Slobbery Instrument Starts Making Sense

The cornet is working out well.

Until today, I couldn’t make myself practice for more than 15 minutes. On the first day, I was seeing spots and feeling like I would faint, and the sounds were positively flatulent. And all I had was the mouthpiece. On the second or third day, I managed to play a G. Yesterday I managed to play “G F E” over and over. Today, I managed D, and I also started to get a sound that almost resembled a brass instrument. On top of that, I was able to practice continuously for several minutes without stopping, and I didn’t faint. And I went over half an hour total. My lip crapped out at that point, so I sat down.

I got myself a book of standards. Man, is it encouraging. One note at a time! I can’t WAIT to be able to play an entire scale so I can try this. It’s so much simpler than the piano, and presumably, sight-reading with the trumpet will help me do a better job of sight-reading on the keyboard.

People say the trumpet (cornet, whatever) is hard to play. Okay, it is. Every instrument is hard to play…WELL. But some instruments are easy to play badly, and it looks like the trumpet is one of them. If I can learn to play badly in a month, it will be fantastic. I don’t have to be Doc Severinsen to get a lot out of it.

It takes about six months to learn to play bluegrass guitar badly, because flatpicking is a set of very unnatural motions. It takes a long time to learn to play piano badly, because sight-reading is hard, and you have to play two parts at once. Trumpet seems more like the banjo. The basic mechanics aren’t that tough.

I don’t know how long it takes to get an embouchure working. At the rate I’m going, it would appear that I ought to be able to play a whole scale within a month. Once that happens, I may be able to torture the neighbors with a real song. I mean actual music. Not the horrors found in my “Play Trumpet Today” book. On March 1st, I may be playing a whole song badly! I sure hope so.

After that, road trip to Birdland. I’ll need a beret.

If I can learn to play something really engrossing, like Summertime, it will be hard to pry the horn out of my hand. That’s a slow song, loaded with improvisational inspiration. The notes will be in my head, and if I think there is any hope I can actually play them, I’ll keep trying until I have to be separated from the horn by burly EMTs and sheriff’s deputies with bean bag guns.

I don’t know all of the instruments that are easy to play badly, but offhand, I can recommend the electric bass. I played one the first and only time I picked it up. Bass players hate to hear people say things like that, but it’s true. The bass is really easy. All you have to do is find three or four notes per measure that harmonize with whatever you’re listening to, and then you play them over and over. Nobody is going to give you a scholarship to Juilliard for doing that, but it will be real music. And the sad reality is, if you’re playing rock, you could actually sit in with a band after a day, because listeners have extremely low expectations of bass players. If you’re good enough to solo, people will notice you, but if you can only play your three or four notes, 98% of the crowd will have no idea you can’t actually play. Here’s something to make bass players even madder: for most rock songs, the bass player could turn off his amp, and most people in the audience wouldn’t know the difference.

Drums. You can play the drums right now, as long as you don’t get cocky.

I hear horror stories about the violin, although I haven’t tried it. They say the hardest part is being able to stand listening to yourself while you get the pitches wrong a billion times. People say you pretty much have to start learning the bagpipes as an embryo, because it takes so long to learn the fingering and wind control. Of course, the bagpipes are, in all respects, heinous. So I can’t say I care. Now the Uillean pipes…they would be worth the effort.

The cornet is a mystery. I thought the notes the horn could play were determined solely by the pitch the lips make, plus the length of the tube. But I noticed something odd today. When I do the fingering for a certain note, but I try to play a different note (because I’m inept), sometimes it seems like I accidentally make the horn play the correct note. How can that be possible? I would think the horn’s length and the wavelengths of the sounds would relate in a pretty rigid way.

I just found a website that explains how horns work. I can’t believe I used to be an aspiring physicist. Just looking at this stuff gives me vertigo.

I remember studying forced oscillations. You can make anything oscillate at the frequency of your choice, if you’re willing to supply the energy. I don’t know if horns work that way. You would think the volume would plummet.

Anyway, this is pretty cool. It won’t be long until I’m jamming to smokin’ beats like Three Blind Mice and Frere Jacques.