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Dennis, Welcome and here's wishing you a pleasurable journey as you study your instrument. I would suggest that at your next lesson you ask your teacher to explain what is meant by a "transposing" instrument. This will explain what you see on your tuner when you finger a particular note on the...

Great resource! Thanks. Small problem----I went to the website to locate and download the Companion Booklet that was mentioned in the early part of the video, but I can't seem to find it. Any help will be appreciated.

Pete, all of the above!! Thank you! I think this is very sage advice, which I hope to follow soon. Certainly I have not been putting nearly enough practice time, and perhaps I would do better to wait until I get some good instruction from a clarinet person. I'd hate to spend time practicing...

I've been reading with interest the clarinet-to-sax thread. However, I'm in the opposite situation--a sax player who returned happily and successfully to sax after a VERY long hiatus and who has been struggling recently to learn clarinet. Unlike many sax players, I was not started on clarinet...

I know nothing about clarinet embouchure (trust me, I'm a sax player and I'm just now trying to learn clarinet). However, I do use a "cushion" on my lower teeth which I fashion from a product called EZO, which is a denture cushion easily found in the dental product section of a drugstore. It...

Oh yeah! Drama abounds! The first board meeting with our new director present went pretty much as I had expected----a whole lot of "we thought about that [probably 10 years ago] and decided against it", protracted meandering about the "old days" [some of these guys have been in the band 50...

Chris, I will follow this thread with interest, and plan to share your list with the band board on which I serve. We are three weeks into rehearsals with our brand new director, who is inheriting a band badly in need of rebuilding. I would add to the list of concerns that of determining...

I used to have a beautiful English mastiff who never left my side UNTIL I took out the sax for some shed time. Then he departed to the furthest room in the house. As he aged, I finally realized just how deaf he had become when he began to stay in the room with me and the sax. He's gone now...

I agree----it makes things that are easy seem difficult, and makes that which is difficult impossibly confusing! I usually resort to writing out the whole part on computer software, or at those sections that are the most confusing. Although tedious, it's been worth it to me. Good luck! Ruth

Princess, Given a choice between "pushy" and "absent", I'll take pushy, who at least can be persuaded (or coerced) into pointing the way to the the item I'm looking for. Actually, I much prefer simple courtesy from salespeople, which actually makes them much more effective at their job than the...

Yep! In principle I would like to "buy local", but I recently went into a local place to buy some reeds, not unusual ones either. No sales staff approached me, so I located the reed display on my own and looked at the display (the ones I wanted were not there). Still no approach by sales...

In reaction to a frustrating rehearsal (bad intonation in the sax section) last evening with one of the community bands I play with, I used the limited time I had this AM to do some long tones and scales with "The Tuning CD". After that I spent some time working up a long time favorite tune...

PS This would be a good query to post on the Community Band Forum.

Hey Gandalfe, I'm not sure what you mean by "dramatic", nor how prominently you want to display the sax section (or perhaps a sax soloist) so as a die-hard community band junkie, I'll just throw out a bunch of things I have played recently and enjoyed as a sax section player and sometimes...

Thanks for fixing the link! Enjoyed hearing/seeing your group---wish mine sounded as good. But one question----where are the ladies!!??

Have I missed something? Without my (knowingly) changing anything on my computer, I must now log in every time I open this site. Used to be that the site opened to the already-logged-in page. FYI, this has not happened on other frequently visited sites.

Gandalfe, Thanks for this sticky----very helpful! Ruth

excessively long--feel free to ignore Interesting and coincidental in timing, as I just finished entering into an Excel file 422 titles with the composer, arranger, style, et al of each for a community band that I play in. This band is one of the oldest in the US, dating well back into the...

Careful there, Al. Surely you wouldn't want to precipitate another YAGE (or even a YAWE):-D

How true! Re: the bari part in the three community bands with which I've played---I've seen several bari players come and go. From my limited experience, a bad bari player is a dangerous thing in a community band---the lack of control and bad intonation, combined with the strong liklihood of...