oboeinsight

I played the oboe in middle school band, because I was determined to announce to the world that I was a misfit

“Discipline sets you free,” the professor went on. “It’s like jazz. You can’t be great at improvising if you don’t learn your chords and scales first.”

I read it here, at Eileen Huang’s blog.

the oboe – is a teenaged girl with a thin nose and sharp teeth that she fancies looks like a vampire’s. she collects pieces of different coloured quartz and likes to step into dark closets to hit the stones off of each other to see the sparks. because of this, she always smells smoky and odd, and her throat is closed all up. she is a narrow aperture. (i realise that the oboe is useful, difficult, and unique, and is the instrument that the entire orchestra is supposed to tune to, but i’ve never been a fan of the double reed. apologies.)

The writer is creating her personal “Peter & The Wolf” story. This is what she did to us poor oboes! Of course the word “odd” is somehow appropriate. You know?

Now excuse me while I go into a dark closet. You see, I have some stones here … ;-)

I think beginner oboe possibly sounds worse than beginner violin. Truly. I sound like I’m strangling a tubercular duck. It’s not pretty!

Do You Think The Menacing Oboe Made The Movie Jaws, Or The Complete Absense Of Mechanical Shark In Da Making?

If they invent an oboe that can produce a tone without turning the performer the color of a young Beaujolais, I might pick the thing back up.

my oboe broke today

I’m buying the $12,000 oboe.

(I can’t even imagine!)

i’m laughing my *** off as my dad tries to fit me and city hall in the same frame because in a circle around the tall table just behind him are two 60-year-old couples sharing a sweetly smelling joint sticking shyly out of a cigarette holder. not only that, but as my dad’s standing there taking these pictures, one of the old guys is holding the joint out to me asking me if i want to partake. of course i wanted to, but i politely refused, laughing, because i was out with my dad. the old dude’s reply? “come on! it’s the opera!” indeed! and, let me say for the fourth time in this post, 3.5 hours is quite a long time to last without at least a breeze of intoxication.

(The blogger was attending San Francisco Opera on the same night as us. We missed this little scene.)

Vivaldi, Bach, baroque music in general puts me in a very calm, but still alert place. And it’s truly classical, not just orchestral.

I have no idea what instrument this is (some sort of traditional English horn?), but it’s definitely meant to poke fun at Hagrid in his out-of-character role. Williams continues to display his virtuosity at adapting a new theme over and over in many new contexts.12. Monster Books and Boggarts!

(Is there a non-traditional English horn?)

I do believe the writer is hearing an English horn. I played music from Harry Potter and there’s a very fun English horn lick. I remember Hagrid’s name in the title.

When Berlioz and Franck used the English Horn in their symphonies, the critics said it was vulgar because Haydn and Beethoven did not use an English Horn in their symphonies.

(I had never heard this before. Can anyone verify it for me?)

What’s funny is they say that the oboe is a hard instrument to play – I picked it up and could play a note on it just fine (I had ZERO problems with the double reed), however I could not for the life of me get anything to come out of the clarinet or saxaphone with that single reed – my mouth and lips were just naturally better suited for the double reed instruments! I also couldn’t get a noise to come out of the flute either as I just couldn’t get the air to blow across the mouthpiece.

I can nearly relate. I did begin on flute, and I could play it enough to play American Patrol (the final band piece I remember playing!), but nothing “fit” like an oboe.