New Scientific Developments

I have shocking news in the field of child development that I believe you all will be SHOCKED to hear (shocking)...

BABIES LOVE LOW BRASS

Duhn


Duhn


DUHN









How do I know this? Well, P and his friends in Berlin who come from Switzerland (yes, we've established the world to be both that small and indeed flat), and we went to visit one of them last Saturday. The guy is D. and he's married to a German, S., whom he met in Switzerland. D is a professional professional trumpet player owning anywhere from 60-70 instruments

(trumpet, jazz trumpet,
picolo trumpet, 2 different baroque trumpets,
trombone, 2 valve trombones, etc etc)

and playing all over the place. When we showed up one snowy evening, he, his wife, and 2 year old son, L. were moving into their new digs, and he offered to take us down to the room housing his axes and their accompanying "geeg bags" (yes, they call them that in French too...les gig bags), which we took him up on. He then went on to hand me valuable trumpet after valuable turmpet, while Phil noodled away on one of his trombones. I've not been around my ax for some time, and frankly I had no idea what to do with special edition Bach strads and special jazz trumpets, but my French wasn't good enough to explain "I haven't played in a long time. I'm scared to even hold this!" so I kept taking them.
Then he gave S. an ax and proposed we all play some quartets, simple tunes, with which I finally got to play first trumpet (and hit a high F on the first time out, thanks y'all!!!). It was not one of my finer musical moments, but whatever. The thing was that by the second piece, L. wanted to join in and so he grabbed a valve trombone, sat on the floor, and actually

BEGAN TO HONK ALONG!!!

even though his arms weren't long enough to both hold the instrument and work the valves. The kid can't speak in full sentences, but he can honk a trombone...like...he has the lung capacity for it! What the heck, y'all?!? When you add the bebeh in the above picture, what you have is a sinister low-brass pattern. Conspiracy? Worth looking into, people! Obama, maybe get somebody on that.
The evening was great otherwise. S. made a great meal. I butchered the French language some more while still being vaguely understandable, and we ended the evening drinking some kind of fruit liquor called Mirabel. I'll tell you folks something, want to burn your innards AND your outards? Try some! It's yummy, but YEOW! Even for a TEXAN, it was strong! These Swiss, I'm telling you, they can handle music, mountains, and moonshine...