When I was in 4th grade at Kennydale Elementary, I had the chance to sign up for band. Now, I don’t really remember if I was given the chance. I think it was just expected, as my other brothers, well two of the three, played in band.
There were limited choices of what you could play in Mr. Nelson’s band. It’s not like you could choose a sax or a tuba. It was pretty much a band made up of four instruments – trumpet, flute, clarinet and drums.
Not much choice there. As my current bandmates will attest, I have no rhythm. There is a beat that goes on in my head that is not matched to anything here on earth, so drumming was out. I didn’t really want to play a girlie instrument, so the only obvious choice was trumpet, largely because I could use my brother’s cornet since he was no longer in band.
I still remember the band room, which was right off the cafeteria and next to the stairwell that led out of the basement. In the band were a handful of clarinets and flutes, a lot of trumpets and the bulk of the band were drummers – all boys. Thankfully, they weren’t allowed to play real drums. Instead they could only use their sticks on a rubber practice pad. I think Mr. Nelson made a good choice there.
It wasn’t until I went to middle school that all this band stuff made sense. There, Mr. Goodale was the band’s director. I took my now usual place in the third section of trumpets – these are the guys who aren’t that great and we only play very boring parts of a song – you’ll never see a third section guy jump to his feet and play a blazing horn solo.
That was OK with me. I wasn’t really that good, largely because I never practiced. While the first section guys got to practice their solos, I practiced after beats. If you express music as it is written, 1 and 2 and 3 and 3 and… I played the ‘ands.’ Think of it like the ‘pahs’ in an oompah band. I never played the ‘oom.’
So you can imagine how boring this is to practice. There’s no oom to time your pahs against. Eventually, you drift around a lot, some of your pahs becoming ooms instead.
That is why I never amounted to much as a trumpet player in middle school.
As I entered high school I was finally going to give up my C grade music career. But my mother insisted that I take band in 9th grade. “Give it a year,” she said. “Then we’ll see.”
I love how my mother would steer us like this. “Then we’ll see” was code for “Then I’ll see.” She just lulled us into believing we had a say in it with the “we’re all in this together” we.
Mr. Gleason was my band director. Love Mr. Gleason. He’s even still my Facebook friend. He taught me to love music.
He also taught me how to get an A in band. In my sophomore year, the cadet band was out of balance. There was only one French Horn player and one Baritone player. Some changes needed to be made.
Given that my third section trumpet career was at a standstill, I volunteered to play Baritone. If I was going to play a bunch of pahs, why not do it on a cooler instrument. But Mr. Gleason said no. It seems my lips were better suited to playing French Horn.
The only French Horn I had ever seen was played by Diana Skalsky at McKnight. As last chair in the trumpet section, I sat next to her. I remember occasionally emptying my spit valve on her shoe. I didn’t like Diana.
To learn the French Horn, I was given a week off from band. Every day, instead of taking my rightful place in the no-talent section of the trumpets, I would retire to a practice room and practice. I can tell you that the French Horn is not easy to play. Without even pressing one of the valves, you can play something like 20 different notes. It’s all in how you pursed your lips and moved them.
Thankfully, as I was to later learn from girls I dated, I had good lips. The French Horn made them great. But it was still no easy task to play it.
The next week, I took up my rightful place in the French Horn section. There was just two of us – Rosemarie Keintz and I. I was in last chair again. And for good reason. I would play along with the rest of the band and odd notes would pop out of the horn. The other kids were laughing. One time Mr. Gleason asked me to come up in front of the class and show everyone how many notes you could play without hitting a valve. The kids stopped laughing.
Things improved greatly in concert band. That’s the big show in town and I was by then getting pretty good. I really loved playing the French Horn, though I profess that I never liked our sight reading quizzes. For the uninitiated, this is where you must go up in front of the whole class. You are shown a piece of music you have never seen before. You have a minute or two to look it over, and then you play it. Egad, what performance anxiety.
A couple years after high school, I stopped playing the French Horn. I moved onto the banjo and now guitar. Thanks to eBay, however, I now have a French Horn again. It’s in the closet. I pull it out now and again to see what I can still play. I have almost made my way through the Hazen Fight Song on more than one occasion, the fingerings blistered into my brain from so many years of playing it at football and basketball games.
And every once in a while, I will hear a French Horn at a musical theater or orchestra performance, it’s haunting sound lifting up above the rest of the parts. It is a sound of pure beauty and very fond memories of a simpler time, when the only thing to think about was the upcoming concert or halftime show.
Out on the Treasure Coast, thinking about pulling the old horn out of the closet and seeing if I still blow,
– Robb