[Dixielandjazz] Ophicleides and Serpents

[tcashwigg at aol.com]

Hi Jim and all:

  I move pretty fast around the entertainment scene in the N. CALIF. 
AREA AS SOME FOLKS KNOW and don't often land for very long at any one 
event.   I actually went to Martinez one night several months ago to 
specifically see that band and got there at 8:05 p.m and the band was 
already finished and packed up to leave.  One in ENTERTAINMENT Business 
FIELD USUALLY expects live music to be played until at least midnight 
even in a one horse town like Martinez.  Heck I used to play till 2:00 
A.M THERE LEGALLY YEARS AGO MYSELF.


I have a great marketing idea:  Let's form a band of Freak Instruments 
and I can make up posters of it and the weird instruments and sell it 
to unsuspecting customers who will pay just to see the instruments 
whether or not any of you guys can actually play them or not.  :))   
Nobody really knows what they sound like so you can play terribly and 
be come an ALL STAR BAND on opening night, let the kids discover you 
and look out Rolling Stones.   Think I am kidding don't you  ??   well 
they bought Rap didn't they ??


OKOM has just lost it's creative edge guys.

Hey Mike Vax  why not use these guys in your shows as a novelty 
attraction they are serious about playing them and it certainly will be 
an educational opportunity that most audiences will probably never 
experience in a lifetime.   Young Audiences that we all need just LOVE 
to Discover new things musical.


Cheers,

Tom Wiggins



-----Original Message-----
From: Jim O'Briant <jobriant at garlic.com>
To: Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
Sent: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 23:29:06 -0800
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Ophicleides and Serpents

   Tom Wiggins wrote, in two different messages:

> Now maybe somebody can explain that other strange
> Instrument jim said he plays???

> Ophicleides, sounds like some sort of Greek Birth
> Control device that we have not heard of yet :))

> Sorry John Pappas !   could Jim O 'Briant or
> somebody explain it and tts possible usage if any :))

Etymologically speaking, "Ophicleide" is a constructed Greek word 
meaning
"Keyed Serpent."

The serpent is a carved wooden wind instrument with a cup mouthpiece 
and six
finger holes, invented in about 1590 or 1595.  Technically, it's the 
bass
member of the cornetto family.  But the finger holes are far too small,
proportionally to the bore of the instrument, and they're also in the 
wrong
places (because nobody had invented keys yet); thus, playing a serpent 
is a
lot like buzzing a tune on a mouthpiece with no instrument attached.  
The
fingers have very little effect, and the embouchure does virtually all 
the
work.

It was called the serpent because it's carved in a shape that winds 
back and
forth like a snake; if it were straight it would be about 8 feet long, 
and
nobody could reach the finger holes (as if that matters very much...).

By the late 1700's, keys had been invented, and they were being used on
early flutes and clarinets.  Some time before 1810, Joseph Haliday 
invented
the "Keyed Bugle," which looks sort of like a flugelhorn with the valve
cluster missing and a bunch of soprano sax keys on it.  It was pretty
versatile in the hands of a good player; the Haydn and Hummel trumpet
concerti were written for the keyed bugle.

A Frenchman named Haliday saw and heard keyed bugles in use, and decided
that a bass version, with keys, would be in improvement on the serpent. 
 He
had a working instrument by 1819; the principal acoustical development 
was
that the size of a given tone hole was proportional to the bore of the
instrument at the tone hole's location.  (Adolph Sax employed this 
principle
in the Saxophone, some years later.)  Since Haliday intended his new
instrument (technically a bass keyed bugle, though shaped differently) 
as an
improvement on the serpent, and because it had keys, he called it
"Ophicleide," or "Keyed Serpent."

> and how come you didn't play it last
> Sunday and further confuse me :))   ha ha.

I didn't have it with me.  And I haven't played it much in the past 
year or
so, not since I played my arrangement of Karl King's "A Night in June" 
as an
Ophicleide Solo with the Pacific Brass.  I guess I'll have to get it 
out and
start practicing.

If you'd been at La Beau's restaurant in Martinez last Saturday night, 
you'd
have heard Glenn Calkins play his Ophicleide in several tunes with Ted
Shaver's Jelly Roll Jazz Band.  Pete was there, too, with his 
Sarrusophone
-- AND his duck call.  Ted's band plays there every Saturday, and the 
food
is good.  Call ahead for reservations to get a table in the same room 
with
the band, and perhaps you'll hear the Ophicleide and the Sarrusophone 
again.
(And the duck call.)

And I promise to practice the Ophicleide and bring it along to San Pablo
some time, and I'll arrange with Tony to have a jam set that I know and 
can
more or less play.

-- Jim O'Briant
   Ophicleide, Serpent, Double-Belled Euphonium,
      and Tubas in BBb, CC, Eb and F
   Gilroy, CA


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