old orchestra stories
I've got my violin tuned. Somewhat. It's in tune with itself, at any rate, though possibly not in the tune it's supposed to be. Now I must declaw myself so my fingers can touch the strings. I'd forgotten that, somewhere -- it's the string-player's manicure, in which the right hand is all pretty and the left hand is shaved down to the quick.
I was in orchestra for three years; most of junior high and then my freshman year of high school. I had to stop because of language requirements. Didn't have the time to fit both that and French classes into my schedule. I still regret it, although not toting a violin around with all the other shit I had to carry was nice. Terri got into it too, because we tended to do things together; she picked cello, and when I asked why she said it was because cellists always got to sit down and violinists sometimes had to stand. I have no idea what this has to do with reality, because we always had chairs when we performed. But that's Terri for ya. We did lots of concerts and neat stuff and of course the year after I quit was when the orchestra in high school got to go to Gatlinburg for a week, but I'm not going to tell you about that because it's really not as interesting. The fun parts, of course, are when things go wrong. And everyone knows there's an awful lot of physical tension involved in making a string instrument sound the way it should.
I've had strings pop, I've had bridges lose structural integrity, but the best bad thing that happened to me was the time I broke my tailgut. Here is the ass end of a violin. The bit the strings go into is the tailpiece, and the little plastic-coated wire that goes around the peg on the bottom is the tailgut. At the time I was still small (not that I'm so terribly un-small now) and the thing to do around here was rent violins from a local music shop. They'd trade them out to bigger sizes as you grew, and fix 'em if they broke - I started with 1/2, and by the time Rent became To Own, I was using the 4/4 I still have today. (That 1/2 was great. It had a sort of diamondy patterned chinrest that made me look like a fish, and the inside of the case was this wicked 1970's rust brown color.)
Anyway. Tailgut. I think this was the 3/4 violin, because I didn't have a shoulder rest for the 1/2. This one did not have a plastic-coated wire tailgut. It was made of some sort of waxed cord, and it was bright red. I thought it was neat because it was red, and unusual. I remember this quite clearly. Class had just started and I was tuning up: the way this is done was, you hold the violin between jaw and shoulder, adjust the fine-tuners with the left hand, and bow with the right. So, as usual, I'm tuning the thing up, and it's doing all those lovely shifts and creaks that wooden instruments like to do, just to mess with you, and suddenly -- SNAP! Bridge goes shooting off to places unknown. Strings detach from the tailpiece and splay out all bent and curly. Tailpiece slides to the right. Somehow I did not drop the thing, which is amazing, because I am a jumpy little critter and also I was HOLDING IT WITH MY FACE. The tailgut, all ragged and shredded and bright bright red, hung in two frayed pieces from the end of the tailpiece. The bridge, by the way, was on the floor under the kid two chairs down from me. I blame physics.
That afternoon, at the shop, the tiny old man who owned the place inspected my busted tailgut carefully, turned to me, and said, miss, how did you do that? This may have been the first time someone asked me that. I should have realized it would not be the last. Then he replaced it with a nice plastic-coated wire one that bolted into place, and I will never ever ever accept a string tailgut again, ever, for any reason, EVER.
Better than that, though, was the time Terri snapped the neck off her cello. This one, when I think about it, I see in slow motion. We were fourteen or so, in eighth grade. Our teacher was pontificating, at great length, about something I don't remember. He did like to do that. I remember the guy's face but not his name - he was bald on top, with carefully groomed white hair on the sides which contrasted rather alarmingly with his permanently red face. It looked even funnier when you added in the fact that his trumpet was chrome, not brass. I was bored, and I had my violin lying across my lap. Terri - across the room from me; she was second-chair cello, so she was in the front - was sitting back in her chair with her knees tucked into the C holes on the side of her cello and the whole weight of the thing resting on its endpin.
If it slid she didn't notice it, but when it fell it took hours. The room was dead silent. Nobody moved. We all just watched it fall. It hit the ground with a crack like a gunshot. Bridge went flying off somewhere. The strings stayed in the tailpiece until Terri tried to pick it up by the neck, and when both neck and strings came up without the rest of the cello we all gasped. She handed the neck to the kid next to her, then scooped the body of the cello into her lap, and as long as I live I will remember the sight of that sad tailpiece swinging slowly, back and forth, while she buried her face in her hands and giggled hysterically.
They got it fixed, of course, although there was a huge blot of glue where the neck joined the body. She swore it sounded better afterwards. I knew better than to argue.
I was in orchestra for three years; most of junior high and then my freshman year of high school. I had to stop because of language requirements. Didn't have the time to fit both that and French classes into my schedule. I still regret it, although not toting a violin around with all the other shit I had to carry was nice. Terri got into it too, because we tended to do things together; she picked cello, and when I asked why she said it was because cellists always got to sit down and violinists sometimes had to stand. I have no idea what this has to do with reality, because we always had chairs when we performed. But that's Terri for ya. We did lots of concerts and neat stuff and of course the year after I quit was when the orchestra in high school got to go to Gatlinburg for a week, but I'm not going to tell you about that because it's really not as interesting. The fun parts, of course, are when things go wrong. And everyone knows there's an awful lot of physical tension involved in making a string instrument sound the way it should.
I've had strings pop, I've had bridges lose structural integrity, but the best bad thing that happened to me was the time I broke my tailgut. Here is the ass end of a violin. The bit the strings go into is the tailpiece, and the little plastic-coated wire that goes around the peg on the bottom is the tailgut. At the time I was still small (not that I'm so terribly un-small now) and the thing to do around here was rent violins from a local music shop. They'd trade them out to bigger sizes as you grew, and fix 'em if they broke - I started with 1/2, and by the time Rent became To Own, I was using the 4/4 I still have today. (That 1/2 was great. It had a sort of diamondy patterned chinrest that made me look like a fish, and the inside of the case was this wicked 1970's rust brown color.)
Anyway. Tailgut. I think this was the 3/4 violin, because I didn't have a shoulder rest for the 1/2. This one did not have a plastic-coated wire tailgut. It was made of some sort of waxed cord, and it was bright red. I thought it was neat because it was red, and unusual. I remember this quite clearly. Class had just started and I was tuning up: the way this is done was, you hold the violin between jaw and shoulder, adjust the fine-tuners with the left hand, and bow with the right. So, as usual, I'm tuning the thing up, and it's doing all those lovely shifts and creaks that wooden instruments like to do, just to mess with you, and suddenly -- SNAP! Bridge goes shooting off to places unknown. Strings detach from the tailpiece and splay out all bent and curly. Tailpiece slides to the right. Somehow I did not drop the thing, which is amazing, because I am a jumpy little critter and also I was HOLDING IT WITH MY FACE. The tailgut, all ragged and shredded and bright bright red, hung in two frayed pieces from the end of the tailpiece. The bridge, by the way, was on the floor under the kid two chairs down from me. I blame physics.
That afternoon, at the shop, the tiny old man who owned the place inspected my busted tailgut carefully, turned to me, and said, miss, how did you do that? This may have been the first time someone asked me that. I should have realized it would not be the last. Then he replaced it with a nice plastic-coated wire one that bolted into place, and I will never ever ever accept a string tailgut again, ever, for any reason, EVER.
Better than that, though, was the time Terri snapped the neck off her cello. This one, when I think about it, I see in slow motion. We were fourteen or so, in eighth grade. Our teacher was pontificating, at great length, about something I don't remember. He did like to do that. I remember the guy's face but not his name - he was bald on top, with carefully groomed white hair on the sides which contrasted rather alarmingly with his permanently red face. It looked even funnier when you added in the fact that his trumpet was chrome, not brass. I was bored, and I had my violin lying across my lap. Terri - across the room from me; she was second-chair cello, so she was in the front - was sitting back in her chair with her knees tucked into the C holes on the side of her cello and the whole weight of the thing resting on its endpin.
If it slid she didn't notice it, but when it fell it took hours. The room was dead silent. Nobody moved. We all just watched it fall. It hit the ground with a crack like a gunshot. Bridge went flying off somewhere. The strings stayed in the tailpiece until Terri tried to pick it up by the neck, and when both neck and strings came up without the rest of the cello we all gasped. She handed the neck to the kid next to her, then scooped the body of the cello into her lap, and as long as I live I will remember the sight of that sad tailpiece swinging slowly, back and forth, while she buried her face in her hands and giggled hysterically.
They got it fixed, of course, although there was a huge blot of glue where the neck joined the body. She swore it sounded better afterwards. I knew better than to argue.