Joined
·
798 Posts
The saxes are there more for the color and flash that the horns make than they are for the sound. Ditto the clarinets - an instrument that is totally wasted sound-wise in a marching band.
I don't know how I managed to do it, but I avoided all "marching" music save only one brief spell when doing the musical Barnum. Everyone else in that pit orchestra took to the bit of staging that we did like a champ, but I had to learn how to do it from the ground up.
As for other, odd instruments used in marching bands, bassoons were quite common in the several hundred regimental bands employed by Napoleon Ier back in the early 1800's. To paraphrase the old saying, "Six hundred Frenchmen can't be wrong."
In that period, the horn was suspended from the center of the waistcoat (an under-jacket beneath the main uniform jacket) by a ribbon that attached to the ring mounted at the top of the boot joint. The instruments at that time (French system horns slightly smaller than the French horn in use today) were played more in a vertical position as well, at least if period painting are to be believed.
(The button in the waistcoat method was ridiculed by some back in the 1960's, but a historian turned up a period uniform that had been worn by a bandsman (the colors are reversed for the bandsmen, the same as with our Marine Band, which wears the red with blue reversed uniforms from the standard Marine Corps dress blues with red trim) who had been a bassoon player and, plain as day, the appropriate button hole was worn out from the movement of the ribbon.)
I've tried the same setup, and other than the hazard presented by that sharp edged reed at the end of the long crook, there are major problems with balance and intonation. But, it can be done.
I don't know how I managed to do it, but I avoided all "marching" music save only one brief spell when doing the musical Barnum. Everyone else in that pit orchestra took to the bit of staging that we did like a champ, but I had to learn how to do it from the ground up.
As for other, odd instruments used in marching bands, bassoons were quite common in the several hundred regimental bands employed by Napoleon Ier back in the early 1800's. To paraphrase the old saying, "Six hundred Frenchmen can't be wrong."
In that period, the horn was suspended from the center of the waistcoat (an under-jacket beneath the main uniform jacket) by a ribbon that attached to the ring mounted at the top of the boot joint. The instruments at that time (French system horns slightly smaller than the French horn in use today) were played more in a vertical position as well, at least if period painting are to be believed.
(The button in the waistcoat method was ridiculed by some back in the 1960's, but a historian turned up a period uniform that had been worn by a bandsman (the colors are reversed for the bandsmen, the same as with our Marine Band, which wears the red with blue reversed uniforms from the standard Marine Corps dress blues with red trim) who had been a bassoon player and, plain as day, the appropriate button hole was worn out from the movement of the ribbon.)
I've tried the same setup, and other than the hazard presented by that sharp edged reed at the end of the long crook, there are major problems with balance and intonation. But, it can be done.
