical warmup stuff. The horns already now at a good temperature, so any pitch variation isn't because the horns cold and moving to warm, and yet I'll get higher and higher over the course of the practice session.

Speaker 2 1:25:08

I watch my training more and more on the sharp side of the tuner, so of course I'll pull my slide more as the first reaction. Now if I'm pushing here to make the sharpness and pulling my slide out to compensate for it, I'm really making myself work a lot harder and I'm way more likely to clam a note because I'm now, instead of playing in the center of the note, I'm pushing up here where I can slip off over this edge. So I'm using a variation of that technique to train myself not to play underpitch at all but just to play at the pitch, even though I've got the horn set to a particular, either higher, like pushed in further, or what I'll do on a moderate day, the more average day is to get the horn well warmed up, tune it and then not move the slide higher or lower, just play it in tune with the horn set that way, because it probably isn't the horn changing as I get sharper over the session. Not maybe to some extent, but I don't. My tendencies, my tendencies are to play sharp.

Speaker 1 1:26:16

So maybe, as we go back into that kind of folds, my mind into thinking, when you're talking about how you have a lip anchor, basically as you push into your embouchure, maybe the muscle fatigue somewhere inside your embouchure starts to like one of the muscles starts to kind of I don't know, not necessarily weakened, but relaxed would be the way I'd think of it and you end up pushing a little bit deeper and moving the pitch sharper by pushing in further because you're more relaxed.

Speaker 2 1:27:10

I'm not sure I'd use those same words, but I think you're tickling at the right concept. Probably is at least one thing that could be happening and I look at it from the other side that I don't think it is the condition of my chops that's causing me to play higher over time. I think it's where my ear wants to pull them. My ear is pulling them up there. It's going to tire me out quicker too. That's the other drawback of doing that. Even if you get a norplane sharp, it tires you out quicker. It's a push for the comfort zone is of the horn. When I do my tuning graphs that I've got on my website.

Speaker 2 1:27:50

I was aware of that tendency way back then. I started these in gosh in the 80s sometime no, actually about 1980, because I took tuning graphs with me when I first went to the Vessin factory. That was my first chance to do that. I went over for the Upholne player of the year award. I had a host who was really gracious and took me anywhere I wanted to go.

Speaker 2 1:28:10

One of the places I wanted to go was to Edgeware and talk to the folks there and say you know, a lot of us really love these horns, but they play so sharp on the sixth partial. I said, now we've got competition now in the States in any way. The Wilson is becoming very popular. It doesn't play so sharp up there and that's really hurting the sales of Vessin. I said, can we do something about it? Well, they were largely unaware of it. It seemed like because the British players have a different style of playing and, for whatever reason, the horns were always made that way and people liked them when they played them. And the question learned to play the horn in tune, but anyway. So I had tuning graphs with them. I could show them where the tendencies were, and that story can go off into a different tangent, the tangent I want right now.

Understanding Intonation and Horn Performance

Speaker 2 1:28:57

I would say that I started doing graphs way back then and then, as I started comparing brands, going to what we now call an ITEC, which before was a P-U-B-A symposium. I want to try X brand of horn and I'd like to compare it to the other horns around for pitch on different notes. So I learned at that point to develop the technique I've got now. When I do this, which is I'll Well, first of all I generally don't just go up the scale and check each note. I bounce around a lot so I want to throw my ear off constantly. So I'm not expecting a particular pitch necessarily, even though I've got some concepts I can't get rid of. But in order to further destroy the concept of what? Well, back on the Besson again.

Speaker 2 1:29:46

E-flat with first file was so sharp. 1 and 3 made it in tune but changed the tone a little bit. So I tried to learn to play it in tune with my chops. So I pulled the tuning slide on the first valve, even though that would mess up the rest of the horn. But just get used to playing like bom ba, e-flat, e-flat and learn what it felt like and sounded like to play it when it was in tune, then put the slide back and see if I could do that just with my chops. So as I was doing that, I realized when I lip it down it changes the tone.

Speaker 2 1:30:18

Right, You're not playing here where the horn wants to play it, You're not pushing it down here and it changes the tone. So that concept led me to. As I'm now trying to test intonation on horns. I'll play a note and I'll move the pitch up and down. If anybody's listening to me to show them, they'll probably think I'm trying to make fun of the Besson or whatever. I'm trying out of the time. But I'm not. I'm just. I'm just I'm destroying what my ear expects to hear and what my chops expect to feel. So I'll move it going up and down like this, and I'll both listen to where the center sounds, like it actually is where the tone is purest as I do this, and I'll try to feel that same thing here. Well, the horn really feels like I've landed here now, no matter where that is. This way I found the center of that note and so I feel like when I do that, then I'm playing what the horn wants to play on that pitch and I can graph it at that point, and that's been pretty dependable.

Speaker 2 1:31:18

I did a recent test where I did a horn a brand I've never seen before or tried before. It was one of the stencil instruments and I came up with a graph and I looked at it compared to one I tried a few years ago that was based on the same design. You know, there were, at least for a while, there were two branches of the stencils. There was a branch that called the AMAHA 642 probably, or maybe 641, and the branch that called the Besson sovereign idea. Well, this was then the Besson line, and while the differences were of slightly greater magnitude, they were almost exactly the same direction. So the graph just followed like this from that older test that I did. So it's been pretty dependable and when I've had foreign users turn in their own graphs, well, we might disagree on how sharp or how flat it is.

Speaker 2 1:32:10

On a note, the graphs almost always follow the same direction, have the same basic shape that mine do. So I feel like I've got a pretty good system for doing this, and that's part of the whole, my whole understanding of tone and why they did this with Dennis Winter. Had him purposely played on here, it does change the tone a little bit and I don't I would no longer want to play here than I should be playing up here. I want to play here in terms of pitch. That's another pitch, that's another one of the horn and that's an argument for triggers. Unfortunately, I ended my left wrist years and years ago practicing too hard Back when I had the sovereign. Very heavy. British sovereigns were quite heavy.

Speaker 1 1:32:54

Yeah, I have one. Yeah, and the reach around 30, 70s right.

Speaker 2 1:32:58

Yeah, the reach. Well, this is us. This was about the middle 80s that I was doing this with the Horn of Povey made in 1980. And I had a very wide reach for your left hand around the third valve, two-wing to the fourth valve. I was practicing my own arrangement which is what was really frustrating.

Speaker 2 1:33:17

I hurt myself on this. I arranged a Mendelssohn piece for piano, originally called the Spinning Song. I got the idea from hearing a xylophone soloist do it when I was over in Britain in 1980. He was soloing in front of the brass bands and it's all 16th notes practically and the whole thing. But it lies low and goes down to the fourth valve, not I shouldn't say the low register, but it goes down to where you use the fourth valve for low C and B and so on and a couple of alternate fingerings involved.

Speaker 2 1:33:52

The fourth valve, to make arpeggios easier, Very seldom goes up above the staff in treble clef or even up to the top of the staff. So it wasn't hard on the chops, it was hard on the fingers and this finger here working the fourth valve and the hand at this angle. You know, holding the horn as I'm trying to move wasn't ideal ergonomically and so I hurt my wrist doing that, because normally I have this what I call my fuse. My fuse is my chops getting tired. They almost invariably get tired before my fingers do. So I take a rest, you know, rest the chops, take a break, then come back to it and of course my hands rest at the same time.

Speaker 2 1:34:30

Well, that didn't happen this time. I could keep going and going and going and erect my wrist Anyway. So that makes it especially hard for me to play a trigger. Now I had one on my Sterling, and it was good to have it, because then I couldn't be shooting here on the horn Instead of having to pull a note down or up. Well, it shouldn't say up, because a trigger is not going to move the pitch up, it only hears the pitch down. So anyway, so now I'm another reason I like the Adams is that.

Speaker 2 1:34:59

I don't feel I need a trigger. It would be handy sometimes, but not nearly handy enough to justify the weight and the vulnerability. So if you have a trigger, it's one more thing that can go wrong. It's probably the most delicate part of the instrument actually at that point. Now, if you take a well, what would be a modern day sovereign, let's say so I'm not talking about Adams necessarily, but the sovereigns are made really well.

Speaker 2 1:35:24

The certain prestigious are made for triggers. I mean they're intended to have a trigger when the horn was designed, I think way back when. So if you took the trigger, if you made one without the trigger I meant for what I said the most vulnerable part of that horn would be you might break off the fourth valve lock if you were a chairless where you might pull a part or something. But I mean the horn's pretty darn sturdy. The funny is it's really compact and designed another long slide. So you know, like the drum bone does, but the trick doesn't.

Speaker 2 1:35:58

Itself is fragile, so it's kind of a point of failure that I just assume not to have. So anyway, that's a long story about why I don't like to use a trigger. So I'm having to compromise a little bit. But in the case of the Adams, most of the horns notes that I'd want to use a trigger for are on the wrong side to use. They're slightly flat, so trigger's not going to help me. And where it does, occasionally on the high F, I could use a trigger a little bit, but I've learned again over time that it's really. This is what's making me sharp more than anything these days.

Speaker 2 1:36:36

Maybe because I played it so long on the Besson and that was my first real professional quality horn. I used to pull out of years and it kind of got used to how it sounds up there. I'm not sure, or it's just, I like playing sharp, whatever, but I can play a high F, an upper F I shouldn't say not the high one, but an upper F on my horn. That's quite well in tune if I'm just trying notes out, but usually in the context of music, suddenly I'm playing it sharp. Now horn didn't change, you know, between a few minutes ago and now. So I'm fighting that tendency within myself and I hope that the younger students now coming up we have horns that are generally better in tune now than they were before. Oh, absolutely. We have horns that respond better by far than they did before. So I'm hoping that the younger generations coming along, including you, and that, since I'm an old guy, have had better horns to deal with and will have fewer of these issues. They won't have fought bizarre tendencies and pitch quite so much. They won't have fought uneven response from the instrument quite so much, so their chops are able to work more naturally, just the way you want them to.

Speaker 2 1:37:55

My, I think, my first year in high school band, which was 10th grade. Back then we didn't have a middle school concept yet. Wendy Gannett was the first euphonium player in the band and she had been well, she still was a viola player primarily. She picked up the euphonium two years before that and was good enough to play first chair on a very good band and I listened to her play. It was a piece called solo soli and the concept of the piece was you'd different instruments in the band, you'd have a solo by them for eight or 16 bars, something like that, and then the whole section would play the same thing. Then you go to a different section. So it was kind of an interesting demonstration piece of nothing else.

Speaker 2 1:38:44

Well, she played that and had it on her, a piece of note, and once in rehearsal she missed the top note. She flipped it A clam would call it, where you get the upper partial first, and I was struck by how nice it sounded. I don't mean to sound it right, but it just sounded like no big deal. She just hit the note where if I had done it it would have sounded more awkward, and I realized as I listened to her more, she's everything she's playing was just relaxed.

Speaker 2 1:39:11

She, I guess coming from the viola, you know what pitch she should sound like, and she just played the horn and expected it to sound the same way and, whatever reason, she grew up with these old American style euphoniums, the same ones I grew up with in the brass world, and I've been playing them longer, but she had not developed a sense of fighting instruments so much. She figured out how to to have a cooperate with her and I think I was led into some bad habits by the instruments and some by upbringing and teaching, and not not that they taught me to do it, but what they didn't teach me to do, perhaps, or my own concepts Listen to so many trumpet players, you know not, not to that kind of thing, perhaps, but anyway, you know, I'm.

Speaker 1 1:39:59

I'm jumping. That makes me think of your story. We kind of mentioned it right after you grab some water is maybe the sharpness comes from playing a quarter, a quarter. Step down on that one piece.

Speaker 2 1:40:17

It was a half step, a whole half step. Okay, yeah, it's hard to say. I, you know my record player was not turning the right speed for a lot of years in there, so I wasn't hearing true pitches on any record. Now, some of these records I bought a replacement for one. I wore out back then A Dixieland, semi Dixieland group called Red Nichols and the Five Pennies and he was a famous group back in the day. There was even a movie about him called the Five Pennies. That started Danny Kay and he's about his life as a trumpet player, supposedly a cornered player. Anyway, I wore that thing out. It was a live performance at Marine Land of the Pacific, which isn't even there anymore, and it was a supper club type performance and I loved it and the record was unplayable and I went to transfer to digital. So I found one on eBay and bought it. But so there's a record. I listened so much I wore it out and I know my record player was turning roughly a half step slow you know that whole time.

Speaker 2 1:41:21

And I, yeah, I had never thought about that. Maybe it did just something kind of quirky to me I wasn't aware of. Now I record player. So I've still got a turntable and the last several that I've had over a few decades I've all had a little strobe attached to them and a little molded in dents on the turntable you could tell is it turning fast or slow, you know. So you can. You're sure you're accurate now. But I've got one that's direct driving quartz lock. So it's got a quartz, the same thing a tumor uses to know the number of frequencies that's vibrating Anyway. So nowadays again your generation, perhaps certainly younger folks coming up, aren't doing what that's when you listen to an MP3 file off the internet.

Speaker 2 1:42:08

it's going to be the right pitch.

Speaker 1 1:42:10

You know it may not be great tonality if they didn't use a high enough bit rate on it, but the pitch will be right, or at least the board of support of that it'll be right at the the one, or rather 100%, whereas if they were to speed up the file according to like your age group and such and like on audio books, you can speed it up to like one in. Sometimes I listen to things at 200%. Just because it's been like like for certain books that I've listened to and I want to kind of refresh myself, I'll listen to it at like 200% times. So it's I can get the core concepts of what I wanted to at an exorbitant amount of speed. I mean it also trains my ear training and in my awareness.

Speaker 2 1:43:14

Yes, to speak up on those notes too, but it doesn't change the pitch of the voice, right it does.

Speaker 1 1:43:21

No, it does. Yeah it sure does.

Speaker 2 1:43:24

Because digital tools now will let you speed things up, temple wise, without raising the pitch.

Speaker 1 1:43:31

Not on mine, okay.

Speaker 2 1:43:34

Well, if you have audacity as an editing tool, you can do that.

Speaker 1 1:43:38

Now on a player?

Speaker 2 1:43:38

I'm not sure if they can do that.

Speaker 1 1:43:40

Not like on Audible, like for books? Yeah, it's, it raises the pitch. It sounds like they're on helium Interesting.

Speaker 2 1:43:48

And it may be a necessity if you, if you, want to go that fast, because at some point if you just speed it up without raising the pitch, it sounds funky. It doesn't work anymore. I used to have that old tape recorder back on the day I may have mentioned that in the last thing and it had three. Well, I had two speeds, at least on that one. Later I had one that had three speeds, but so it was meant to operate at seven and a half inches per second and they had a three and three quarter available to save tape and you'd obviously want to have it set to the same speed. You recorded that one. I didn't play something back, but I learned if I recorded my practice at three and three quarter and played it back at seven and a half, it sounded almost like a trumpet with a lot of technique.

Speaker 1 1:44:29

So because it moved me up exactly an octave and doubled the speed.

Speaker 2 1:44:34

So I I just tried a couple of times to record something like Carnival of Venice at half speed. Oh boy, pretty good clip, and it's not not like the trumpet player with very clean technique, but um and they say that Natalie, uh, tends to do that with her Instagram recordings.

Speaker 1 1:44:52

Natalie Colgrove yeah, yeah, I, I, I find myself listening to that.

Speaker 2 1:44:58

I'm like, yeah, no, it's, it's fun Because I mean, I think I probably did a couple of those where an actual trumpet player could not have done what the recording was doing, but it sounded enough like a trumpet to sort of simulate that what it would sound like if they could, sort of thing was it was fun.

Speaker 1 1:45:20

That's cool, alrighty. So I think we're going to step into our actual recording video version. Uh, would you like a refresher on your water?

Speaker 2 1:45:29

Let me get another refill. Yeah, we'll be right back. I think I'm going to do the same, okay, yeah. Okay, I am back. Awesome, I should have brought some warm water up with me in my insulated mug. That would have been better. Warm water tends to soothe your throat, not just lubricates it, but relaxes it more too. Where the cold water tends to tighten things up a little bit, it sure does.

Speaker 1 1:47:32

It feels good though it does. We're going down here in Texas. We just had one of our pretty decent rainfall for this year for us, where it rained like I don't know four or five hours. We hadn't had rain all summer for like four or five months straight, whereas it's been like yesterday it was pushing 100, today it's maybe pushing 80.

Speaker 2 1:48:04

With all but from 80 to 60 year.

Speaker 1 1:48:07

Yeah, we're about to hit 69, 72-ish on Saturday for a high.

Speaker 2 1:48:16

That'll be nice. Yes, I know.

Speaker 1 1:48:18

Yeah, especially for the marching competitions.

Speaker 2 1:48:22

Oh yes, Awesome. I can imagine some of those things in 100 degree temperatures. That would just be a killer, maybe literally.

Speaker 1 1:48:30

It was, I think it was two weeks ago. We had our the first marching competitions of the season, which BOA was hosting Bands of America, and they actually adapted their schedule here in Texas, especially from 15 down to 12 minutes for shows, and it shortened the time period where pre-limbs was going to finish by like two 30-ish and finals weren't till after 7 pm. I mean the temperatures two weeks ago they were about 108 here. Yeah, it was ridiculous.

Speaker 2 1:49:21

We saw almost a touch of that when they were down in Tempe for the ITEC. It had gotten over 100, but it's like 102 or so it wasn't 108 starting to sound serious. That's seriously.

Speaker 1 1:49:33

Well, in Tucson it's more dry heat than the humid heat.

Speaker 2 1:49:38

Yes, yeah, definitely that.

Speaker 1 1:49:40

Yeah, I miss. When I went to El Paso, I was thankful for that dry heat. It's certainly much different than like hearing Central Texas, where you know there's. What we had faced all summer long was something called the Omega system, where we had this high pressure system blocking all the storms from both east and west coast. Yeah, and it was miserable. It was very, very hot.

Speaker 2 1:50:20

Yeah, cool, and the humidity makes it seem worse than it is.

Speaker 1 1:50:26

It is. It's like at one point we were having it was 108 outside for a high, but the humidity it was 117. Wow, yeah, oh, that's really nothing. We were in Iraq when we were down range. We were seeing temperatures in the shade near over 140. Oh, it was miserable, but I mean we were. It is what it is. It was hot out there.

Speaker 2 1:51:09

I think those little ovens, the easy bake ovens they used to sell, you know that would actually cook something in about an hour. They probably didn't get that hot.

Speaker 1 1:51:17

So what I would, what a lot of us would do, is like when we got our care packages, like one of my in-laws sent a can of the chicken, a la king in a can, and I was set that on the roof on the outside and it'd be done. That big can would be done in a couple of hours.

Speaker 2 1:51:41

Yeah, it would be boiling inside. I could imagine yeah.

Speaker 1 1:51:46

It was crazy. Okay, so I think we're going to, like I said, jump in. I'm curious, you brought in the name Wendy.

Speaker 1 1:51:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah, during your 10th grade years, yeah, yeah, and for that that will be our panel, okay, while we and that's beginning high school you said yes, okay, I think I'd like to start there, okay, and see where the kind of the 15 minutes rolls 15, 20 minutes, see how far we get, and then do a post-show and then go for another one later. Okay, and, by the way, I'd love to do a. I've started to record videos of just a singular sonata or a solo or a book, so I'd like to get an actual video recording of you talking about your 32 unaccompanied works and then your other, your the International Songs for Unifonium, the Seven Nation book with Simeron Talk about that and then other works and stuff like that, as time permits.

Speaker 2 1:53:18

Okay, so in the case of both those books, I think I have already YouTube recordings for almost all the songs, if not all the songs, so we could just do the talk part about them. That's perfect.

Speaker 1 1:53:31

That's exactly what I want.

Speaker 2 1:53:33

Okay, good.

Speaker 1 1:53:34

Yeah, I don't go into playing any of them or having anyone play it. It's just the reasons why what to expect, what to hear, kind of the inspirations and all that good stuff.

Speaker 2 1:53:50

Sounds fair.

High School Euphonium Experience and Influences

Speaker 1 1:53:51

Awesome. Alrighty, here we go, recording in progress. Welcome back everyone. I'm your host, nikolas Hoftarvanheide, and we have back in our midst David Worden for a second in series in the Living History series. Welcome back.

Speaker 2 1:54:08

Thank you, I'm glad to be back.

Speaker 1 1:54:10

Outstanding Well, as we were covering an amazing discussion before this recording took place on the podcast version roughly around an hour and a half of really amazing content regarding extended techniques, bending, even clamming, different notes and all sorts of really awesome stuff about lip structures, embouchures and whatnot. So find the link below on wwwinternationalyphoniumcom. David-werden and I'll leave the link below for that and all the information regarding his channels and such can be found, especially at the end of this video. I'll leave a link to his channel either here or here, so you can check all the amazing content he's released. So to come back into the second in series, we're going to start off with high school, which started for him at grade 10.

Speaker 2 1:55:24

Right, we didn't have the middle school concept back then. It's not a known thing. So my first high school year was grade 10, as you mentioned, that was also when I finally got a four valve instrument. My parents did manage to buy on time a King four valve instrument and I knew a little about what the fourth valve did, but not everything. But it was a better horn than I had. I had a con director before that, which was a three valve student line of cons. A nice horn by most measures, I think. But the King was just a little better, a little more robust sound, more sound out of it. It's a louder sound, if you want it to, and of course it had the four valves. So my oh, I can't think what the piece was. It was a Wagner piece, I think. At one of the old transcriptions that we played.

Speaker 2 1:56:16

My high school band did some fairly aggressive music and this particular piece I remember there was a passage that started somewhere around a low F concert. So I was going to use my fourth valve for that, of course, and was four valves here. We didn't have a three and one in the American instruments, so I had the four valve down and then fourth valve and then it went below that a few notes. So I did what I thought was logical I used the normal fingerings for an octave higher. With those notes and without knowing it, I stumbled face first into a limitation of a non-complacating euphonium, because I practiced it and tried to make it sound right. And it didn't. Because of course by the time you get down, which would be a whole step, it's really more like a half step when you have a non-complacating instrument using the standard fingerings. So I decided no, I just can't do that, it sounds bad. So I went back to playing it in the optional normal octave and the first rehearsal my band director yelled at me about this You've got that four valve instrument, why don't you use it? I would try it, but the notes don't sound right. And unfortunately he didn't know why. I mean, he did not offer a suggestion or anything and the compensating system was not why. The knownness was in the 60s. So yes, they were present in America in a few places, but not in typical high schools in the Midwest, so that was an unknown thing. So I finally just sort of had to fake it and placate him. For the time being I never did understand that until I got into college what was going on with the compensating system, but otherwise it was quite a good year for me.

Speaker 2 1:57:56

I was now around some really good players. I was the youngest person in the band then. I was at the lowest level of grade. I was sharing players who were more experienced. That was a good teaching thing. I mentioned previously that I had not had private lessons with anybody ever. We got good lessons in the band program. We got a lesson every week. They were short, perhaps 10 or 15 minutes, but we had some consultation. And in junior high school I had for two years I had a person who was a trombone player so he understood pretty well. And the next year, my ninth grade year, we were in a different town temporarily and the teacher there was a piano player and flute player and yet she taught me quite well. So I had a good foundation. Now going into high school, my band director was a trumpet player originally, so again, a good understanding of breath. So we worked out of the Arbor book and that was very helpful to me. It helped me improve technique and a little bit about musicality. But I still didn't have some concepts real clear. So having the better players in the group helped me. Well now we were talking about offline.

Speaker 2 1:59:08

Previously, before we started the recording. Here was Wendy Gannett, and she came from a musical family. She was a viola player and quite a good one, but she wanted to play in the band as well. So she took up euphonium about two years before this and by the time I got there she was already playing first chair because she was so good on it, and that was probably the first time I heard somebody who sounded so relaxed when she played. I had more intensity I won't say tension, because it wasn't. I wasn't feeling tense, but I was thinking intense as far as sound. Wendy, of course, as a string player, didn't think that way, and she also seemed to be very comfortable with what the horn wanted to do. She played in a more cooperative fashion. I played in a more forceful fashion, I'll say so. She played this piece and had a solo in it, a narpagio, up in the semi-high register, perhaps to a G or an A-flat concert, and in one of the rehearsals she clammed the top note. I never heard her miss a note before that, but she did the normal via, you know, the harmonic above it first. And what struck me was. It sounded nice. If I'd done it it would have sounded awkward. It sounded wrong. I mean she didn't mean to do it, obviously, but it didn't have any brashness about it because she was playing a more relaxed manner overall, which was just an interesting thing to hear, a different concept than I had had before In this year, probably because I wasn't studying privately, I suppose I didn't know about things like music camps.

Speaker 2 2:00:52

So I'd heard about Allstate, didn't really understand what it was and the band record did not suggest I try out for it. So I didn't try out until my sophomore year I'm sorry, my junior year. So I didn't go to Allstate that year. I probably played well enough that I would have, and then I would have heard even better players there and been in a better band overall. But our band was quite good and, as I said, we played with music so I got good instruction there. I believe the soloist we had, as I guess Artists Sass that year, was I can't think of his name.

Speaker 2 2:01:26

I'm not sure I knew it back then. I didn't, in fact, but he had been a trumpet soloist with the Navy band and was now retired and doing this kind of thing. He was quite good. He played Concert A2 by Geddy Ke, which is a piece that I know. Now you really should be able to double tongue. I couldn't. Back then I could sing double tongue pretty fast so I tried to play those fast passages. Got a little frustrated because I couldn't play as fast as he did, but I still learned the music and loved playing it and I think for a solo that year. I can't remember what I played but we were assigned pretty hard solos again, good education along the way.

Speaker 2 2:02:04

Coming up to my junior year. I was more used to the instrument by that time and comfortable with it. I still didn't understand the low register but in typical man music you didn't go down into that register with a compensating system when it helps you. And our guest artist that year was Harold Bratch. That was an opener because Harold was euphonium solos with a Navy band for 20 years and was now out doing it in a civilian life. He was a real live euphonium player playing on a Bussin or a Buzian hawks, probably euphonium.

Speaker 2 2:02:37

First time I heard that as well, and it changed my whole concept of sound. I didn't know what a euphonium should sound like exactly. I mean it sounded like a pretty tone, trombone sort of. But when Harold played it it sounded quite different. So I did adapt my tone a little bit to sound more like him. I didn't have the same horn or mouthpiece but I could do something with my tone to sound a little darker and deeper.

Speaker 2 2:03:02

That was quite helpful and I played for my solo that year Hungarian Melodies, which is what he played as one of the pieces with our band. So again I could hear his recording. That was on his LP record that we had before he even came and I tried to emulate that wherever I could and that was great experience. I heard how he interpreted the music, how he played the cadenzas and so on, which is very helpful for somebody. I consider myself a young player. Still at that point I didn't have a lot of depth of experience or musicality to understand how to assemble a cadenza in the most agreeable way for the listener. But Harold helped me a lot with that and he was a nice guy, we talked to him, we even got a publicity shot in the paper with Harold and me and the first euphonium from the other band that played with us.

Speaker 2 2:03:53

We had two high schools in town and it looked like we were playing a trio while we were at Horned Ashley. It was just a pose, but we had a good time talking with him and Harold Brash taught me that he never used valvoil, he simply spit on his valse, which was interesting. That was advice I chose not to follow. I'm guessing the most intimate repair people would not encourage that today as well. But hey, it was a good year for me and it was my first year in all state. So I did get to go then and hear those other players and think, wow, list of that, they're quite good. And then press with the other sections as well.

Speaker 2 2:04:34

We played this enormous band. We did the Morton Gould Dixie arrangement which if you ever played it starts off with a whole clarinet section playing the melody down low and it was a magnificent sound with gazillion clarinet players playing it very well All in unison. It was remarkable. So that was also a good experience for me musically. Then into my senior year, we had another treat for a soloist. Doc Severinson came to play with us.

Speaker 1 2:05:07

And that's awesome.

Speaker 2 2:05:09

And when my band director introduced us he played a record that Doc had out of the time and I'd never heard a trumpet player play like that. I had records at the time of Harry James, big band trumpet player, who had a rather you might call it a schmaltz sound these days, sort of a loose pitch, nothing played out of tune but just a very bendy kind of a pitch and a lot of vibrato. But really quite a player, quite a remarkable player, and one that I found out in college was the idol of our trumpet professor there. He really liked how Harry James played. So I've heard him and I've heard Al Hurt who recorded at the time, but again without demonstrating a great tone. He had a ton of technique but not a great tone, not a great amount of sensitivity in certain passages. Doc Severinson, on the other hand, showed me he had all these things. He had a great tone, great range, magnificent power and really good control. So we heard him play. Oh gosh, I can't think. Right now I have the program somewhere. I know I played Laverne and Delamac Arena, a piece. I'd heard Ben Desplay in a totally different style and that was real eye-opener. Anyway, hearing him play, and that year as well.

Speaker 2 2:06:22

I was first chair in Allstate, which was a good experience for me. It put me under a little more pressure than just being first chair in the high school band, but I liked that kind of pressure. I was probably the only place in my life where I was really confident was in my playing. I was not terribly good at sports. I had reasonable physical strength and so on and reasonable speed, but just never had done much with it. So I had no confidence there. But I had pretty good confidence about my playing so I felt good about that. That year I think, I played sounds from the Riviera with a solo which was quite difficult. So most of the high school playing was a good experience.

Speaker 2 2:07:04

The one bad experience it was probably my junior year was state contest and I went and I had a piece prepared and I knew it well. It went well with the pianist and we got there and we had a little warm-up room we used with a piano and she gave me the B flat and I tried to play that in tune and then try to play an F in tune. I'd moved my slide for one but that didn't work for the other one. Then I'd never had that happen before. I didn't know what was going on. We never figured out what it was. We'd had to go out and play and for the first time at contests I'd done them since junior high school I got the equivalent of a C grade for playing a piece. That was pretty hard, probably just because I could play the technique. But my pitch was awful and I knew it. I just couldn't fix it.

Speaker 2 2:07:57

So it bothered me when I went off stage, so to speak, and went back to the warm-up room, which was a physics lab, and I got the impression there was something stuck in my horn perhaps. So I took a long rubber hose I had on one of the fixtures in the physics table and son of a gun my valve oil was stuck down there. It was a long bottle of valve oil that had stuck just around the crook. It had fallen into the bell when I was carrying a horn and it slid around the crook just enough. You couldn't see it from the bell end, but dramatically affected how the horn sounded. So I got that out and my accompanist was great about it. She helped me chase down the judge. He let me play again, but by that time we'd run all over these hallways and I hadn't even warmed up again when I found this. So we went back and I played. I got a B equivalent or a B plus or something of that time around. So that was an interesting experience. I think it was the first time an instrument let me down. I thought it was the instrument. It was a good life lesson anyway, and probably had to do with the fact that I like to swing the case as I was walking along and I was happy to go lucky, seemingly anyway, just fooling around basically and the valve oil was loose in the case and it found its way into the bell. So maybe there's a lesson in there for some of you. I'm not sure. But in any case I take such things a little more seriously right now and take better care of my horn.

Speaker 2 2:09:28

The idea I had by my senior year, when I had to start thinking about college, was that I wanted to be a band director. I like my band directors. I got along with them pretty well. The one I had in high school was much more rough than any that I've had before, but he definitely was warmhearted for his players and he was a great band director and thought me a lot and I tried his patience one day Was teaching myself to play trombone and practicing. I'm getting sentimental over you, over and, over and over in the practice room and he finally said David, for God's sake, please play something else for a while. So I tried his patience then and one other time when we were fooling around in rehearsal and shouldn't have been. But overall it was a great experience.

Speaker 2 2:10:19

And later in life, when his life had died.

Speaker 2 2:10:24

My ninth grade band director was a single woman and they got married at some point later and so my two favorite band directors actually at that point ended up being a married couple and that was just kind of fun to hear about, anyway. So I thought I wanted to be a band director and I went into college, into that kind of a program, to the University of Iowa and again my family was not wealthy. The university that was quite reasonable for in-state tuition. My father had died when I was in ninth grade and I got some Social Security from a college education from him. Basically that was very handy to have as well, so that helped me pay for my college. I came out with only a small loan at the end of it all and I got there and the college loaned me a Besson to use. So that was my first experience then with a real professional and I noticed right away that there was some inclination difficulties on how to get used to things that were different, certainly, than the cane that I played. I held on to the cane, though I used it for marching band for the three years I was in marching band. It was perfect for that. I never did enjoy marching with a Besson and tried to avoid it whenever possible. If you'll see pictures of me later from my Coast Guard time when I did parades. You'll see that I was using a three-valve king with an upright bell, the American-style horn with the vowels in front, because it was so much easier to carry and manage on the march than the Besson, which was totally awkward as a marching instrument.

Speaker 2 2:11:59

Anyway, so there I was at the University of Iowa and once again surrounded by some other good players, especially until the first few months that year the band had worked with the State Department and they were doing a tour of Russia and also some of Europe, but some of the rest of Europe, I should say. But Russia was a big highlight because American groups didn't go over there very often. So that was cool and I had to audition to get into that band and I made it. I was the third player, third chair on the band out of five and the two players who were above me were both grad students who'd come back specifically to take their master's programs this year because of that opportunity for that great trip. So for a while I was in learning heaven, basically by listening to these great players, and our band director was Fred Ebb. He was at the time. He was, I guess, kind of a legend in the Midwest. I didn't realize at the time but he was and he was very interesting, especially getting off the more mature band like that when you're in you've got grad students and college students in the band. There were certain times where he wanted a solo passage to sound a certain way and he'd actually try out the whole section playing it. So in our section he went right down the line.

Speaker 2 2:13:19

In this one it was in a modern piece. Solo had a lot of expression, a lot of large dynamic changes not my forte at the time, but I heard the first player do it it was wonderful. Or the second player do it, it was wonderful, I did it okay, and then the other two did it. He chose the second player to actually do the solo and that happened once from the point of that section as well. It was an interesting concept, one that I have never seen since, certainly not in service bands. That type of thing is not done there typically, probably because it might create some embarrassing moments that would not be appreciated for long term happiness of your players. But the first-year player who was there had been in the Army Band, he had studied with Leonard Falcone and Harold Brash, and he was an amazing trombone player and an amazing euphonian player and I learned so much just by listening to him.

Speaker 2 2:14:13

We had an abandoned program the Holst Second Suite for the tour. So during the rehearsals I got to hear him play that solo and I thought, my gosh, why is he playing so loud? Because I had not been exposed to that level of playing. Now, around that time I had to drop out of the band because I couldn't afford the trip that was going to cost us money. I didn't have, so I stayed behind in the leftover band, so to speak, and had some good experiences there as well.

Speaker 2 2:14:43

But the band came back then from the tour and did a concert at their home base and I got to go hear that and the Holst Second Suite was on that concert and so I went out in the audience. Then I got to hear Dick Butler was the guy's name play that solo and I thought, oh, that's why he did that. He plays so loud. It didn't sound loud from out in the audience. It sounded very present, you could hear it and you could hear it easily. It sounded like a solo, which it was supposed to be.

Speaker 2 2:15:12

That was my first true lesson, I think in the way you may need to do something in an exaggerated fashion in order for the audience to hear it in a normal fashion. I heard somebody compare it recently to the way stage actors put on a lot of makeup and if you talk to them afterwards it looks like too much. When you see them out of the lights, far away, it's about the right amount. It was that kind of concept and it took me a while still to get used to doing it myself. I was perhaps more timid as a player in some ways than I should have been, but I gradually well, probably not until I got on the postcard actually that I really get that under my belt to where I was comfortable with expanding my sound enough to be heard by the audience without making it sound harsh. It's a lesson I still try to teach today to teach people to play. Oh, my favorite solo probably there was the ah shoot Introduction to Dance by Barat.

Speaker 2 2:16:19

Barat yeah, I got to drink the water here. While I was in the Coast Guard band, we had Roger Bobo as one of our guest artists. He played that piece on his F-Tuba and it was this. Well, first of all, that was another one of those astounding moments when we were in this very large hall that we had a nice pencil hall, good acoustics, and he just filled the hall and made the whole hall resonate. It seemed like with his tone.

Speaker 2 2:16:47

Very impressed by that.

Discussion on Euphoniums in Concert Bands

Speaker 2 2:16:48

So Dan Vincent, who was the euphonium player at the time, my other euphonium player and I both found it valuable to try and play that opening solo the way he did, with as much sound volume and as much sound intensity, good core sound, good core tone and a lot of vibrato. We tried to play it that same way on euphonium. Well, we couldn't quite match the sound, but it was a great experience and a great training tool to try and come as close as possible, and I think we both learned that we can actually play louder than we thought we could without getting into edge if we really worked on doing that. So I suppose, like anything else, we learned that if you practice something you get better at it. Anyway, going back into high school, we do college. I mean, the experience after the band left was interesting because that same year we tried to create a wind ensemble and I got to play on that as the only euphonium player and that was a very interesting experience. It was typical that, like the Eastman Wind Ensemble was coming into play or literally around that time, or perhaps had been for a while. So playing a smaller ensemble where you could hear yourself better and hear all the other players better, was enjoyable. I liked it Now. But I also didn't enjoy playing the large concert band. There's been a discussion on my forum lately about how many euphoniums should a concert band have. Well, our band was about 120 people so we had five euphoniums and that didn't seem like too many and I think it wasn't for that size band. But it was so different than that experience from what I experienced for the rest of my life Once I got on the Coast Guard.

Speaker 2 2:18:38

The section was well, I was two or three players at first. In the first few years we had some shifting around and the assistant director was also a euphonium player, so we had split duties. But then for the rest of my career it was two players and in the bands I would. I played in a a while at the Sheldon Theater brass band down in Red Wing, minnesota. I was playing tuba then because that was the opening there I played flat tuba, but they again as a brass band had just two euphoniums. So that's. I pretty much just seen two euphoniums in groups since my college days and this discussion on the forum was a reminder of what it's like to play in an ensemble with five euphoniums.

Speaker 2 2:19:20

And to me part of the concept there. I'm certain that what we worked for in the college ensemble was blend and balance among the section players. So if you have five players who are not trying to do each other but trying to really play as a section, you get this enormous unified sound coming out. That's just what you need. Sometimes. Example I used was a common march, el Capitan, a Suza march. Well, the second I think that's the right march hope we got the name right. But the second time, through the first train, the euphoniums. I was like that sorry for the pitches. So that's beautiful little counter melody. And as the only player or as a player with two in the section, especially when we're on the wrong side of the ensemble, so to speak, if it's a curve set up and you're on this side of that curve, the bell is pointing backwards. So you really have to work to get that to come out. And we did it. I mean, we got it to come out but it wasn't quite as loud as we wanted. And if you had five players you could easily do that without sounding loud, but it would have all the presence that it should have. And that's how you should think of these things when you're in a large section, you need to blend and balance with the section.

Speaker 2 2:20:43

And as part of the same discussion now and as part of my thinking while I was in the Coast Guard, there were way too many pieces written with one euphonium part. Yes, there might be a treble clef and a bass clef part, but they were the same part. And even with two players that created some imbalances. When they score us, maybe doubling a voice in the trombone section. Well, if you've got four trombones playing three parts or four parts, depending on the music, and you throw two euphoniums out of one of those parts, it's going to throw the balance off. So what I would do is I go through sometimes and get the score out and pencil in a harmony part or a second part, if you will, in the euphoniums. So for playing with the second trombone, I might pencil in either the first or the third part, so we've got harmony that supports them rather than taking over one voice of a chord, and it was more fun for us to create a little more challenge in playing.

Speaker 2 2:21:43

Or there was a time when we didn't have a bassoon player in the band. We normally carried two, but with people coming and going and the way the Coast Guard was set up you could not replace a player until one had already left. And replacing a player meant time in recruiting. You have to go through the physical and whatnot. There was no basic training so they came right in the band but there were still a long gap, sometimes before the person showed up. Well, those gaps coincided sometime and we got to where we had no bassoon. So I played the bassoon part for a while in the band and I'd often use a straight new for that, depending on the part, and that was great fun. And I think I suggested in the forum discussion that if the large concert band, which is a community type band, not professional players, if they had a shortage or weakness in the bassoon or the bass.

Speaker 2 2:22:36

Thrown at that part, one or two bassoons could double that.

Speaker 2 2:22:39

If the basses weren't very strong, you could assign a person to double them on the higher bass part.

Speaker 2 2:22:46

So there are some things you can do. Otherwise you just sit in the section you're given. When you do your job, you blend with the section and you cooperate, you work with the section, sometimes to try and learn to play in tune with each other and to blend with each other, even with diverse instruments which often will show up. You'll have a couple in a section of five, I'm guessing, in most community bands, and eventually have at least one, maybe two of the old American style euphoniums with the front valves and the bell pointing the wrong direction over this way, and you'll have some of the modern professional style instruments where the bells are up here and the bell points that way. Even with that disparity, though, you can learn to balance, and that's a good life lesson as well as a good musical lesson. So anyway, that's a little of the experience that got me into the Coast Guard band Did you want me to go on and talk about getting in the band as well.

Speaker 1 2:23:42

That experience we're going to do that on our third in series with you. I think I mean that, right, there was not too far of a stretch for our listeners just because when you went, when you were, when you had auditioned for the tour in Russia, you were on a panel of five euphoniums, you being on the third seat there and going into your form, talking about the community band aspect and the larger kind of more extended versions of what communities might see. I think it really gives the overall aspect of what is possible and then bringing in your dynamics of the host and the sound expansion that you experienced during that time, really build your musicianship.

Speaker 2 2:24:54

Indeed, my favorite example of adapting yourself to the music was Phantasy on American Sailing Songs by Claire Grunman, and I can't remember the exact passage. But there was a passage we had marked metal piano that was fairly background under some modern solos. We had to actually underplay that. The next passage was the melody, with perhaps one other section and was marked solo, but at piano. So here were the levels. They were talking about the background section and the solo section were written this way and you had to play them this way. Come out much more in the solo section. There's like there being to come out up here but sounding like a dynamic here in terms of the relaxed quality of sound. You didn't want to sound aggressive up here. You thought it would be flowy, flowing and relaxing your sound. So those kind of lessons are something we probably will face all our life and I've had to work on things like that. Even playing with piano, there are times when you need to adapt your tone and your style dynamically and concept wise to match what the music needs.

Speaker 1 2:26:03

That's really cool because that gets into our talk before the recording started on your, which we'll cover in a separate interview, specialized interview series, your international songs for euphonium and those different styles that come into play for even that.

Speaker 2 2:26:28

Yes, that's partly why I like using international music, because it does bring in different styles of music than just the songs you might all have grown up with, although I'm going to think about I think even in elementary school, when I had to sing. You know, boys those days anyway hated to sing, but when I had to sing in music class with a group.

Speaker 2 2:26:50

They were often foreign songs. They had English words usually, but there were songs that came from different countries. So even then I guess I was getting a little bit of the cross culture, but we probably sounded the same one all in many ways.

Speaker 1 2:27:02

That's really awesome. I think that's a really great way to wrap up this segment and if you are interested in finding out more information and carrying this conversation over into the podcast, which will be shortly after ending this recording series, you can find the links down below into your favorite podcast, once it's listed, and at wwwinternationalphoniumsummitcom David-Wordon For more information and to follow the channels. You can see David's channel either here or here, I'm not so sure. Let's see. It would probably be over here if I'm doing it correct. So, with that being said, thank you so much for joining us, david, on these amazing talks and bringing your journey alongside of the current and future Euphonium students and artists to come.

Speaker 2 2:27:59

Well, it's my pleasure and I'm happy to give this demonstration on making short stories long, absolutely.

Conversation on Music Recordings and Performances

Speaker 1 2:28:07

Absolutely. Thank you so much and we'll see everybody next time on his third in series coming soon. Thanks everyone, bye. Recording stopped. Awesome, that went really well.

Speaker 2 2:28:23

Oh, I'm glad my voice held up.

Speaker 1 2:28:26

Yes, you almost got the Doc Severance and Growl, yeah it worked out pretty hard there. Well, I really do appreciate your time. And make sure you get some hot water to soothe those vocals. I'll do that. And, yeah, as you facilitate your arrangement and gearing up for this holiday season.

Speaker 2 2:28:55

Yeah, it's always a busy time for brass, which is a good thing. Brass works more than stuff.

Speaker 1 2:29:00

It is Well. I can't wait for our next installment with you and to see where all this goes, and especially with the idea of permanence as a foundation to musicianship and life.

Speaker 2 2:29:17

Yes, all right. Well, thank you again for having me here today. It's been fun talking to you and talking to the world. As we get to the recorded part, I guess right.

Speaker 1 2:29:27

Absolutely Right, and get them to kind of hear our voice and to hopefully at the regular volume instead of the helium version of fast playback.

Speaker 2 2:29:42

Sorry, I'm trying to see what it says on the screen here. Living history to. Okay got it Little print on these trifles, but I gotta get really close.

Speaker 1 2:29:51

On the background of my background. Yeah, yeah, it says living history series Part of the International Phonium Series Summit and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 2:30:01

Okay yeah, you actually have one for your background. It says International Phonium Summit and your name as part of the cohort, and that's been really fun developing this platform, because the cohort is composed with so many of composers for euphonium that it provides that foundation for our younger artists and even the professionals to grab hold of all this fantastic music, like the one I showcased with you, with Michael, his emotional spectrum, angry, and so many others, including yours, your 32 unaccompanied works that's going to be released soon. I'm looking forward to seeing our cohort perform these and perform with quality, instead of just pumping out recording after recording and and not have any substance to the passion.

Speaker 2 2:31:19

I think I know what you mean, yeah.

Speaker 1 2:31:23

I just want everybody to. I want quality recordings, I mean, as we're looking forward to new music and looking for those records or the recordings of like introduction and dance by Brot, or you know other pieces like Necraterra, for like in Lester's piece or any of the pieces on our cohort. To find a good recording, to find recording is not that that hard, but to find a good quality recording I think is a bit more difficult to find. So you know, unfortunately, a lot of the recordings all well, well, not all of them.

Speaker 2 2:32:18

Most of my recordings are not live performances they're. You know, sarah may get together at church and record something and we try to play. Well, obviously, but it doesn't quite have the energy that a live performance does. It'd be fun, with all the recitals that people are giving, if we heard more of the of the live performances and fewer of the can ones. But it's not life right now, and not for me anyway, certainly, but not for a lot of people, I think. Right, I've gone places where the court at all. I had to bring my own equipment if I wanted to recording of it, and most people aren't set up to do that. It's very inconvenient, especially if you're trying to get ready for playing, so also get ready for your technology to work correctly. It's a little extra stress that most people don't want, so but I do it.

Speaker 2 2:33:05

That's my recital last year at the Both our side was the one I did earlier this year and the one I did the regional last year are only on YouTube because I recorded them. I brought my stuff and reported them and in the case of the one from this year, that's also on Gail Robertson and Ben Tate interval, get out there as well, because I recorded the whole recital where we all played and it's a pain. It's a lot of work, a lot of work to work, but I like having my performances. Just there's a little more energy to them and it's just hard to get when you're just doing it for the four walls.

Speaker 1 2:33:44

Absolutely, and not to mention the audience's energy that feeds into all that.

Speaker 2 2:33:51

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 2:33:52

Perfect. I'm, like I said, I'm looking forward to our third in series, as we cover the Coast Guard portion of auditioning, getting into and that segment of your career.

Speaker 2 2:34:08

That'd be fun, I'm looking forward to talking about that as well, so you'll send me another. I can't think how you got me to sign up last time. You send a message or something, don't you like?

Speaker 1 2:34:17

I do Yep Indeed, until next time. Everyone, thank you so much for joining us and yeah, thank you, david Worden, for joining us.

Speaker 2 2:34:29

Thank you as well. Thanks, thanks to all who listen.

Speaker 1 2:34:32

Yes, indeed, have a great day everyone. Bye, bye now, bye for now, you.