Sun, 25 Dec 2011
Learning baritone again (for the Russian Nonsemble)
In fifth and sixth grade, I used to play the baritone horn. A few weekends ago, I played a show with the Russian Nonsemble. Look for me in a blue shirt and tie:
When I joined the Brighton public school system in fifth grade, other students had been playing musical instruments for a year. I tried a few different options, and I settled on the baritone. Maybe I really liked the sound, or how buzzing works with a mouthpiece and combines with the entire horn. Maybe I was suggestible and accepted something that the band needed.
I learned the instrument on bass clef, which was its own oddity. It was a little confusing to use bass clef in band and treble clef in chorus, but I managed. (Maybe this exercise taught me something about the concept of equivalence.)
There is something relaxing about playing the baritone: I am not keeping the melody. The tone quality I send out is not, at least in a fifth grade band, make or break the performance. One downside is that, with the highly repetitious lines, it can be easy to get lost.
Early in the sixth grade, our band director asked for volunteers to learn the French horn. Steve Marler picked it up for the musical challenge. I picked it up because I was willing to fill an institutional need.
It was a lot of fun to play French horn. Well, it was a challenge, at least. Every single group performance setting I had for the French horn -- from sixth grade through high school, through the Johns Hopkins concert band -- there was someone sitting next to me who was a full notch better at me. It was disheartening, to be honest.
I stopped playing horn somewhere in college. For a while I played mellophone in the Johns Hopkins pep band, but that wound down eventually.
About a year ago, my friend Irina invited me to be part of a band, for which she lent me a baritone.
Halfway through the concert you see above, I began to do more than just read the music. I listened to the sound of the band and looked at my bandmates, making bom-pom sounds on the horn while bobbing up and down with the rhythm of the song we were playing.
Thanks to Jess Schumann for taking the picture!
