With the lack of new posts lately, thought I'd try to do something different.
What's a music related confession that you've been dying to tell?
For me, it's the fact that I am actually quite terrible at playing all clarinets.
In mid-7th grade, the band director "upgraded" me to playing the bass clarinet, mostly because there were zero basses in the band. After that, I never went back to soprano.
I played bass clarinet from 7th to 9th grade, and then quite clarinet entirely. I would pick up my old Buffet B12 (as I did not own a bass) maybe once a month and jam out a little bit, but not at all regularly.
I did not play any kind of clarinet in any capacity until I was a freshman in college, when I took a 2-unit band course where I was able to borrow a school LeBlanc bass for ZERO cost, because once again there were exactly zero bass clarinets in the entire band.
The second quarter of freshman year, I purchased for myself a M. Lacroix bass clarinet which was my daily player for a bit. I soon acquired a Conn hard rubber bass, and played on that for a while. I lent the Conn to a fellow band member and went back to the M. Lacroix.
At one point I sold both of the bass clarinets and QUIT the school band entirely.
I did not play again until junior year, when I bought for myself a Bundy contra alto clarinet which I played in both the school band and an extra-curricular video game music group.
I then sold the contra alto and quit playing for a year. I bought another contra alto and then rejoined the school band for one quarter, and then quit the school band again. I continued on in the extra curricular group for the remainder of senior year and all of my graduate year.
The real confession here is that I was never that good at any of the clarinets I played. I was only "in demand" because I played the bass clarinet which nobody else played.
After that, I was "in demand" because I played the contra alto clarinet which literally nobody else played.
