Friday, September 12, 2008

Attack of the Gigantic Musical Instruments

This year our local school district introduced a brand new String Orchestra program to the Elementary Curriculum. Jeffrey was interested at first but then his enthusiasm waned when he found it out meant going to school 1/2 hour earlier every day of the week. I wanted to encourage him to try this, and offered to pay the rental on ANY instrument he chose. OK then. He picked the Double Bass.








The thing is bigger than he is. By a LOT. When we went to pick it up they said that they would be adding tape lines to the stem to mark the frets. I'm thinking we could also use it as a growth chart to record his height.






Now our house is filling up with extra-large musical instruments. We already had the Baby Grand Piano that fit much better into the living room of our last house than it does here.


When Timmy joined 7th grade band he picked french horn for his instrument, which we were renting to own, and then switched to Trumpet. Since we'd already paid in so much we eventually owned it even as he switched his instrument choice again to Barritone. Slightly smaller than a Tuba but still so big that the case for it is about half the size of a casket.










And for Tim's last birthday his one heart's desire was for a full-size drum set. We found a good deal on a used one through Craig's list, but that thing takes up an entire room (originally intended as Larry's office) in our basement.






Now Tim has announced that he would like to replace it with this one that he found on the internet:




Our house is overflowing with this stuff. Maybe the next home improvement project should be to build a conservatory.






2 comments:

Teacher Teacher! said...

We have a Sousaphone in our house. Somehow is has taken up residence in my study room. Honestly I don't know how that happened and it takes up a tons of floor space. FYI for your budding baritone player, MSU was home to a vary famous baritone play named Leonard Falcone. (pronounced Fal-coney like the hot dog). Mr. Falcone was director of the marching band from 1927 - 1967 and one of the versions of the fight song the band plays is commonly known as Falcone Fight. He died in 1985 but his wife is still very involved in the organization of the Alumni Marching Band. A quick google search will lead you to a MSU historical archives page and the Leonard Falcone International Euphonium and Tuba Festival.

Aunt Kathy said...

Zenon played sax in a band a long, long time ago. A few years ago he rented a saxaphone for a weekend. To my amazement, he was terrific! And he could still read his very old yellow sheets of music. Tim and Jeff are learning fun skills for their whole lives! Encourage them Mom Mindy!