Finally A New Trumpet
(Marching bands can be dangerous)
Screen 1 of 5When I was a freshman in high school, I bought a very cheap trumpet made by the Carl Fisher Company for $12. Of course, it was not a very good instrument; but $12 was all I had in my savings account, and I needed a trumpet then, not later, if I was to play in the high school orchestra, as I wanted to do.
I joined this small orchestra early in the fall of 1924, and soon we were playing "Marche Militaire" by Franz Schubert for the students to march to and from daily chapel exercises. That was the only march we could play, and I was sure that everyone, including those of us in the orchestra, was becoming tired of it. But still we played it over and over.
I was not an expert player at all. I was quite young and had never taken any trumpet lessons. But at least I knew that F# is played by pushing the second valve down--not the first. I learned very early that it does make a difference, a very big difference, if one member of the trumpet section is playing Fµ (first valve down) at the same time the others are playing F#. In fact, when this happens, the resulting dissonance is enough to drive any audience away, if they can get away, a privilege our fellow high school students did not have when they were attending compulsory chapel exercises.
The only other trumpet player in the orchestra his name was Emory, either did not know the difference between Fµ and F#, or he thought it was unimportant. For during the first few weeks of school, he just pushed whatever valve suited his fancy, much to the displeasure of our amiable director, Miss Mary Armitage who also played piano with the orchestra. If we were just practicing when he made these mistakes, she would stop the orchestra and criticize him soundly but kindly. But if we were playing in chapel when Emory pressed the wrong valve, Miss Armitage would just cringe, frown and shake her head while continuing to play the piano.
Emory did not like to be embarrassed like this; so he devised and tried to carry out a plan which I'm sure he hoped would make things go better for him. Instead of looking at the music on the stand in front of him, he began to look sideways at my fingers on the trumpet. If I was pushing the first valve down, Emory would quickly push his first valve; and if I was using the first and third valves together for a note, he would follow immediately with those same valves. Of course, he was always just a little late in playing the note, especially if it was an eighth or sixteenth note; but his strategy worked fairly well on the half and whole notes. With those he would have more time to settle on the note and play it with confidence. At least, Miss Armitage did not catch him as often on these longer notes.
There were, however, some more serious weaknesses in his plan. For example, when I made a mistake--as I often did--he would also be wrong. Then at times when I became irritated at Emory because he was copying me, I would purposely press the wrong valve to fool him. I would usually pull this trick on a passage marked "forte" (loud) and then not blow any air through my trumpet on that part. This would make his wrong note more obvious to the director, who would then admonish him all the more. Poor Emory! I don't know what he did later in life, but I feel sure he did not play in a symphony orchestra.
I used this cheap trumpet during my first three years in high school. Its valves would stick occasionally, but when that happened, I would just spit on them. That practice may have appeared to some to be vulgar or at least unsanitary; and maybe it was, but it worked. Anyway, in those early years, I did not know about valve oil for brass instruments. I was quite aware, however, that I would have to get a better trumpet, if I expected to continue playing in the high school orchestra and later in college bands and dance groups. And since I did want to play in such groups for several more years, I began to save money in my freshman year. For three years I saved about $1.00 each week from the $2.50 weekly salary I was paid for carrying newspapers. I wanted to buy a good instrument, one that would sound much better and one that I could be proud of.
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