GOTTA BE A STRING PLAYER

A blog for string players, by string players, about everything. Have questions or want advice? Hit up the ask box! Check out gear at: gottabeastringplayer.spreadshirt.com

[131-di]

the contrabass saxophone is such an absurd instrument

[medicalalucard-deactivated20201]

talk dirty to me

[illogicalhumanoid]

Have ya’ll seen the double contrabass flute before???

[131-di]

reblogging my own post because what in the fuck

[leaf-jelly]

i give you the contrabass tuba. Why is it real. I dont know.

[carbink]

Know what’s even better?

HYPERBASS FLUTE

[paulsrockinpagoda]

my counter:

piccolo trombone 

[gottabeastringplayer]

I’m both glad and sad that string players are only limited to violin, viola, cello, and bass. Can you imagine a contrabass? Or a piccolo violin????

[wielderofscythes]

String players are not limited to just those.

I present, THE OCTOBASS

It’s so big that it needs keys to hit the strings.

And in the reverse direction there exists the Pochette. Translated from French, it means pocket, as it was a pocket sized violin like instrument.

[katherine-xari]

[krisdoesart]

This is amazing

[anais-ninja-bitch]

someone post the archlute

[cargopantsman]

This one?

[recoil-operated-deactivated2021]

Subcontrabass C ocarina

[greater-than-the-sword]

Legend of Zelda: The Subcontrabass Ocarina of Time

[hey-its-saturn]

this is my favorite post i think i’ve reblogged it like 4 times

[irishfry]

@not3catsinatrenchcoat @marinipanini

[gottabeastringplayer]

Did I come out of years long retirement to say "whoa, that's my add-on from 5 million years ago?" Maybe!

[birdsarecommunists]

Cute music terms to name your children:

Viola

Harmony

Melody

Cadence

Carol

Hymn

Celeste

Clef

Agitato

Oboe Player

F Sharp

♮

Barbaro

Plagal

Smorzando

ii♭ 6-4

Canon in inversion and augmentation

[sosdoestats]

well that escalated quickly

[gottabeastringplayer]

hey what do you mean contrabass "doesn't exist"? literally played that instrument for about 6-7 years so like... pretty sure it's not a figment of my imagination.

Y’know, that’s my own ignorance, sorry. I was thinking about the other ranges of some brass/woodwind instruments and was clearly not well educated on the full range of strings. 

[gottabeastringplayer]

WHEN MUSICIANS ARE PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE

[gottabeastringplayer]

Hey everyone. It's been such a long time since I've started this blog, and even longer since I've updated it, but here's a nice refresher. I still do intend to make a shirt one day that has an orchestra layout with stereotypes written in for the sections. One day it'll happen.

[131-di]

the contrabass saxophone is such an absurd instrument

[medicalalucard-deactivated20201]

talk dirty to me

[illogicalhumanoid]

Have ya’ll seen the double contrabass flute before???

[131-di]

reblogging my own post because what in the fuck

[leaf-jelly]

i give you the contrabass tuba. Why is it real. I dont know.

[carbink]

Know what’s even better?

HYPERBASS FLUTE

[paulsrockinpagoda]

my counter:

piccolo trombone 

[gottabeastringplayer]

I'm both glad and sad that string players are only limited to violin, viola, cello, and bass. Can you imagine a contrabass? Or a piccolo violin????

[omg-horns]

JUST WATCH IT OK

[shmuringg]

Holt shit

[omg-horns]

YES

[eatsthomas]

I am scared and confused.

[omg-horns]

(:

[my-mental-quo]

I love this….those kids are geniuses…and do they actually know how to play/tongue/bow the instrument they were playing in that video? Not doubting them or anything it just looked like they swapped instruments….

[maxopferkuch]

Ok, as the person in the blue shirt on the left, I can explain what is going on here.

On the far left, you see a clarinetist playing a broken cello.  She does not know how to play the cello.  (Nor does that cello have any intention of being played.)

My friend and I are collectively playing a frankenstein of an instrument that I like to call the “Eb bassooninet.”  It’s an Eb clarinet with a bassoon bocal attached. It sounds like a dying duck.

The bassoonist in the middle is the only one playing a normal instrument normally.

Second from the right, you see a clarinetist playing half a clarinet.

Finally, on the far right you see a clarinetist playing a Bb clarinet that is pulled out so far at every joint that it approximates an A clarinet.

The best part about this video is that everyone is actually a really accomplished musician, not that you’d guess it xD

[gayworstenemy-deactivated201803]

au contraire, this is the kind of thing ONLY accomplished musicians are fucking weird enough to come up with

[housecatincarnate]

[musicalmelody22]

Fun Story: My director kept telling me and my tenor sax buddy to play softer. No matter what we did, it wasn’t soft enough for him. So getting frustrated, I told my buddy “Dont play this time. Just fake it” 

Our Band Director then informed us we sounded perfect. 

[fororchestra]

To my readers: “p” means quiet, “pp” means really quiet. I’ve never seen “pppp” before haha.

On the contrast, “f” means loud, and “ffff” probably means so loud you go unconscious.

[corruptbucky]

I had ffff in a piece once and my conductor told me to play as loudly as physically possible without falling off my chair…

[justtkeepcalmm-deactivated20250]

Me and my trombone buddies had “ffff” and he sat next to me and played so hard that he fell out of his chair.

The lengths we go for music.

[lady-gorthaur]

Okay yeah so I play the bass clarinet and the amount of air you have to move and the stiffness of the reed means it only has two settings and that is loud and louder, with an optional LOUDEST that includes a 50% probability of HORRIBLE CROAKING NOISE which is the bass equivalent of the ubiquitous clarinet shriek.

[elsajeni]

One day, when I was in concert band in high school, we got a new piece handed out for the first time, and there was a strange little commotion back in the tuba section — whispering, and pointing at something in the music, and swatting at each other’s hands all shhh don’t call attention to it. And although they did attract the attention of basically everyone else in the band, they managed to avoid being noticed by the band director, who gave us a few minutes to look over our parts and then said, “All right, let’s run through it up to section A.”

And here we are, cheerfully playing along, sounding reasonably competent — but everyone, when they have the attention to spare, is keeping an eye on the tuba players. They don’t come in for the first eight measures or so, and then when they do come in, what we see is:

[stifled giggling]

[reeeeeeally deep breath]

[COLOSSAL FOGHORN NOISE]

The entire band stops dead, in the cacophonous kind of way that a band stops when it hasn’t actually been cued to stop. The band director doesn’t even say anything, just looks straight back at the tubas and makes a helpless sort of why gesture.

In unison, the tuba players defend themselves: “THERE WERE FOUR F’S.”

FFFF is not really a rational dynamic marking for any instrument, but for the love of all that is holy why would you put it in a tuba part.

[minguskingus]

This is the best band post 

Everyone else go home

[oxboold-deactivated20180729]

Oh man, so I play trombone, and we got this piece called Florentiner Marsch by Julius Fucik, and we saw this

which is 8 fortes. We were shocked until,

that is 24 fortes who the fuck does that

[prokopetz]

Who does that?

This guy. Take a good look - that is the moustache of a man with nothing to lose.

[vivelafat]

Julius IdontgivaFucik

[septemberbells]

More like Julius Fuckit

[sushinfood]

Pyrozod’s tags for this were too hilarious not to share

[haha-leigh]

I haven’t been in band for years but this made me laugh so hard

[hisroyalnerd]

I haven’t seen this post in ages and I’m dying of laughter

[tobinlaughing]

I didn’t think it could get better after The Foghorn Tuba Story, but it did. It got better. Bless you, MusicTumblr.

[gottabeastringplayer]

I don’t think I’ve seen any of these ultra dramatic dynamics but like. Why composers. W h y.

[perezhilton]

[stupendousmelody]

When you are one with the music

[thirstym8nd]

Luvs it

[rae-redacted]

WHO IS SHE

[guyofyear]

ALONDRA DE LA PARRA

[theunimpairedcondition]

[counterpunches]

#a warning to anyone out there attracted to women#she looks great in a tux

[missmarionmac]

Have some more photos of her in action, because I love her:

And my all-time favorite:

[houseofgriffons]

She looks like she’s casting spells

[thegreatweissshark]

Ohh, hello. 

[trumpetangst]

MUSICAL NOTATION, AS DESCRIBED BY CATS

(I would have liked to crop some of these gifs (like the accent ones) to make them more accurate but alas, I lack the skills.)

[classicalcarp-deactivated201805]

i never knew i needed this in my life until now

[art-yeti]

“Celebrating Sax: Instruments and Innovation” exhibition at The Met… or aka the horrific past of brass

[four-flats]

drunk brass instruments

[hisnamewasbeanni]

If brass instruments watched horror movies, these would be the melted former-humans emerging from the darkness underground.

[sixpenceee]

[gottabeastringplayer]

You may only use this to play Danse Macabre.

[steampunktendencies]

Photo taken inside a very old French cello from Napoleon III times. Credits: Adrian Borda

[gottabeastringplayer]

Tag urself if anything I’m the scroll conductor (but only mildly)

[mybrainkindahoyts]

Some more interesting captions I ran into in this amazing ensemble today.

[tastefullyoffensive]

Instruments Renamed for Accuracy (via WalkingSoliloquy) Previously: Animals Renamed for Accuracy

[gottabeastringplayer]

Please make sure to share this with your own Captain Flappy.

[black-to-the-bones-deactivated2]

LOOK AT THIS 

[tharook]

[fatherway]

anyways heres wonderwall

[oxfrnk]

why is ur ukulele so big

[fatherway]

i feed it well