May I speak to the conductor

A first violinist, a second violinist, a virtuoso violist, and a bass player are at the four corners of a football field. At the signal, someone drops a 100 dollar bill in the middle of the field and they run to grab it. Who gets it?

The second violinist, because:

1. No first violinist is going anywhere for only 100 dollars.
2. There's no such thing as a virtuoso violist.
3. The bass player hasn't figured out what it's all about.

What do do with a horn player that can't play?

Give him two sticks, put him in the back, and call him a percussionist.

What do you do if he can't do that?

Take away one of the sticks, put him up front, and call him a conductor.

What's the difference between alto clef and Greek?

Some conductors actually read Greek.

A conductor and a violist are standing in the middle of the road. which one do you run over first, and why?

The conductor. Business before pleasure.

A Player's Guide for Keeping Conductors in Line

by Donn Laurence Mills

If there were a basic training manual for orchestra players, it might include ways to practice not only music, but one-upmanship. It seems as if many young players take pride in getting the conductor's goat. The following rules are intended as a guide to the development of habits that will irritate the conductor. (Variations and additional methods depend upon the imagination and skill of the player.)

1. Never be satisfied with the tuning note. Fussing about the pitch takes attention away from the podium and puts it on you, where it belongs.
2. When raising the music stand, be sure the top comes off and spills the music on the floor.
3. Complain about the temperature of the rehearsal room, the lighting, crowded space, or a draft. It's best to do this when the conductor is under pressure.
4. Look the other way just before cues.
5. Never have the proper mute, a spare set of strings, or extra reeds. Percussion players must never have all their equipment.
6. Ask for a re-audition or seating change. Ask often. Give the impression you're about to quit. Let the conductor know you're there as a personal favor.
7. Pluck the strings as if you are checking tuning at every opportunity, especially when the conductor is giving instructions. Brass players: drop mutes. Percussionists have a wide variety of dropable items, but cymbals are unquestionably the best because they roll around for several seconds.
8. Loudly blow water from the keys during pauses (Horn, oboe and clarinet players are trained to do this from birth).
9. Long after a passage has gone by, ask the conductor if your C# was in tune. This is especially effective if you had no C# or were not playing at the time. (If he catches you, pretend to be correcting a note in your part.)
10. At dramatic moments in the music (while the conductor is emoting) be busy marking your music so that the climaxes will sound empty and disappointing.
11. Wait until well into a rehearsal before letting the conductor know you don't have the music.
12. Look at your watch frequently. Shake it in disbelief occasionally.
13. Tell the conductor, "I can't find the beat." Conductors are always sensitive about their "stick technique", so challenge it frequently.
14. As the conductor if he has listened to the Bernstein recording of the piece. Imply that he could learn a thing or two from it. Also good: ask "Is this the first time you've conducted this piece?"
15. When rehearsing a difficult passage, screw up your face and shake your head indicating that you'll never be able to play it. Don't say anything: make him wonder.
16. If your articulation differs from that of others playing the same phrase, stick to your guns. Do not ask the conductor which is correct until backstage just before the concert.
17. Find an excuse to leave rehearsal about 15 minutes early so that others will become restless and start to pack up and fidget.
18. During applause, smile weakly or show no expression at all. Better yet, nonchalantly put away your instrument. Make the conductor feel he is keeping you from doing something really important.

It is time that players reminded their conductors of the facts of life: just who do conductors think they are, anyway?

Donn Laurence Mills is the NSOA contributing editor. He holds music degrees from Northwestern University and Eastman School of Music. A conductor and music educator, he is also the American educational director for the Yamaha Foundation of Tokyo.

Definitions:

• string quartet: a good violinist, a bad violinist, an ex-violinist, and someone who hates violinists, all getting together to complain about composers.
• detaché: an indication that the trombones are to play with their slides removed.
• glissando: a technique adopted by string players for difficult runs.
• subito piano: indicates an opportunity for some obscure orchestra player to become a soloist.
• risoluto: indicates to orchestras that they are to stubbornly maintain the correct tempo no matter what the conductor tries to do.
• senza sordino: a term used to remind the player that he forgot to put his mute on a few measures back.
• preparatory beat: a threat made to singers, i.e., sing, or else....
• crescendo: a reminder to the performer that he has been playing too loudly.
• conductor: a musician who is adept at following many people at the same time.
• clef: something to jump from before the viola solo.
• transposition: the act of moving the relative pitch of a piece of music that is too low for the basses to a point where it is too high for the sopranos.
• vibrato: used by singers to hide the fact that they are on the wrong pitch.
• half step: the pace used by a cellist when carrying hi instrument.
• coloratura soprano: a singer who has great trouble finding the proper note, but who has a wild time hunting for it.
• chromatic scale: an instrument for weighing that indicates half-pounds.
• bar line: a gathering of people, usually among which may be found a musician or two.
• ad libitum: a premiere.
• beat: what music students do to each other with their instruments. The down beat is performed on top of the head, while the up beat is struck under the chin.
• cadence: when everybody hopes you're going to stop, but you don't.
• diatonic: low-calorie Schweppes.
• lamentoso: with handkerchiefs.
• virtuoso: a musician with very high morals. (I know one)
• music: a complex organizations of sounds that is set down by the composer, incorrectly interpreted by the conductor, who is ignored by the musicians, the result of which is ignored by the audience.
• oboe: an ill wind that nobody blows good.
• tenor: two hours before a nooner.
• diminished fifth: an empty bottle of Jack Daniels.
• perfect fifth: a full bottle of Jack Daniels.
• ritard: there's one in every family.
• relative major: an uncle in the Marine Corps.
• relative minor: a girlfriend.
• big band: when the bar pays enough to bring two banjo players.
• pianissimo: "refill this beer bottle".
• repeat: what you do until they just expel you.
• treble: women ain't nothin' but.
• bass: the things you run around in softball.
• portamento: a foreign country you've always wanted to see.
• conductor: the man who punches your ticket to Birmingham.
• arpeggio: "Ain't he that storybook kid with the big nose that grows?"
• tempo: good choice for a used car.
• A 440: the highway that runs around Nashville.
• transpositions:
  1. men who wear dresses.
  2. An advanced recorder technique where you change from alto to soprano fingering (or vice-versa) in the middle of a piece
• cut time:
  1. parole.
  2. when everyone else is playing twice as fast as you are.
• order of sharps: what a wimp gets at the bar.
• passing tone: frequently heard near the baked beans at family barbecues.
• middle C: the only fruit drink you can afford when food stamps are low.
• perfect pitch: the smooth coating on a freshly paved road.
• tuba: a compound word: "Hey, woman! Fetch me another tuba Bryll Cream!"
• cadenza:
  1. that ugly thing your wife always vacuums dog hair off of when company comes.
  2. The heroine in Monteverdi's opera Frottola
• whole note: what's due after failing to pay the mortgage for a year.
• clef: what you try never to fall off of.
• bass clef: where you wind up if you do fall off.
• altos: not to be confused with "Tom's toes," "Bubba's toes" or "Dori-toes".
• minor third: your approximate age and grade at the completion of formal schooling.
• melodic minor: loretta Lynn's singing dad.
• 12-tone scale: the thing the State Police weigh your tractor trailer truck with.
• quarter tone: what most standard pickups can haul.
• sonata: what you get from a bad cold or hay fever.
• clarinet: name used on your second daughter if you've already used Betty Jo.
• cello: the proper way to answer the phone.
• bassoon:
  1. typical response when asked what you hope to catch, and when.
  2. a bedpost with a bad case of gas.
• french horn: your wife says you smell like a cheap one when you come in at 4 a.m.
• cymbal: what they use on deer-crossing signs so you know what to sight-in your pistol with.
• bossa nova: the car your foreman drives.
• time signature: what you need from your boss if you forget to clock in.
• first inversion: grandpa's battle group at Normandy.
• staccato: how you did all the ceilings in your mobile home.
• major scale: what you say after chasing wild game up a mountain: "Damn! That was a major scale!"
• aeolian mode: how you like Mama's cherry pie.
• bach chorale: the place behind the barn where you keep the horses.
• plague: a collective noun, as in "a plague of conductors."
• audition: the act of putting oneself under extreme duress to satisfy the sadistic intentions of someone who has already made up his mind.
• accidentals: wronng notes.
• augmented fifth: a 36-ounce bottle.
• broken consort: when someone in the ensemble has to leave to go to the bathroom.
• cantus firmus: the part you get when you can play only four notes.
• chansons de geste: dirty songs.
• clausula: Mrs. Santa Claus.
• crotchet:
  1. a tritone with a bent prong.
  2. like knitting, but faster.
• ducita: a lot of mallards.
• embouchure the way you look when you've been playing the Krummhorn.
• estampie: what they put on letters in Quebec.
• garglefinklein: a tiny recorder played by neums.
• hocket: the thing that fits into a crochet to produce a rackett.
• interval: how long it takes to find the right note. There are three kinds:
  1. Major interval: a long time.
  2. Minor interval: a few bars.
  3. Inverted interval: when you have to go back a bar and try again.
• intonation: singing through one's nose. Considered highly desirable in the Middle Ages.
• isorhythmic motet: when half of the ensemble got a different edition from the other half.
• minnesinger: a boy soprano.
• musica ficta: when you lose your place and have to bluff until you find it again.
• neums: renaissance midgets.
• neumatic melishma: a bronchial disorder caused by hockets.
• ordo: the hero in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
• rota: an early Italian method of teaching music without score or parts.
• trotto: an early Italian form of Montezuma's Revenge.
• lauda: the difference between shawms and krummhorns.
• sancta: Clausula's husband.
• lasso: the 6th and 5th steps of a descending scale.
• di lasso: popular with Italian cowboys.
• quaver: beginning viol class.
• rackett: capped reeds class
• ritornello: a Verdi opera.
• sine proprietate: cussing in church.
• supertonic: Schweppes.
• trope: a malevolent neum.
• tutti: a lot of sackbuts.
• stops: something Bach didn't have on his organ.
• agnus dei: a famous female church composer.
• metronome: a city-dwelling dwarf.
• allegro: leg fertilizer.
• recitative: a disease that Monteverdi had.
• transsectional: an alto who moves to the soprano section.

Why is the French horn a divine instrument?

Because a man blows in it, but only God knows what comes out of it.

What do you call someone who hangs out with musicians?

A drummer.

Why are orchestra intermissions limited to 20 minutes?

So you don't have to retrain the drummers.

How do you know when a drummer is knocking at your door?

The knock always slows down.

Why do bands have bass players? To translate for the drummer.

What do you get when you drop a piano on an army base?

A flat major.

What do you get when you drop a piano down a mine shaft?

A flat minor.

Why is an 11-foot concert grand better than a studio upright?

Because it makes a much bigger kaboom when dropped over a cliff.

Why was the piano invented?

So the musician would have a place to put his beer.

How do you get two piccolos to play in unison?

Shoot One