Posted by Lee Stofer on September 25, 2002 at 07:00:26:
In Reply to: Re: Re: What was I thinking??? posted by Ross on September 24, 2002 at 14:51:55:
Yep, got a whole book's-worth of them. Nearly 20 years ago, I was standing in the warehouse distric of city, waiting with my Army Band to start a street parade, and I decided to be super-prepared and oil my valves, although they felt OK already. Well, tired, foggy-minded tuba player trying to do something vaguely technical early in the morning yeilds dropped 2nd valve, onto the pavement of course. The skirt of the piston had a nice flat spot. So, I get a kleenex from a kind clarinet player, wipe it off, and in sheer terror take it to a 55 gallon drum and start rolling it on the top of the drum as hard as I can, using the palm of my hand. After a couple of minutes of this, I wiped it off again, oiled it, and it went into the horn and actually worked as well as it had before! I had no idea that doing that would really work, but desperation does wonders.
One of my worst moments in music was in Germany, at an afternoon ceremony on an American Military Compound. I had bought and fixed-up a Reynolds 4-valve Eb sousaphone, which seemed to play very well. I was excited about having the horn back together and was eager to try it out. Trouble is, I went out as the only tuba for this cermony without checking out the pitch on the instrument first. It plays well in tune with itself, it must be OK, right?! Wrong!! To my horror, I found that I could scarcely get any pitch in tune with all the slides in, and played the two pre-music marches with very short, clipped notes and lipping up as much as possible to try and hide the fact. Well, the US Anthem was up next, and there would be no place to hide. So, I pulled out slides, re-adjusted everything and played the rest of the ceremony on a sousaphone in D. Ouch!
Lee Stofer