CoLab videos and Sound Clips

So I've finally managed to upload a few of my videos from CoLab onto the computer! They're so much harder to do than pictures for some reason, and trimming them proved surprisingly difficult too but we're there now (I hope).

Here is one of the better clips of us practicing the Shostakovich fanfare;

As you can tell, the bass trumpet was the instrument providing the most difficulty here as it uses a trombone mouthpiece!

Here is a sound clip of us practicing the opening to our film arrangement - 20th Century Fox Fanfare!

This is the last of my CoLab 2015 blog posts - I hope you enjoyed following my experience and look out for next year's!

Friday 13th February - Day 5

Performance day is upon us! Most of what we are going to show has been done so it's now just finishing touches and hoping nothing major crops up to throw a spanner in the works!

The whole group arrived on time in room 222 this morning and after a brief final chat with our mentor we set to work practicing the tricky instrument changeovers and ironing out any remaining blemishes in the arrangements. 

By 11.30am this was complete so we started setting up our chosen "stage" - the courtyard at Trinity's King Charles Court. Natalie and I wrote up on a whiteboard the bits of our project the audience might like to know such as which instruments we're using and the pieces incorporated in the arrangements in case anybody couldn't recognise them...

Unfortunately whilst setting up we noticed a slight flaw in our preparatory thinking - we had considered a wet weather plan, but not the possibility of strong winds knocking over music stands and instruments! Very kindly, Roz Surtrees (a member of the CoLab operations team) arrived loaded with clothes pegs, plastic wallets and card so we could try and fix our music in place. This proved much more difficult than anticipated and part way through the performance we ended up with members of the audience jumping in to help out by catching flying music and holding the stands during particularly strong gusts! 

Initial set up of the group for the historical arrangement.

Music started flying off!

 Despite all this, we managed to pull off a fairly good performance and we quickly became very skilled at playing with one hand whilst keeping the music in place with the other. Luckily no instruments were damaged from falling stands or likewise and I'm very proud of our group for demonstrating our exploration and work from the week. We've had such a good experience discovering what it's like to play all these trumpet-related instruments in an ensemble and it's been a pleasure working with a wonderful group of trumpeters!

Thursday 12th February - Day 4

So the final day before the performance is over and I'm pretty happy with where we're at! Firstly a massive thanks to Sandy for doing all the arranging - he's worked so hard to produce two 10 minute pieces and all the individual parts it's incredible!

This morning Sandy and I were faced with the challenge of what to do when we found the library was shut, so we started trying to work out who was playing which trumpet in all of the sections of the piece! A table with instruments and pieces was the easiest way to start this so we got cracking to organise ourselves and make the parts quicker to sort out on Sibelius.

At 12 we had the much-awaited masterclass with Gabor Tarkovi, principal trumpet of the Berlin Philharmonic and what a fantastic experience this was! The 3rd and 4th years each played a few excerpts and Gabor worked on them with each person, giving really good advice on style, articulation and production. In particular there was a recurring theme of not making notes too short so the excerpt has a fitting style and sounds well amongst an orchestra. Gabor is an absolutely incredible player and was such a great person to have a masterclass with!

Andy working on excerpts with Gabor.

We all returned to room 222 afterwards chatting about the masterclass and we had to fill in Sandy, who had been hard at work finishing off our arrangements and printing parts! The remainder of the afternoon was then spent rehearsing the pieces and thinking about how we were planning to set up our ensemble and all the equipment the following day for our performance. We also came up with a wet weather plan - wear waterproofs!

Definitely looking forward to tomorrow for our performance but also quite apprehensive as this will be our opportunity to show everyone what we've been doing all week...

Wednesday 11th February - Day 3

Hellooo, yet another busy day complete! Can't believe we're now past half way in the project and we've done so much but still have a lot of practicing to do before our performance on Friday! (Butler's Bar in King Charles Court at 12)

Today saw our composer head off to the library to continue working on one of the arrangements whilst the rest of us carried on getting familiar with the large variety of trumpets - it was productive, I promise. By playing through the pieces we intend to put into the big arrangement, we were able to work out which instruments to use for each section and relay the information to Sandy to incorporate into his arranging. We also had a new addition to the fun - I don't know what it is called but it's basically a trumpet version of a french or tenor horn! It uses a french horn mouthpiece which made it pretty difficult to play for us trumpeters, and by changing the slide it could be pitched in Eb or F. We decided it won't be used in our performance but it was great fun to have a go on.

French horn/Tenor horn trumpet thing

A chat before lunch with Andrew Dunn about our upcoming performance and college life as a trumpeter gave our lips a rest and made us start thinking about the quality we're going to present but also how we're going to communicate to the audience what we've learnt from the project. All of a sudden, 2 days left doesn't seem like enough time!

By the afternoon, Sandy had arranged most of the first piece so we set to work on figuring out who would play which part and where they would need to swap instruments - quite a task we soon found out and even more part writing to do! We also played through the rest of the pieces for the second composition, but we need to get cracking to get that finished and practiced in time for Friday lunchtime...

One of the sections of the second arrangement - can you work out where it's from?

On a more personal level, we're getting to the point in the week where everyone's quite tired, so hopefully tomorrow's masterclass will rejuvenate our enthusiasm so we can return with fresh eyes to practice everything and adjust any necessary bits. More about the masterclass after it's happened tomorrow, I'm sure you'll enjoy hearing about what we've learnt from an amazing musician!

Tuesday 10th February - Day 2

Well after today we can certainly say that we're all deeply involved in the project! We started off the day with a brief chat with Andrew about our plan so far. He also brought in the college's 2 alpine horns which we quickly got out and started trying them out, as any brass player would do of course. Another instrument and idea added to our many already and something else to incorporate into our plan!

A good bit of fun with Alpine Horns.

We decided to go to the library to collect as much music as possible to be arranged and put into our group composition. By each taking a section to work on, the wonderful resources of the library and IMSLP meant we actually managed to find everything, except sorting out the fanfare for the opening - not going to tell you anymore about the content of the composition though as I'd hate to spoil the surprise!

Hard at work in the library.

The afternoon we spent working out what we're going to do for the opening fanfare - so many ideas to work through and we're even talking about what staging we might include in the performance too. Although there's a picture, the plan will probably change as we develop our ideas...
Unfortunately, one of the fanfares we want to use was only available in a study score so in order to practice it without wasting too much time Sandy very kindly wrote it out on the whiteboard in a short score form.

Rehearsal of some arrangements.

 Today showed me that we all work really effectively as a group and can achieve so much more than expected in a short amount of time. It's only Tuesday but the amount we've learnt and explored already is fantastic, we can't wait to perform to everyone!

Monday 9th February 2014 - Day 1 of CoLab

Good evening after a successful first day of CoLab! Very pleased that my project "Too Many Trumpets" has got off the ground to an enthusiastic start so far, and a plan of action for the rest of the week - looking forward to what we'll have for the performance on Friday already!

So we started off today by bringing in and collecting from around college the many different types of trumpet that exist so we could "have a play". The whole point of the project is to try new combinations of instruments in a trumpet choir style ensemble, working out what blends well and what doesn't, but to start with we just wanted to try out all the new shiny things! We have a good range of instruments; Bb, C, Eb/D trumpets, Bb Cornets and Flugel horns, Natural trumpets, Eb Soprano cornet, Piccolo trumpets (piston and rotary valved), Bb and C German rotary valved trumpets, bass trumpet, Cornetto (which is like a big recorder with a trumpet mouthpiece really). We enjoyed this a lot, quite geeky really.

After trying out so many trumpets and a few of our composer's arrangements, our lips were pretty dead so made a spectrum out of the trumpets by when we thought they were invented in history, so you can see the development through time.

We particularly liked the arrangement of "Hymn to the Fallen", but when we originally played it we used a combination of trumpets, cornets, flugel and bass trumpet which for the style wasn't right. So we tried it again with cornets, flugel and bass trumpet and the blend was a lot better but could be further improved by using all flugels and bass.

Over lunch we dicussed our plan for the performance and how we intend to conclude our discoveries. We have a plan for the week, which has already been altered but a slight structure is in place! In the afternoon, we started talking about ideas for the composition specifically for our group and Sandy (the composer) wrote down our ideas, which we will all get to work on tomorrow morning. Mind maps are wonderful things so I wrote down things during our discussion with mentor Andrew Dunn, and also about what we had already discovered through the day.

So far, a great productive start and it's fantastic that everyone's so keen to learn more about and experiment with the trumpets and their uses!