SOME FUNNY ORCHESTRAS

by Cynthia MacGregor

(cont'd from Friday)

Another instrument you blow into is the bagpipes. Not usually found in a symphony orchestra, the bagpipes is (are?) nonetheless a venerable instrument, one that in looks resembles a cross between a handbag and an octopus. The sound is that of a Scotsman who has had someone reach underneath his kilt to see what’s there.

The first and most difficult lesson in learning to play the bagpipes is learning which pipe to blow into. Tissues are easier—you know where to blow. Bagpipes are considered a party instrument—there are enough pipes that a gang of friends ought to be able to play all at once—hopefully all playing the same tune. It would get pretty messy if one person were playing Brahms’ “Lullabye” and another were playing “Yankee Doodle” while a third played “Yellow Submarine” and a fourth played “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” Opinions are divided as to whether the bagpipes are an instrument of music or an instrument of torture.

Yet another instrument you blow into is the breathalyzer.

Besides the bagpipes, there are other instruments played with the breath that are not normally part of an orchestra. These include the kazoo and the ocarina, a large okra. You cannot, however, play music on okra in its natural state. Most people cannot even eat okra. The ocarina is also called the sweet potato, but nobody has ever played a candied ocarina.

Some musicians are really little kids at heart. They just like to bang things and make a lot of noise. They play instruments of a type collectively known as percussion. They make a lot of noise, like a percussion grenade—although that is only considered an instrument of death, not a musical instrument.

The drum is the most common percussion instrument. There are various kinds of drums (not including oil drums). Bass drums should not be confused with the string bass, or with first base, or with man’s baser instincts, though those may be what drives a percussionist to make all that noise and try to pass it off as music.

Tympani is actually the name of an instrument and not a lisped mispronunciation of a type of orchestra. Really “tympani” is another name for the kettle drum. The musicians cook their dinner in the kettle and then beat the drum to announce that dinner is ready. The snare drum and traps are used by musicians who are also hunters. If they didn’t like what was cooked up in the kettle, they can always try to catch a rabbit or other animal to take home and cook after the concert.

Another noisy instrument is called symbols. I’m not sure what they’re symbolic of—maybe dessert, since they look a little like pie plates. Then there is the try angle, so called because the musicians who play this soft, gentle instrument need to try almost any angle to get a chance to be heard. The musicians who play the gong have no such problem. The chief use of the gong is not in orchestras but by auctioneers, who announce the sale of each item with, “Going, going, GONG!”

Instruments that are hard to classify include the xylophone, the glockenspiel, the accordian, and the organ. The xylophone’s chief usage is not as an instrument but as in illustration for the letter “X” in children’s alphabet books. It’s hard to describe the sound of the glockenspiel, so I won’t try. The accordian is an instrument played a lot at peace talks, to help the factions reach an accord. The concertina is a small—as its name implies, teenage-sized—accordian. And the organ is only sometimes an instrument. Lots of men in certain books and magazines are forever talking about their organs. Pipe organs are instruments, even though their name makes them sound like something you’d smoke tobacco in. If you want to hear organ music, go to church or to the ballpark.

Of course, not everyone who makes music does it with an instrument. Some people simply use their voices. Singing voices fall into five basic ranges: soprano, auto, tenure, berrytone, or baste. There are two kinds of sopranos, Technicolor sopranos and messy sopranos.

Some of the most famous operatic arias were written for sopranos. A common question arises when the auience has to listen to them: “Aria finished yet?” Singers often vocalize an arpeggio to warm up. This vocal exercise got its name from the challenge posed by many music teachers: “Arpeggio can’t reach the high notes.”

There are two lines of music written on sheet music—when you sing or play certain instruments, you want the trouble cleft, but other instruments use the boss cleft. The piano uses both at once, which can get awfully confusing. You read the boss cleft with your left eye and play those notes with your left hand; you read the trouble cleft with your right eye and play those notes with your right hand. If you have to play a cross-hand piece, you are likely to wind up cross-eyed.

The eight notes of the scale comprise an octave, which is, of course, a way of rating gasoline. Those eight notes are do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do, and there is much that can be said about them, but Rodgers & Hammerstein have already pretty much taken care of it, so we won’t go there.