40cal

What are they going to do to you? Fire you?

Just explain to the organist your particular situation and if necessary make an analogy of jumping up and down on his/her hands w/cowboy boots on to make your point of how your lips feel.

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“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day so that my child may have peace.”

Thomas Paine 1737-1809

“That’s all the bullets we had, or we would have shot him more,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd

Dale Proctor

I realize the playing event has probably passed, but allow me to add this advice. I agree with all the posts that advocate "educating" the organist and/or choir director. One of the most important words for a trumpet player to learn is "no". This can go a long way toward keeping yourself out of situations such as these. When you've said "yes" and have to deal with it, a good strategy to use is honesty - just tell the songleader that you can't play every verse, because your lip will blow out. Then it's their decision - planned tacets, or unplanned ones. Just make sure they understand that there WILL be tacets! The original question dealt with endurance, and the best way to increase it is to play a lot - not practice as much as real playing gigs that push the envelope.

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"Brass bands are all very well in their place - outdoors and several miles away." - Sir Thomas Beecham

Olde Towne Brass
www.otbrass.com

Brass Band of Huntsville
www.brassbandofhuntsville.org

MrClean

I have played gigs like this, particularly when I was younger, and was too timid to say "no", and have gotten hurt. Sometimes, there was numbness in my chops for weeks afterwards, even when I wasn't playing! I told the contractor to stop calling me for certain gigs because I wasn't interested in dealing with ignorant directors that tried to squeeze every last note out of me. These are usually the gigs that pay the least, too. Oh, the irony...

There is no gig on the planet that is worth jeopardizing your career for, and I do mean "no".

J

stchasking

My mother taught me a trick.
Play the tenor line up an octave. It sounds like a descant.

I would play out of the hymnal, then go to my cheat sheet on the third verse and play the tenor line. I also have a few descant books to change things up a bit.

This is an old thread. I wonder how it surfaced?

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"I was performing professionally at age 17 and have never had a real job." Allen Vizzutti

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