Where the Sun Never Shines

Perhaps this is a small step over the threshold into the direction low life humor but this one is too good to let slip by.

My apartment in Tokyo is a very fine one; it has two bedrooms, one that has been transformed to a studio with the presence of a Yamaha grand piano. There is a very nice kitchen and a spacious livingroom / diningroom area, a comfortable Japanese style bath and shower and two toilets. Every room is computerized and in the living room there are no less than 5 computerized panels on the wall, all in a row, that control lighting (with a rheostat for each of the rooms lights) heat and air-conditioning controls, two other controls, which I have finally discovered are for the hot water in the apartment, although I have no idea why there are two, and another circular remote control device, which is beautifully designed, which I finally learned regulated the preferred heating of the tile floors. And, of course, there are the two completely computerized toilets.

On the wall of the two toilets are remote control devices that look very much like a TV remote control device. There are no less than 16 buttons to press on these devices; it only took me a day to determine that the top button was to flush; it was absolutely necessary to learn that, since there was no other visible way to do it! It also gives the advantage that if you forget to flush you can reach in the door, remove the remote and push the flush button from the living room!
The other buttons were a mystery, that is until two days ago. There are two buttons which I can only guess are to choose where you want to be washed off after use; one button has a picture of a girl and a spout of water centered on her most feminine area and there’s is a picture of a unisex being with the spout directed at the rear of the figure. It was, of course, a bidet, that omni present bathroom fixture found in Europe that one can refer to with children as a “bottom washer offer”. I personally never used a bidet through the years I lived in Europe, but I was quite aware of its purpose.

Two days ago while using the famous porcelain throne and while placing my Japanese phrase book on the floor I accidentally pushed one of the 16 buttons, which I’m very sure was the bidet. After the initial shock I was amazed by the accuracy and the just warmer than body temperature of the spout, I even questioned if there was some kind of radar in the bidet. The water pressure was quite impressive and within 30 seconds I was absolutely sure that I was totally spotless. Now came the high drama; how do I turn the thing off? It just didn’t stop and that reservoir of warm water, wherever it was, was coming to an end and I was beginning to feel the reality that the temperature in Tokyo dipped below freezing for the last two days.

I really wanted that thing turned off and as fast as possible, I looked at the 16 buttons, all in Japanese, fearful that random button pushing might open a Pandora’s box of unwelcome hygienic experiences. Finally, I choose the bottom button on the right and mercifully it was the right one. It was a very long bidet, I’m sure over a minute, had it lasted any longer I’m sure I would have frozen that proverbial place where the sun never shines. But alass, all is well that ends well.

Tokyo 2005

Tricks: Masks and Shortcuts

Tricks: Masks and Shortcuts

In 1973 at First International Brass Symposium in Montreux, Switzerland, I was invited to take part in a panel discussion among several orchestral low brass players from various orchestras throughout Europe and North America. I was clearly the junior in this group of players and I had enough sense to keep quiet, but I will never forget that discussion. I was amazed at all the tricks these players proudly exposed, it seemed they covered everything in every way other than just playing the parts correctly. The first topic was playing on time; some sections dealt with the problem of lateness by consciously playing everything a 16th note ahead! I wanted to say, “Why don’t you just listen?” but I was 25 years younger than any of these seasoned players.

Subsequently, I calculated just how long it took sound to travel from the back to the front of an orchestra. At the speed of sound, 3.4029 meters in 0.01 of a second, it would take a little less than 0.02 of a second; 0.018 to be exact, 0.018 of a second for sound to travel six meters from the back row to the conductor’s podium. It’s highly questionable if eighteen thousandths of a second is perceptible to our hearing and certainly it’s not enough to excuse the trombones and tuba for being late. The best way to play on time is to listen!

The same panel discussed how to play dotted rhythms, dotted 8ths and 16ths or the double dotted 8ths and 32nd notes as in this following passage from the finale of Buckner’s 7th Symphony.



Three solutions were offered; to play the 32nds on the beat, to play the 32nds as close to the long notes as possible and to accent the 32nds. No one offered the idea of playing the 32nds clearly, on time, and balanced with the long notes.

Less that a year ago a visiting tubist gave some masterclasses in Japan and offered the same solution of accenting the 32nds on the above Bruckner passage, not as a solution for lateness but as an adjustment to assure the balance between the long and short notes was equal. It can work --- sometimes; if it’s done well and in rhythm it can be a good solution to the phenomenon that short notes sound less loud than long notes even if they are exactly the same dynamic. The negative side of this practice is when students take the idea too an extreme, it results in hyper accented short notes. This was the case in Japan and as several students came for lessons in preparation for an orchestra audition. I had to correct the tendency many of them showed of grotesquely over accenting the short notes.

One more trick of our time: There is fad at the present time; the very dubious belief that low register legato sounds better if the fingers move the valves slowly. I don’t know where this fad came from but I personally find it one of the more un-thought-out tricks I have ever encountered, it stands in absolute opposition to the evolution of tuba technique becoming more and more refined. It probably came about as an unconscious masking and compensating for the fact that fingering in the low register is simply more complicated and frequently the fingers are unclear and uneven changing from note to note. Moving the fingers slowly masks that problem.

Articulation is the focus of rhythm and legato is an articulation. Clarity and precision are very important in the low register simply because our human hearing mechanism does not easily discriminate clearity in that register. Playing a rapid passage on the piano in the middle high register and playing the same passage in the piano’s lowest octave easily proves that. As I told my valued colleague who was teaching this trick, “It sounds like a sluggish bass section all by itself!” Rumors have it that some basstrombone and contrabassoon players are frustrated by this practice.

There are different ways to deal with instrumental problems and I strongly believe the best way is to approach them as honestly as possible and to correct them without resorting to masking or shortcuts, it’s not that much more difficult and it sounds enormously better.

- Tokyo, Japan