Different Musical Instruments

Musical instruments come in many different varieties right from regular cornets, baritones, trombones, basses/tubas to more 'exotic' looking instruments in the brass band sphere and into other genres as well including....

Sarrusophone

Contrabass Tuba

Contrabass Flute

Cimbasso (trombone musical family)

And miniature instruments like...

Pocket cornet

And plastic instrument - yup they don't have to be brass or silver plated any more...

A video of a Contrabass Saxophone...

Brass Banding As A Family

Over the years of playing brass instruments I have noticed many many players come and many go as well. They become like family because brass bands are extensions of your family. In fact it has been said that a brass band is a family. We all come together to create music together, to laugh with (and sometimes at) each other. We encourage each other to play better and give each other time to understand and play a passage in a tune which we thought was previously impossible to play. The old phrase "Practice makes perfect" I believe works to a certain extent up until the point when you try to play your part along with the rest of the band and then all it takes is for one player to start on the wrong beat and if you are not careful it can 'throw' your timing out as well. Watching the beat of the conductor is important but I believe equally important is the sometimes necessity to use other methods of keeping the beat and listening to other players come in on a certain part of the musical piece. Other methods of keeping the beat are to count inside your head or to lightly tap your foot on the floor (I don't use this method myself because it can be noisy and distracting when someone else does it and takes away from the reverence of a piece especially during a quiet, slow movement).

As I have said above, brass bands are like large family and the brass banding movement/organisation in general come together as a family. I have often said that there are two things that everyone around the world will immediately understand... love and music. You can take a musical instrument into the jungles of Borneo to tribes people and play it and they will be fascinated by it and will try to figure out how it works and where the sound is coming from.

You can take the man out of the music but you can't take the music out of the man :-)

Introduction To The Brass Band World

Welcome to my new blog. You are all very welcome in here as I put down in writing my passion for music especially in the world of brass band music. Perhaps for some of you brass band music is boring and soooo last century - like 1940s/50s/60s when you consider at that time it was a 'big deal' to listen to it on the radio or watch it on the somewhat fledgling television sets at that time as well. You could see the brass players performing in the background of a lot of videos right up to the 1980s and then it seemed to lose its appeal after that and then slowly making a comeback again (with no small help from others of course) when the world's best known brass band 'Black Dyke' began performing with pop acts 'The Beautiful South' (Liars Bar song) and 'Peter Gabriel' (1998 film Babe: Pig In The City) and also recording the theme tune to the highly successful British gardening television show 'Groundforce'. It is hard to escape brass band music now because it is very popular amongst film makers as background music in many many hit films and if you enjoy listening to brass music like I do its very often that I will actually listen to the music being played in films rather than watching the actors and actresses delivering their lines. It doesn't even matter if it's a brass band playing or an orchestra if the music is good then it is very much worth listening to in my opinion.

For those of you whom are very much into the brass banding world I welcome you to my blog as I go through my continued journey with it. I will try to do a post each day and see where it all leads me.

Thank you for reading my very first post and I will sign off now with one of my favourite solos. Performed by Peter Roberts - Flowerdale...

Peter Roberts - 'Flowerdale'...