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- cross-posted to:
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Everyone in my class was required to learn an instrument too. Maintaining, cleaning and checking whether everything works was literally one of the first things we were taught dude. No way that kid never properly disassembled their clarinet.
I’m not sure if the right lessons are learned here.
Imagine that this person was handed a will maintained working instrument.
Then he would not have received all those specialized training and advanced techniques used to mask the clarinet’s failing. Would be still have been as good years later?
I think its an analogy fam.
Some of us get handed broken clarinets in life and have to figure it out. In order to kinda fit in.
Some of us get regular clarinets that sound fine.
Surprisingly maybe to you, everybody assumes the person with the bad sounding clarinet is just bad at clarinet despite trying their best.
But when given the right tools, they’re amazing.
Yeah, you definitely did not learn the right lesson from this.
I played clarinet in 5th grade and was last chair. I challenged the girl next to me a couple of times and won, but then she’d take it back the next week. In my case it was because I didn’t practice and didn’t want to play the clarinet, I wanted to play the sax, but we already had a clarinet, so that’s what I got. I still have the clarinet, it’s in my closet.
This story is a good analogy for when they try to force kids to learn by certain methods instead of accepting that another method might suit them better
When learning to weld, it’s recommended that you start with Stick welding if you want to be serious and learn all the types eventually. It’s harder to start with, but forces you to learn better hand control. Stick welding isn’t like a broken clarinet, but the story reminded me of that.
I can be in board with this story until he moved from last to first overnight. While I realize that’s exaggeration, at most I’d believe he moved up a bit unless he also changed schools or the band teacher changed. That would require the band instructor to admit they were wrong in their judgement of the student, which almost never happens.
Part of a band teacher’s job is maintaining the instruments. The band teacher deserves all the blame attributed to those bad pads.
Was looking for this response. A band director should have noticed that shit immediately.
All of the community’s job is to fund the school district. There’s not much a band teacher can do if there’s no money for maintenance…and very often there isn’t.
Not that I’m defending band teachers. Some are great. Some suck. Just like everyone else. But it’s not like the pads grow on trees.
Or maybe they do. I don’t know. I’m not a musician.
There’s a big difference between “sorry, we can’t afford pads” and “your fundamentals suck. Git gud, n00b.” And that difference is a bad band teacher.
Also, the student or parents were willing to pay for private lessons. My private lessons all the way back in the 1900s cost 3-4x more than clarinet pads cost now. I’m sure they would have much rather covered the cost of new pads.
Finally, back when I ran technology for a middle school, I’d often help the band teachers repair and maintain instruments while chatting in my free time. If a band class/school district can’t afford clarinet pads for years, then they are weeks away from every single instrument turning to dust in the hands of teenagers.
Which brings me back to my main point: if a school-owned clarinet has bad pads for years, then that band teacher ain’t band teachering.
Yeah, like I said, I’m not defending any band teachers. However, my kids’ elementary school band teacher was awesome, but the saxophone she loaned my son one summer was absolute shit. My daughter struggled with the drum kits in every grade because they were always falling apart. And our school district is considered one of the wealthier ones in the area.
I would bet that one clarinet’s pads wasn’t the only issue in the school district. It’s more likely that the pads went unnoticed because there were so many other more significant problems that no one ever got around to dealing with the pads.
I’m not defending the band teacher. Just suggesting there might be a lot more to this.
That is very generous and understanding of you. But I’m sure if you casually mentioned to the band teacher that the saxophone was absolute shit, they’d probably agree with you.
What OOP is describing would be the equivalent of a language teacher telling you that your child is illiterate because their pencil broke while they were filling out a multiple choice sheet.
If I ever get to retire, I would love to repair instruments for public schools.
Sometimes your clarinet is just broken.
Happens more and more as you get older.
this might be the kick in the ass i need to repair my saxophone
Too bad for me I had my guitar serviced, figuring it would be better to spend a little doing that rather than spend way more on a new guitar when the problem might have been me the whole time.
The guy said my guitar was perfectly fine after replacing the strings :( Not that I play it often either way, or would start playing it often if I bought a new expensive one.
But on the flip side, it turns out it was the equipment for my return to guitar hero/rock band sucking more than I felt it should. Though these days, it seems like it’s hard to find a decent guitar controller at all (the new one I bought had to be opened so I could shave the strummer down so it wouldn’t stick when you strummed it, and I’m still not sure where the circuit is for the star power tilt because it was as bad as any other guitar got by day 1), but between that and cleaning out and re-pasting/padding my PS3, I’m no longer getting a series of notes I’m sure I hit all of but the game says I didn’t hit any of.
So many guitar repairs are bridge height
Do it! Join a ska band!
I wish I had time for a ska band right now. I just joined a new band (first gig with them was last weekend and they did a hell of a lot better than I expected. I’m really proud of them) and have a few music related projects. My todo list has the following categories under music: transcription, arrangement, instrument design, technique instructions, band practice, and Navi.
I’m trying to limit myself right now and not join more bands than I have time to practice but you make a very good point.
I feel ya, I’ve been turning down new projects too, recently. Fortunately, my main squeeze is a ska band (skacore, close enough), so I get to live the dream lol
Ah yes, the weighted training clarinet
Neville Longbottom has entered the chat.
Lesson here is that I should definitely buy the new set of golf clubs
There’s some math tricks that can help, too. Like for each hole, subtract 5 from your stroke count, and suddenly par doesn’t seem so ridiculous. Or it wouldn’t if golf wasn’t such a ridiculous sport to begin with.
Just change your golf pads.
