My Band Debut!

I thought I had told you (my readers) this, but I mayn't have: I have taken up a new instrument!

My wife saw an announcement that the local New Horizons affiliate was ready to sign up new members, and urged me to go and see.  What is New Horizons?  It's a countrywide (and maybe international, to some extent) organization that has brass bands in many localities, that encourage retirees to take up playing a band instrument.  In our area, it's sort of associated with a large music store, which provides space for rehearsals, rental instruments, administrative support, and so on.

So, I attended one of their rehearsals, and when it was over, I talked to the band director, and I said I wanted to join. 

"What would you be interested in playing?" they wanted to know, and I said, 'Anything; but I would really like to play a bass instrument!'

They said: well, we have found that it works better if the new member chooses their own instrument.  In spite of all that, I was strongly encouraged to learn to play a baritone horn.  These things are also called just baritone. It is a brass band instrument (not an orchestral instrument), and is pitched roughly an octave higher than a Tuba.

 

They meet for rehearsals every Tuesday and Thursday; and I would get a half-hour lesson each Thursday, after which I'd sit in with the band rehearsal, though all I could do at first was play the B Flat in the bass stave.  So I gazed intently at the scores they were playing from, and pounced on any upcoming B Flats, and played them.  (New members who couldn't read music would have to be taught that skill too.)

That was in early October.  We were rehearsing some standard marches, some carols, some Christmassy songs (Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, Jingle Bells, etc.) and a few items that the locals liked, e.g. some Penn State marches, etc.

Finally, today, we got all dressed up, and went out to play at a state hospital!  (In Pennsylvania, state hospitals are mental institutions, but they're not called that, to save the feelings of the inmates.)

It went off OK.  I couldn't play everything I should have played, but I figured it was better to skip the notes I couldn't get than play wrong notes.  Every rehearsal I seem to be playing more notes than before; there are some chromatic sequences, like F, E, E Flat, which I can play now, as long as it's not too fast. 

The Baritone is keyed like a trumpet.  There are three pistons; the first one drops the note by a whole tone.  The second one drops the note by a semitone. The third one drops the note by three semitones—a minor third.  So the B Flat scale goes like this:

• B Flat: just blow. 
• C: pistons 1 and 3 (and blow).
• D: pistons 1 and 2 (and blow).
• E Flat: piston 1 (and blow).
• F: just blow, a little harder. 
• G: pistons 1 and 2, blow harder. 
• A: piston 2, blow very hard.
• B Flat just below middle C: just blow, quite hard. 

You must have guessed that, when I wrote 'blow harder,' there must be more to it than that!  There is; you have to tighten your lips, and blow harder.  But, as with almost all wind instruments, blowing a little harder does give you a new note. 

Without any pistons, you get a B Flat, then an F, then octave B Flat, then you get the entire so-called harmonic series of B Flat.

Using pistons 1 and 3, you actually get the harmonic series of F, which happens to contain C.

Using piston 2, you get the harmonic series of A (which happens also to contain E).

Using piston 1, you get the harmonic series of A Flat, which contains E Flat.

Knowing all this is well and good, but since the fingering of consecutive notes isn't simple—as it would have been on a recorder, for instance—you just have to memorize the way each note is played.  But when a note sounds perfectly, it sounds like it's being played on a horn; in other words:  beautiful. 

Archie