Posted by Anthony,who tried it on March 22, 2002 at 13:45:54:
In Reply to: Banana Thing??? posted by Dan Mordhorst on March 22, 2002 at 09:33:56:
I tried it last week, and it didn't seem to work. A Jazz Ensemble that I play in went on a sort of mini-tour at the end of last week. Our big band was playing a Bob Mintzer chart that has a nice little bass trombone solo in it... nothing too technically challenging, but exposed enough to scare the hell out of me everytime we came to it, mostly just because bass trombone isn't my primary instrument, so I never really feel "at home" well playing it. We performed it about 5 or 6 times in the 2 day period... before the first performance, I tried the banana thing, and I was still nervous when it came my time to perform... second performance was about 2 hours later, wasn't as nervous, but hadn't eaten any bananas.. next performance was about 4 hours after that, tried the banana thing, and was as nervous as I'd ever been while performing.
The very last time I played it, I forgot to try the banana thing, but it didn't matter, because I wasn't nervous at all. Played it the best I'd ever played it, and was as comfortable as I'd ever been with it.
I was skeptical about the banana thing from the start, and that could be why it didn't work. Or perhaps it was the fact that I generally eat a half dozen bananas per week anyways? I don't know. I assume that it must work for some people, otherwise we wouldn't have seen it on this board... fortunately for me, though, I don't get as nervous when playing the tuba.
Anthony