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I play the smellyphone in marching band when im needed.

FUN! biggrin

YAY! We started concert season last week and I have all the solos so far! we have four horns this year, which must be a record for the symphonic band...lol. I can't wait till our first concert in a couple of weeks. I feel sorry for the rest of my section though, they have to play Mellophone. I get to play piccolo instead! YAY! no offense to Melly players out there but the Mellophone sucks. The Tone is horrible and who ever designed it, should die...and if they already did...well they should die again!

alright, alright. I wish you luck. The horns get the most interesting parts in our band...the mellos get whole note and half notes...thats about it. Our horns get solos and solis and we almost always have the melody!

We get a whole lot of sixteenth note runs, and we usually play the same part as the trumpets or Flutes depending on the song=) So I guess we are lucky.

Oh--I forgot to tell...Our high school doesn't allow mellophones! That's why I have to play percussion. It's so sad.

...O_O

What the heck does your band have carrying the alto part? The poor alto saxes, all by themselves?! gonk

Well, I have a little story to share about the mellophone and it's bell. You see, I was marching around, weaving through the clarinets to get to the front to be part of the big hit as usual, and... I almost ended up making my own big hit. Huge mellophone bell + poor clarinet player right in front of me = collision waiting to happen. Luckily I heard her playing and I was like, "Whoa, hearing a sound coming out of a clarinet in front of me and can't see who's playing it...", so I stopped and kinda marked time so I could wait for her to pass.

As for our parts in the bands... we get a lot of solos/solis and stuff in concert band, and the countermelody parts in marching band. I love our marching songs- they're usually more interesting than the concert music, except for the fact that whoever writes them usually thinks we can spontaniously do G to G octave jumps whenever we want. Last year's show's last song consisted of 16 straight measures of yummy high G tied whole notes. It was all GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG! Usually by that time in the show my chops were dead, so I brought it down an octave 99.9% of the time. In fact, I'm pretty sure in the end we just changed it because nobody in our section could hold that freakin' G for that long. But I forget. O_O

This is the first time in concert band that I've had three other horns in my section- probably because there's always 4 parts in the music we now play. I find it really weird that the 3rd part is usually much higher in range than the 2nd part. Part of the reason the 3rd chair player is where she is is that her range isn't very high or low. I made second chair, and my parts rarely go above an A on the staff when we don't have the melody. The 3rd part's almost like an extra 1st part, sometimes, while I have my own thing going on and the 4th part backs me up. Other times I back up the 1st part and the 3rd part has its own thing that the 4th part backs up... and now I'm confusing myself. But the 3rd part is scary. I think that's the point I was trying to make.

One last question: what model of horn is the best, in your opinion? I play on one of the school's Holton H179s, but I'm looking into the H277-H281s for when I buy. I haven't heard much about brands besides Holton, Yamaha, and Conn, so I'm curious.

Whew, long post. XD

Neh, not the uber G. The composers aren't that crazy. razz It's the G sitting so very unlovingly right on top of the bars- not the one in them, and not the one way above them. It's not really super hard to hit normally, but it's evil when you have to hold it out for a measure or so while the trumpets around you have to go slow to get their quarter notes and triplets right while we practice, or when you're having to concentrate on moving forward on the field at 28 million miles per hour to make way for your rookie simultaniously. >_>

I can barely get up to the high C above the staff, but I haven't ever tried to squeak past that. (I think my brain would explode. gonk ) I can't read ledger lines that high (or low...) very well, either, although I'm learning the ones on the bottom so I can play in the lower octaves in our songs in concert band.

Speaking of ledger lines and stuff like that, french horn + bass clef = evil in a bag.

Wow, chirpdee, that sounds about like my issues with the F Horn (but I only played in concert band, b/c I marched in the guard) yeah, and some of the songs I got were just sick compared to what everyone else was playing.... we only had 2 parts though, instead of 4... the only time we ever had 4 parts wasin Jazz band, I think.