Snorglorf

When I lived in England, there was some sort of musical aptitude test with simple questions on a tape they played to the class (Which pitch is higher? Is the melody the same or different, etc etc). At the end of it all, me and a few others were removed from the class and taken down the hall. We thought we were in trouble for talking, but then they told us we had scored the highest on the test. They had a private flute teacher come in who gave us a flute mouthpiece (is that the right name? it's the thing you shove in the end of a flute). I was the only one who could make a sound on it, so I started private flute lessons. I played flute for a year or so before I left England for Canada (I think I was somewhere between the ages of 9 and 11).

After this, I stopped playing music for a while, and I barely even listened to music. In grade 7 there was an ad on the notice board for a guitar teacher. I don't remember if I expressed an interest or if my mom signed me up, but I took guitar lessons through Grade 7 and 8. Sometime in grade 8 or grade 9 I got invited to a little website called OiNK, which made my interest in music skyrocket.

In Grade 9, when asked what instrument I wanted to play, I wanted to play Alto Sax. A lot of people wanted to play alto sax, and there were only 2 altos left. I had the biggest hands of the bunch, so I was migrated to tenor. I hated the instrument and never practiced, although I love the sound of a saxophone and I'm sure I'd muchly enjoy it if I were to practice and get good.

At the start of Grade 10, we had no trumpet players in the class, and I noticed the fact that trumpet cases were a decent amount smaller than tenor sax cases. I decided I needed to play the trumpet so I could take it home and practice. I played a lot and enjoyed it, but I doubt I would have stuck to it if my parents hadn't brought me home an Olds Ambassador from Value Village a few weeks later. Much to my surprise, this cheap horn from a thrift store that sells mostly dingy old crap, played far better than whatever my school horn was.

This combined with my experience at IMC Jazz Camp '08 have pushed me to decide that I'm going to be playing trumpet for the rest of my life.

At the start of this year, I began studying with a guy who studied with Chase Sanborn during University and probably did a whole host of other cool stuff that I don't know about. Anyway, one day I asked him about buying a new horn and for some tips on it. He replied that he had an old French Besson laying around that used to belong to Guido Basso and Chase, back in the day. He offered to lend it to me for a few months in order to test it out and blam I'm stuck. This horn is beautiful, and I can only look forward to the day when I find an even better horn. It's probably impossible that I've found the best for me already. The price is right at $500, and now I've just gotta get around to paying for it..


That's me in a nutshell. I'm hoping to go to Humber College, York or University of Toronto to study jazz. After playing since Grade 10, I don't know if this is a lofty goal or not. It's a risk I'm willing to take!


(That was significantly longer than I had anticipated)


EDIT: The album that did it for me for trumpet was Art Blakey's Moanin', although Saxophone Colossus by Sonny Rollins had set me off way earlier than that. Kevin Turcotte is also an enormous contributor to the reason I love trumpet so much. And Oscar Peterson with Jon Faddis album

walsh

I brought a trumpet home from school in 77 and a month later my father had me trying to learn how to play "All That Meat and No Potatoes" on "Satch Plays Fats". When I finally got it (for a twelve year old) I was hooked. He would sing, I would play.....God, that must have been funny. I'm not sure who sounded worse, but we would laugh, and then, "let's do it again, do it again!"

Thank you Tony, I haven't thought about that in a very long time.

John Walsh