davewerden

The wait is over. A major manufacturer has finally begun to design products for players who are left handed. The first such example is based on the popular Wick/Mead SM3 mouthpiece, shown below in its standard form:


Standard Right-Hand Model




Of course, the smooth other surface and tapered shape may have been difficult for left-handers to pick up and handle, but that has now been solved with the SM3-LH:


New Left-Hand Model
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I have finally found a really good cleaning swap for my compensating euphonium! Every brass player knows it can be hard to get the inside of the horn swabbed out. The traditional swap has a coiled metal "snake" with a pad or brush on each end. You need to run it through the tubes to clean them inside. However, the metal can scratch the horn if you are not careful and the pads or brushes don't do a very good job of cleaning. Worst of all, the thing gets caught in the horn sometimes and ...

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently played a series of eight concerts with the Minnesota Orchestra. Any of you who have heard the orchestra perform know that it is a truly fine group. But what might be hard to tell from listening is that they are nice folks who seem to genuinely like each other. Several pieces on the concert did not use full orchestra so I had some time to hobnob with many players. It's a wonderful group to work with, and I was reminded again how lucky we are to have them ...

Once again I had the opportunity to perform with the Minnesota Orchestra this week. I'll discuss more about the musical side in a future post, but I noticed a few interesting bits of trivia while I was there.


First, as an electronics hobbyist (in my past), I found this really unusual electronic tuner for instruments. It is of the type that sounds one of 12 tones for the player to match. It appears to have a fine-tuning control.





The next interesting ...

Have you heard any top 20 pop songs that were all instrumental? Have you noticed that many popular songs don't even use instrumental interludes? There is an interesting article on Slate discussing and documenting this:


Words, Words, Words