The Flutes Hear All

Except the other flutes. Anyway, this is blog to document the phenomenon that is marching band and it's participants. Strap in folks, it's gonna be a W I L D ride.

[band-quotes]

"Two things you should never do, drugs, and breathe on the bar lines."

-The band director

[band-quotes]

"Really hammer home the ffp<ff at D. Like, full send it on the stab. Make me feel like I'm gonna get stabbed."

-Woodwind Tech

[band-quotes]

"Really hammer home the ffp<ff at D. Like, full send it on the stab. Make me feel like I'm gonna get stabbed."

-Woodwind tech

[band-quotes]

So, for those who don't know, after I graduated from high school, I came back to help tech the band, this is my second year doing so. And at like the first or second rehearsal I found this like metal stick and just took it (It's the woodwind mascot now, his name is Danny.) One of the clarinet players approached me today and told me she's going to keep a tally of how many times I drop it. I've only had Danny for 2 practices and I've already dropped him 6 times.

[band-quotes]

You: Bb

Me, an intellectual: Beef lat

[juulius-ceasar]

[band-quotes]

Clarinet: yeah no, it's not that hard, I'm just stupid

[band-quotes]

Pitt tech: *sneezes*

Pitt director: Dab on it

[incorrect-marchingband]

Band Kid Confessions

my band has a yearly ritual, where during midterms and/or finals, we sit in a circle, and put on the flashlight on our phone and put them in a circle screen down flashlight up. then one student pulls up a picture of a goat and places it in the middle, we wait for the phone to shut off (for the lamb to die) while chanting. this brings us good luck on all of our exams

[marching-band-against-humanity]

me, violently pressing f: for everyone who had to play sleigh ride again

[larissaschristies]

A collection of my favorite directions from the cello part of Next To Normal

[stevetomjohn]

The tumblr classical music fandom always seems to have a problem with how various people spell Tchaikovsky, and for that reason I present to you the Library of Congress’s list of recognized spelling variants:

[sexism-on-stage]

Typical female percussionist conversation: Me: I'm a musician Them: Cool! What do you play? The flute? Me: No, I'm a percussionist. Them: Really?? Me: Yeah What I'm thinking: BANG BANG PARADIDDLE BOOM BITCH Sorry if this isn't appropriate, but I get that a lot. "You look like a flute player." We discussed this in my Music Ed class and how much people, especially young students, tend to place instruments with a specific gender. There are 3 female percussionists in my studio of 25. It's crazy.

Percussion studio gender ratios are usually worse than low brass studios, which is both impressive and terrifying to me.

Kids do this a lot, which makes me upset. At a very young age they associate instruments with gender, because their parents or music teachers have already done this for them. Every time I would go to a new teaching placement in my degree program, I would have the kids guess what instrument I played. I would say that 75% of the time, they guessed flute. I actually had a little girl cry once because I was the first adult female trombonist she had ever met and she didn’t know that there were others like her out there.

That should not have had to happen.

[shitty-composers-notes]

This is really interesting. I’m a female trumpet player and I have definitely felt this. Especially in marching band, there’s this kind of camaraderie that builds among the boys from them ragging on each other and making sex jokes that they just aren’t comfortable making with a girl. I was the only girl in the trumpet section my freshman year in mb, and I certainly didn’t want the section leader making inappropriate comments to me, but since that was the way he communicated, I ended up being unintentionally excluded. It’s not just social ostracism either; My sophomore year in wind ensemble, my school’s auditioned band, I was not supposed to be last chair, but I ended up there anyway because all the other trumpets were boys who were friends with each other. They say together and unless I wanted to directly confront them and push a chair in between two of them (as if), I was forced into last chair. Sexism in music groups is real; don’t even get me started on how few opportunities the amazing girls in our theater program receive compared to the many opportunities given to the mediocre boys. The best way to combat it is by teaching children that their sex has nothing to do with their interests, hobbies, or dreams. And besides, isn’t it crazy that there’s such a pervasive gender binary that people artificially assign genders to inanimate objects?

[percontation-points-deactivated]

Just like how females are looked upon strangely if they play typically “masculine” instruments, the same could also be said in reverse for males who play “feminine” instruments. Every single male flautist that I’ve ever met, somebody always asked them if they were gay. 

You wouldn’t ask Sir James Galway if he was gay, so why are you asking your classmate?

[shitty-composers-notes]

You’re absolutely correct! I was just sharing my personal experience as a female trumpet player.

[urobsessedwme]

@shitty-composers-notes wow!! Let me please get in on this conversation as a female trumpet player who has extensively researched sexism in musical ensembles! What you said about lowkey being excluded and denied opportunities is right on the nose.

Btw, please look up Valaida Snow- she was called by Louis Armstrong “the second best trumpet player in the world” (after him) and she is my inspiration as a jazz musician.

Seeing this post really made my day because I find sexism tied to instruments to be fascinating and terrifying, and an excellent example of the gender constructs that still exist in western culture. Here’s an excerpt from a paper I wrote about the subject (bcs I’m too lazy right now to write something new)

“Choosing to begin learning to play the trumpet in fourth grade didn’t change my life drastically- at least, not right away. In all honesty, I could talk for hours about how playing the trumpet shaped my life, from the people I met to the sleep I lost from waking up for Jazz Band before dawn, but what stands out most to me is the worldview I acquired that comes with playing the trumpet and simultaneously being a girl. A 2002 study from the University of Washington found that children as young as age five believed that saxophone, drums, and trumpet were boys’ instruments while flute and violin were more appropriate for girls. The trumpet has always been regarded as a masculine instrument, having military connotations dating back to their use as signaling devices on the battlefield. Gustave Kerker stated in his 1904 edition of Musical Standard,“Women cannot possibly play brass instruments and look pretty, and why should they spoil their good looks?”

Once, a fellow student in the jazz band shared a list of influential jazz musicians. It was a list of over one hundred people. Not a single woman was on that list. (You’d think he would have at least included “The Mother of the Blues” Ma Rainy… But no, not a single woman.)

By high school, I was tired of the first thing fellow musicians and audience members noticed about me being my gender, not how I played. I wanted to be noticed for my talent– but instead, I was noticed for being a different kind of outlier as the only girl in a jazz band of about 25 students.“

Anyways sexism in music programs is real and message me if you want to be salty about it bcs I am always down.

[juricon]

So I finally got my copy of ‘Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer’ and it says

pornissimo

pornissimo

only in the world of Tom Lehrer

[protomagicalgirl-deactivated201]

This is my first time in musical theatre pit and i

[thefaultinourslides]

Me, jumping to conclusions

[gabrieldreyfuss]

Can’t believe I got fired from my radio gig for being myself.