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...a little part of me dies.

So for the background to that statement! I'm in my schools(kind of my schools kind of not) swing band. Anyone who has ever played in a swing/jazz/big band will know that a feature of many of the pieces is a solo, or a lot of time theres a repeated solo section. In my band, the general custom is that if there is a solo section everyone in the band will be ready to solo and will just wait and see if the conductor points at them. Mostly it'll be playing the solo thats written down on the sheet, occasionally it will be improvised. Thats how it works in my band.

So we had a gig tuesday night and in one of the pieces there are no written solos, normally the drums and the bass and the piano will improvise a solo each and then we'll move on. Halfway through the piece, conductor points to the trombone line(which I'm the leader of) and indicates that he wants all 5 of us to improvise. We panic but we agree. All of us play one 16 bar improvised solo. Then he points and says he wants us to do pairs, which is alternating playing four bars each, so we all do that with the last guy doing pairs with the trumpet improviser. Now we're tired! And he indicates that he wants the top 3 of us to just go up and down the line doing 4 bars each and then he just left us going for ages and we're seriously running out of ideas. It disolved into a contest of who can hit the highest, craziest note possible as well as, who can cram the most notes into a 4 bar phrase. Then he let us stop and we died....

When my conductor makes me do crazy solos. My soul cries.
Tell your crazy solo stories here!

Well, it wasn't realy crazy, but t was nerve-racking.

We had solo and emsemble in my band because we were advanced band(Even though we were only seventh and eighth graders...) So, in seventh grade, my first year there, which was special in its own, me and my best friend are going to play a duet from this disney solo sheet music we have because it has to be one we got on our own. So, we practice together for a month, her on oboe and me on clarinet. We have these cool alternating part like parts where one will play and the other will rest, and then we switched. Will, about a day before we were to lay, her oboe breaks. I'm left to do it alone while her oboe is in the shop, and I don't know the part. she got off of the grade for excused, but I failed. Mstly because I didn't have any time to practice that part, and was anticipating a crash and burn before I even started, so I didn't do too well anyway because I was thinking too hard abotu that part. He knew the situation, and probably would have passed me as an excused unknown part, because I got the solo book specifically for this solo and when we started the solo. It was terrible. Especially because I know it know. In three octaves, which aren't even written. stare

I'm bout to join a jazz band at my school. I think I'll be the only trombone, since I'm the only trombone player is 8th and 9th grade.
But we'll have at least one, if not two valve trombones.
But the valve trombonists aren't really amazing at their instruments (they both play tuba, one as main, and the other one's main is baritone.) so I would get low solos (since I'm a first trombone at the high school... and I'm in middle school).
But I might join on trumpet so there would be an audible trumpet section.
(I can play trumpet.... umm...... not well, but better than a beginner. But I can play baritone too so if I learned stuff on baritone.... oh well).
And those would really be the only two sections I could be in.
But I would have a solo in either one, or a duet in trumpet. Maybe.

Keep the stand flat, well, flatter than normal throughout, then when you stand you can look down at it. Thats what we do.

Huh.

Our Jazz instructor absolutely loathes written solos, written drum parts, and written piano comps...and a lot of the time whatever might be written for vibes or flute, or possibly the entire piece itself! biggrin So for solos and stuff, he has us practice scales and listen to real jazz.

As for me soloing, flute parts seem to be only sometimes written, and if they are written, odds are they don't have changes. Plus, I freeze up at anything if put on the spot if I'm not confident with it.