Coming To a Close With Penguins, Obama and Star Trek

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen! This is a picture of Abbey Road Penguin Style.

Penguin Road

Are you a Beatles fan? I know I'm not because the Beatles were famous 40 years before I was born. But, my process for finding random things isn't based on what my interests are(but there is no way a cat will get on this blog). I usually don't care what random thing goes on my blog to sandwich my topic. My process is come up with something random in my head look it up, and then find an even more random thing from my search results. 

But, sadly this my last blogpost. I have to answer the question: How have I changed over the course of this year? 

If you guys remember, the good old days, the days where I was just a small lad, the times when it was fall instead of spring. Oh those were the days, the days where I had to reclaim my sleep schedule completely. I may have had to wake up for marching band early in the morning, but I was staying up until 3 AM the night before every week day and then passing out on my couch after marching band. Rules of sleep do not apply to me folks. Anyway, I was an ever-fresh freshman new to the dynamic that is pseudo-high school(I still go to a Junior High). None of my creativity or openness had been unleashed at that point. All my posts were purely instructional, and I credit myself to slightly phase that out with the instruction as I had less and less musically instructional to talk about. Surprise! We are officially at the bottom of the barrel. I'm sure you guys can't tell because this blog material is just so high brow.

Ok, I actually have to answer the question without my perpetual ramblings. I've changed the formatting of my blog posts form all topic content to be more like an ice cream sandwich. The topic is enclosed in two fluffy things that allow for consistent structure. You can hold on to it and depend on it because it will always be there. The ice cream is what you come for, I mean its called an ice cream sandwich the not two chocolatey buns of righteousness and morality with filling. I've incorporated more voice into the blog as well as a bit of comedic features. I have to admit that my old blogposts were boring. But I guess that the point of those blogs wasn't comedic at all, it was all about the musical facts and advice. 

If I were to answer the question without the blog in mind and just answer the question as it addresses me as a person there's a few things that have changed about me this year. I guess I've gotten more confident, confident as a trombone player and outside of that. I've definitely gotten better as a trombone player, I've improved my tone quality, my sight reading, my rhythm, my range, and my technique as it applies to playing trombone. I wish I could talk about how I've changed as a person but I really can't. I've gotten taller, I've valued fitness and health more as a person but I can't say that my personality has changed that much. I've gotten introduced to various political views, outlooks on life, different ways to approach things and different mindsets to have. I've become more liberal, but I think that's something that any teenager goes through. I guess I've changed a lot over the course of the year, but it all mental, so subtle and subconscious that I have to delve deep to think about how much I've changed. I guess the grand summer upper is that I've gained self-confidence. The self confidence so say...

Obama

Thanks for reading guys, I hope Obama was a nice touch to this blogpost, If not I can...

Obama Change

To conclude this post I just want to say that trombone is the best instrument in the multiverse. Commander Riker is on team trombone. Basically, if you don't think that trombone is the best instrument you are against Riker and the entire Star Trek Universe.

Commander Riker Playing Trombone

Commander Riker Playing Trombone

Commander Riker Playing Trombone

Alright Guys, Thanks for putting up with me and so's and now's this year.

Have a nice day or night.

Magnanimous Marching Band, What Happens When Darth Vader Gets Rosetta Stone with a Llama

The Fabulous Llama

Hello ladies and gentlemen it's almost that time of year when marching band starts but those llamas are already here. 

That's right it's almost here, we are about to have the party of all time this summer marching band season in the trombone section. I am not sure what trombone I will use because the Pbone sucks and my other trombone is too expensive to brave the weather with. Maybe I'll get a King 2b Silversonic 1940 edition, maybe I won't. All I know is that it's almost marching band season.

SJSU Trombone Player

Nebraska Husker Trombone Section

Before I move on I don't mean to lead you on by saying I might buy this trombone right here. 

King 2b Silversonic

So, marching band is coming up it's the best way to spend summer time on your instrument. In marching band you spend two hours on your instrument every week day and with that kind of devotion to your instrument you get phenomenally better. Instead of playing video games every morning you will engage in physical activity to get in better shape and then play video games. Think about it guys, a potential six pack AND League of Legends, you can't get better than that folks you just can't. Did I mention the fact that you are going to be in the sun for a long amount of time. So, Unless you are polish like me you just might look Samoan by the end of the summer. Surprise! I'm part Cherokee so I will get a tan this summer! 

To continue on ever so gracefully marching band is great! When you are a marching band member you get to play the song Thriller while wearing a fruity hat. The possibilities are boundless!

If I haven't sold you yet then you weren't in the market to buy my precious wares. Onto something else. 

So, to buy a really nice trombone for marching band and jazz band, to get a trombone for a few hundred for marching band, or to just use my Pbone.

Now, If you don't know what a Pbone is, well, you are a privileged person. A Pbone is a plastic trombone. It's slide isn't like a regular slide, you can't use your slide-o-mix on it and achieve the same results as you do with a normal slide. The mouthpiece cannot produce a good sound and you have to use a small shank brass mouthpiece instead.Every thing about the instrument is cheap, You can get a better brass trombone for the same price. The only good thing about the instrument especially for marching band is that it's only 1.8 pounds with the Pbone mouthpiece and probably a couple pounds more with the brass mouthpiece. 

To end off this post I'll leave you with some Star Wars multi-lingual Darth Vader stuff. 

Thanks for reading, have a nice day or a nice night.

Darth Vader in Multiple Languages

The Sacrosanct, Sagacious, Salubrious and Satiating Solo/Ensemble Escapade

Arthur Pryor

That right above this text is a famous trombone player named Arthur Pryor. I personally don't know why I chose this picture, but if you look up trombone solos and go down exactly 73 rows you will find this picture.

To continue down this unnecessary tangent...

Random 19th Century South Carolinian Trombone Player/ Model

Alright, so if you look up revolutionary war trombone player and go down eight rows you will find this spunky carolinian civil war trombone model. From this picture you can tell that she has a great personality with a lot to bring to a conversation about pop culture.

If you haven't questioned the nature of this blog yet then, congratulations! You are used to the pointless, tangential and disfigured statements that truly embody what my blog is about.

Now onto the thing that was actually in this blogpost's title.

Alright, my perfect audience. I went to Layton for the Utah State Solo/Ensemble. I took the bus with the percussion ensemble at about 10:30 AM. I was the only non-percussion soloist on the bus that morning and my solo was scheduled for 3:05. So,  you can imagine that I had a lot of time on my hands. Now, this was Layton High School not Time Square or Las Vegas. There weren't places things to do or people to see for at least 3 hours. We weren't allowed to leave the campus, so all my exploration were kept to the confines of the Layton Knight's inner sanctum. Rationally, I walked around until I saw some orchestra kids like Benny O and Charlie L. Charlie Had to leave, so I was hanging out with Benny(if you know benny, you know this was going to be an "interesting" time. After an hour of Benny filled exploration and copious cheerio throws later, Benny realized that all the orchestra kids had left the building, so he grabbed all his stuff and ran out of the building at a dead sprint. So being "responsible" me, with an hour to go I found where my solo was, texted my piano accompanist to arrange where we should rehearse, suggested that the 15 minute time limit on the warm-up room was just a "rule", that no one enforces that and got my stuff. When I got to the practice that my accompanist setup in I found a overly nervous freshman with a white dress shirt and tie telling me that we had 8 minutes left. After I got my trombone out, warmed up, realized that the room made my sound overly bright  and was told we had 5 minutes left. Thereafter a rather, um, stout woman popped open the door and whispered a question to the preppy freshman (I surmised that she was asking about the time left). She looked at me with a supercilious look on her face along with a glint of intolerance and elitism in her eyes. What I got from that expression was, "Look at that tuxedoed up child trying to rehearse before his solo. If you had to rehearse right before you solo, you weren't ready to begin with. Idiot".  I'm sorry guys, but I can't quit capture it and put into words what this quite obese woman showed on her face. But, loathed her so much that it was as if Kim Jong Un came into that warm-up room and intimated that we were not good at planning out rehearsals. Enough of my ranting. We left the warm-up room, shared another warm-up room the cats pajamas and trombone guy Jake A. just to spite that woman and the rules. After that I went over to the seminary where lots of solos were taking place for my scheduled solo. From there I waited 37 minutes after my appointed solo time, because they were apparently running behind schedule and met wondrous Mr. Hughes outside the bus while feeling bad for keeping the bus off schedule. I got a 1- compared to the 1 I got at region which I guess I'm pretty proud of considering the lack of effort I put into my solo after region. Also I have to say that the judging is scaled up. For example the comments could be"work on getting these notes at measure 73-75 and make sure that you have dynamic range" or something where they are more conservative with what they tack off on your solo. At State They say "These notes weren't tuned and your tone quality was not not consistent".They really start tacking off things and that's why it's important to make your good solo even better or you could get a point or more lower at state compared to region.

Thanks to everyone who reads this so and now filled blogpost.

To leave you guys with a good feeling in the most centralized point in your vascular system is this metaphorical masterpiece. If you understand high school bands this is rodent gold.

l.o.l. rodent metaphors

Tremendous Transcriptions with Decadent Dolphins and Backhanded Bulldogs

Snoop Dogg with Dolphins

The Nationalist Dolphin

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen! It's that time of year at my schedule where all the Jazz band kids at my school have to do a transcription. Usually only 12 bars from a 12 bar blues song with the head and the actual solo. In my jazz band we have to learn to play the changes on piano for our song; I'm sure that in Varsity it's only harder and more time consuming.  

Maybe it is a hassle to do the transcription but it improves us all as players of our respective instruments. For example when you are listening to the soloist you have to be able to tell what note he's playing while keeping track of the rhythm. Not all of the notes are sustained for long at all. Maybe you are trying to transcribe one of Andy Martin's solos and he goes into a 5 bar nonstop 16-note run, and there, you are pretty much hopeless unless you are now all of the jazz specific scales by heart or you have a program that can slow the song. But, when you transcribe you develop your musical ear so you can decipher notes better and be able to listen to something and play it right off the bat. When you get to that point its really cool and you can show off to all your friends. 

Transcription improves your solo vocabulary. If you want to be a good soloist or even if you just want cool stuff to play over changes then transcription is what you want to do. There are hundreds of solos over an f blues by talented and famous musicians that you can listen to, transcribe, and play over some changes at your school or even at home with some changes you can play on your laptop. 

The last thing is that the best players have done tons of transcriptions. There's a trumpet player at my high school named Luca and he is an amazing soloist. He's transcribed every solo that clifford brown has on the internet and if you listen to Clifford or you know how he plays, Luca has an identical solo vocabulary and tone quality. If I wanted to sound like Andy Martin or JJ Johnson I would listen to them all the time, transcribe everything that they've put out. At the end of it my solo vocabulary would be dramatically different and expanded, my tone quality would have changed to a point and I would be able to show off all his works and name them. 

That's all I have to say about transcriptions for this post. I hope that you guys liked and potentially learned something from it. Also if you want an easy way to transcribe you can go to Noteflight, it makes the process of transcription phenomenally easier then just using a pen and musical score paper because you don't have to rely on your handwriting and what you believe a note sounds like in your head. It writes it out so it looks professional and it plays the note for you so you can check if its the correct one.It plays back what you wrote with your choice of instrument to play it along with a choice of swing or no swing. 

Sorry, but I had to say it. Have a nice day or night. Look forward to a post about marching band and this bulldog.

Bulldog in a Toddler Swing

Best Bass Trombone Talk and Squirrel Semantics.

A Trombone Shorty

Ooh, thats right there was at true trombone joke. That picture did deserve a true trombone joke though, because squirrels need rights too. You know in the era that we live in I'm appalled by the fact that squirrels don't have rights like we do.
They don't have free speech, if they had free speech things like squirrel dictatorships wouldn't form.

Squirrels, don't have the right to bear arms, you know squirrels are already in such a disadvantage when it comes to bear attacks, they need that equalization that a bazooka brings to a bear brawl. Just imagine this squirrel above this paragraph with a bazooka and you will understand how powerful and humorous that is at the same time.

Now I believe that squirrels don't need the right to refuse soldier housing. In the society that squirrels live in currently there has been a development of tree sharing intolerance which is truly dismaying.

Unreasonable seizures and seizures for squirrels is just not cool. Squirrels spend all of their late fall free time organizing their nuts because they don't have Netflix. Those nuts are everything to them, don't be rummaging through those and taking them, how do you think most dogs feel.

Squirrel right to property is paramount. Even though tree-sharing helps squirrels have good squarma (think about it) the other squirrels in the oak trees need to know that that tree is the Squirrelson's tree, not the Squirreliam's or even the Squirrelenberry's tree.

Squirrel trials must be speedy. Have you ever seen a lethargic squirrel? Point made.

Excessive bails are just prejudice. It singles out the lower class squirrels and that's just not fun for everyone. Since squirrel society is making a noticeable shift to communism, it important get rid of socio-economic boundaries.

Give squirrels all the rights. All vices would be made illegal in squirrel society, because in society there is a certain prejudice that effects the squirrels children. We can't teach the little squirrels to be bigots!

Wow, I didn't know I had that in my to talk about squirrel rights for that long. That was just kind of weird.

Now let's actually talk about bass trombones.
The bass trombone is the exact length of a tenor trombone, but has a larger bore size and bell diameter.
So, the Bore size is at .562" and at .580" through the valve tubing. The bell diameter spans from 9.5"-10.5".

The fact is that the bass trombone is pretty awesome, you have low parts that sometimes even consist of pedal tones. You just sound like a musical terminator that can do the jitterbug. You have some of the lowest parts in the band and you feel like you have the power to overpower the band completely.

Also, bass trombone players are the coolest of the cool. Think about all the bass trombones that you personally know, including yourself Mr. N.W. They are just cool guys, and I get to join the club.

That's all I got for this post, thank you for reading, have a nice something.

State Jazz With Funny Haircut Fads

No caption could describe this

Ok. So this blogpost is weird.

As you can tell I have been "exposed" to, um, this. I honestly can't hold it in. It looks like a young man thought it was a good idea to scribble brown expo marker in a circle around his face to connect his tween side-burns and then photoshop his face onto Vin Diesel's head. I wonder what he was thinking right when a person snapped this picture. Maybe its"I didn't really have any friends until last tuesday at midnight, that's where I met a man in my local Waffle House named Steve. Steve he had a really cool Yu-gi-oh card collection, but that was only a ruse that I caught up on later. It was really an elaborate plan to get me to join his cult, The Kings of Kosher Cutlery. It all went downhill from there. he was He's probably just a victim of some college prank.

I really don't know why this is relevant to my blog, lets get into some relevant things. State Jazz competition is coming up. Its on a saturday and I have to be at the high school and ready at 7:13 to get on the bus to go to murray high school. We are going first, and I forget when the varsity plays but the we either leave or will be back in the afternoon. I'm a little worried, because there are parts that aren't all there somehow. There's also random mistakes that happened on the concert that I don't have any control over. I'm not sure If I've said this before on my blog, forgive me if I have, but, I can't do anything to prevent someone from misplacing the beat to the point where the band can't find the beat for a few measures. I can't prevent freak events and I guess that's whats making me nervous right now. Oh and also hitting the chair in front of me when I'm doing my fifth position.

Beware of those dubious trombone slides

Well, there's always a spongebob quote to lighten the mood "The best time to wear a striped sweater, is all the time."

So, we all know that spongebob is lyrically gifted. Lyrical enough to touch the hearts and minds of kids everywhere. But, he shouldn't join an acapella group. Since spongebob is the best cartoon from my early childhood and still is the best cartoon. I personally don't care too much for the newer spongebob episodes, the ones where the cartoon style got changed from this...

to this...

Even spongebob agrees.

The sad thing is that I can't link to these pages to you beautiful people because they are all blocked for some reason. It honestly limits creativity and deters students from doing creative things in their projects/blogs.

That's it for now, next post is about the best of the benevolent bass trombone. Thanks for reading and have a nice something.

Copious Amounts of Competitions With Talk of The Penniless Squirrel's Malnutrition

Sometimes it sounds like this is the case

Sorry guys I'm kind of on a squirrel kick right now, but you can't scold the squirrels! This picture was just too perfect to resist. It's both metaphorical and hilarious(squirrel double entendre).

Anyway, since squirrel talk is officially over, it's time for state solo/ensemble talk.  So, I did solo/ensemble(I did a solo) at my high school for the region competition. I was scored a 1 which is pretty durn good. I'm the only person in my school's symphonic band that made qualifies for state. To be fair there weren't that many in symphonic band doing it. Maybe six people even did the competition from symphonic band. Despite that I'm still proud I did well.

The piece that I played was called Achilles by R.M. Endresen. It was a grade IV piece with a piano accompaniment. I played it well and it was a great piece.

So I know that you want to know about that squirrel malnutrition right? Well squirrel malnutrition is just a thing I said to rhyme with state competition, kind of like Wiffletree Wind Ensemble, except five times better.
Sure a diet based solely on tree nuts can't be that great for you, too much carbs. I know that squirrels are herbivores and I'm sure that they have copious amounts of berries as well. Maybe there are squirrel kings in residential areas that govern the surplus of such nuts and berries and they are the only ones with the fat stacks. No stone unturned on this blog, we get right down to squirrel socio-economics.

Honestly I believe that the last paragraph was pure gold. Maybe you think it was nickel or maybe you think it was Californium 252 which is worth 27 million per gram.

Ok, now that we've gotten solo ensemble and squirrel socio-economic levels out of the way. I should talk about the Jazz concert. In the JV Jazz we did a set of three songs: Satin Doll, Misty and Oclupaca. A moderate swing, a ballad and a latin/swing piece. The first one and the last one went well but, the second song went very poorly, to put it candidly. It was out of tune and half-way a member of the rhythm got two beats ahead of the band, we lost track of one so the trombone missed their entrance. As long as that doesn't happen at state then we should get a 1 or a 1-.

Thank you guys for reading. I hope you will comment on the post and follow this blog if you haven't already. Have a nice day, night nice night or nice anything.

Oh,  here's the music we played at the jazz concert. The Satin Doll video isn't the same arrangement but you'll get the idea. Links above in blue.