Since moving to The Bitterroot, groups with room for my trombone playing are hard to come by. My fall-back option is my computer and studio speakers running Music Minus One recordings while I pretend to have a real band or small combo to play along with.
I used my new-to-me-then Canon camera to record two representative samples of my main Bitterroot trombone gigs. The miniature internal microphone certainly does precious little to capture any sound quality that might exist were we listening live. The artsy photographic effects were fortuitous accidents. I did not know I had turned them on (or how), but am happy with the result.
Most summers find me playing a bit part in our community band… that is when terrorists aren’t running false flag community shut-down programs that some people call COVID.
I share here two sample recordings of The Bitterroot Community Band. The Gary Owen March from the Hamilton band-shell and the Tijuana Brass Medley from the Daly Mansion lawn.
Here too, my microphone does injustice to the band sound, but gives you the essence of my community band.
Gary Owen was particularly fun for me as I took on the euphonium part that was written for a valve instrument as we had no euphonium in our band when we began practicing this piece. The challenge was to play something scored for a fast-moving valve instrument on a long slide action. It gave me something to work for and rewarded me with a lot of fun in accomplishing it; getting all those notes out of my horn.
The Daly Mansion gig is a beautiful setting for making music, but without the bandshell to focus the sound, a lot of it goes up into the trees. It takes a lot more band to give the audience scattered about on lawn chairs a rich sound… then we have the tinny built-in microphone issue again. Nevertheless, you can see why we enjoy having this group of musicians to play with.