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Letter of the month:
(That's
about how many we get)
Dear Old Duffer
As an ex
professional player - some of my former colleagues may
disagree over the precise use of the word ‘professional’, but I did
occasionally get paid - of some standing, usually in the loud bits of
Mahler symphonies, and much slumping gracefully in the chair hoping the
bladder will hold out to the interval, I would like to express my
admiration for the author(s) of this site.
I always believed
that duff chops were the result of a nasty virus
which was spread by glass washing machines used in pubs, getting the
last tube home, or telling people what kind of mouthpiece you were
thinking of changing to.
At last it would
seem at that some serious research is going to be
taken into this foul blot on our noble calling.
I have some
literature which may be of some use to your research –
including a number of unfortunate reviews taken from the daily
newspapers - describing in some detail the devastating effects of ‘Duff
Chops’. I don’t want them back incidentally.
Jolly good luck
with it anyway.
PS I have enclosed
a pound with this email, and there’s more where that
came from!
Noah Littlepub
Upper Shasting
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For winning our 'Letter Of The
Month' competition, Noah gets
a free pint of London Pride,
which can be claimed in any Soho bar
and a free trip home if
he bought a return ticket.
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Duffchops has recently
received this communication from Olav Uweson
( a direct descendent of the first wave of Viking raiders
who pushed inland in the year
789 towards Milton Keynes and, finding themselves with nowhere to sail
their longships,
excavated the famous Willen Lake, although never actually successfully
navigating across it.)
Transposition
Transposition
has been the bane of
every horn player’s life. Although composers such as Monsieur
Mozart inconsiderately decided to write music in keys, that was
alright for players of the time because they had crooked instruments
and could just add some garden hose for extra lengths. These days,
players ‘transpose’, and there are three very distinct methods to
follow.
Let’s
say that you’re sitting in a
horn section and the music in front of you says ‘Horn in D’ and
you have a written minim, second-line ‘G’. What do you do? Well,
many players today would apply method 1 and would think – I’m
playing on a horn in F and I want to transpose down to Horn in D. The
key I’m transposing to – D – is a minor third below the key my
instrument is pitched in – F. So I’ll play a note that is a minor
third below the written G, namely ‘E§’.
To me, that’s confusing, laborious and time consuming.
The
next method to consider is to
guess. Alright, so we have a written G in Horn in D, I’ll guess C#.
I don’t know if its right, and quite frankly, it’s also a bit
confusing. As you can see, with two methods we already have two
different answers. Hardly satisfactory.
The
only thing to do in this day and
age is to apply science. If it was good enough for Einstein and his
‘E=MC2’ then surely there must be a formula which will
ensure perfect transposition for duff-chops horn players.
The
formula is as follows: G = ((PXB2D
– X + ∏(x)
+ + 27 + (-)-û
+ ¾)).
Start with the written note ‘G’, subtract your car
registration, add the first letter of your maiden aunt’s middle
name - ‘X’ (don’t ask), times that number with your shoe size
and add the number of sausages you had last week (up to 27). Multiply
that by your age last birthday (provided it is 62 – nothing else
works) and find the corresponding letter in the Greek alphabet.
Translate that into English and voila, you have it – ‘Eb’. As
you can see, that’s considerably faster than the first irrational
method, and only a little bit off the ‘guess’ method, so as long
as you’re within a reasonable pitch of the rest of the orchestra,
conductors don’t mind too much. As this formula is by far the
easiest and most foolproof method of the three, try it out on the
first horn part of the 2nd movement of Brahms’ 2nd
Symphony, but don’t attempt it until the concert; it spoils the
fun!
To
be honest, I think that method three is just him having a bit of a joke.
Personally, I always employ
method one, falling back onto method two when my brain gives out.
This seems to be in line
with what most other players do.
Duffchops.Com accepts no
responsibility for loss of earnings or employment resulting from
experimentation with method three.
Thanks for your contribution
anyway, Olav.
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