[Dixielandjazz] slightly OT: Pay by the Note!

[Bill Gunter]

Hello all,

David Richoux reports:

>there was a story on the BBC World News tonight about the recent  
>controversy in the Bonn Beethoven Orchestra - the string players want  more 
>money for performance and rehearsals because the play more notes  than the 
>wind players!

I love this way of thinking.  Being a percussionist myself I reflected on 
the "pay per note" concept and it makes sense.

You know, if I whack my snare drum once with the stick in my right hand I 
can play one note. If I bounce it a couple of times I can produce two or 
even three notes. If I then repeat that with the stick in my left hand I can 
produce another two or three notes (foir a total of four, or possibly six 
notes).

It is possible for me to continue bouncing my sticks alternately quite 
rapidly indeed in a technique known as the "drum roll" to produce hundreds 
of notes in an extremely short period of time.

And how about the piano . . . a boogie woogie player hitting "eight to the 
bar" can play twice as many notes as the stride piano player who plays the 
simple four beat "boom chuck boom chuck."

And he who plays "The Minute Waltz" (Chopin) or the "Flight of the 
Bumblebee" (Korsakov) should get a lot more money that he who simply plays, 
say, the adagio from the "Moonlight Sonata."

And the musician who plays a chordal type instrument (harp, keyboard, etc) 
can play a lot more notes that a musician who plays an instrument that only 
can produce one note at a time (trumpet, clarinet, kazoo, etc.).

What about the trombone player's gliss . . . on note, or an infinity of 
notes. It's like the axiom that any given straight line contains an infinite 
number of points. Shouldn't the gliss contain an infinite number of notes?

And when the composer indicates a rest (quarter, whole, half, sixteenth, 
whatever) is the deliberate not playing of a note comparable to the actual 
playing of a note . . . after all, the musician did have to read and respond 
to the musical instruction to "rest."

Rich orchestras will always play prestissimo while the poorer orchestras are 
probably stuck in the musical doldrums of largo.

I can just hear the business manager saying "We'll have to cut 'Moto 
Perpetuo' because we simply cannot afford it. The featured number tonight 
must be something like "Air for G String."

On my washboard I have 32 separate corrugations along the entire length of 
the washboard's playing surface. Would I get 32 notes for a full sweep with 
my thimbles or just one note for the one sweep?  . . . and what if I used 
more than one thimble . . . hmmm!

OKOKOKOK . . . no more! This is beginning to sound really stoopid.

Respectfully submitted,

Bill "The Devil Made Me Do It" Gunter
jazzboard at hotmail.com