As a flute player, I used to sit in front of the French horns. Yeah, they empty them out allllll the time. Splat. Splish-splash. Splat.
It does seem strange that she couldn’t get through one piece without emptying it, but if there were long rests, and it was a long piece, then I guess she couldn’t.
Is anyone else getting turned on?
(I’m amused that the Google ads feature one French Horn ad and three plumbing ads.)
Clearing the spit seems analogous to me to a singer clearing his throat. You’d rather not do it if it can be avoided, but if my throat is blocked by gunk, damn straight I’m gonna clear it.
As far as water goes, I think that’s a matter of preference, colored by the scenario. I wouldn’t do it if it were just me and the piano. I’d make sure I was well hydrated, then have another drink at intermission. Then again I’m not a hornist. Wetting the mouth and wetting the throat are rather different ideas. I actually don’t think I’ve ever brought water on stage with me, with the exception of the following anecdote.
I did do a concert with a professional choir a couple of years ago on a very hot day (about 98 degrees) where the director (realizing that forty people in tuxes and gowns packed onto risers for forty minutes might get a bit uncomfortable in that heat) more or less ordered us to bring water, then made an announcement to the audience to the effect of: “Sorry about the water, but it’s that or mass fainting.”
Next, on Sick Sad World.
Do brass players put something on the floor to catch the spit or do they just pour spit all over the stage?
(I was a violinist. I never paid any attention to what was going on back there.)
Thats what the carpet was for.
Or the little slats in the wood floor.
BFA in French horn over here (yeah. That’s why I work in non-profit.) - my mom told me after my senior recital that there were points where she wasn’t sure if I was playing a recital or trying out for the marching band flag corps. I still play, and I’m nowhere near the proficiency that I used to have, but it seemed to me, the more difficult the piece, the more spit I accumulated. And while I had a spit valve (I own a Yamaha horn - still have it and still play it occasionally), that only got the spit out of one part of the horn. It took a lot of twists and turns and pulling out tubing to get the rest out.
(Sometimes you get ‘mystery spit’. No matter what you empty, it’s still there.)
E.
Ok, first of all: it’s mostly not, repeat not spit. The water that collects in all wind instruments has very little of the enzymes which are present in actual spit, though of course there are some. For example, moisture continues to accumulate in some brass instruments (especially tuba) long after you’re done playing it. If it were spit, how could this be?
Did you ever notice what happens when you blow onto a cold window? The moisture that collects there is not spit. It’s condensation from the moisture in your breath, which it gains during circulation through your lungs and so on. Your breath is moist.
Now, all wind instruments involve blowing through a small aperture in a tube. The effect is that the air pressure lowers once the wind is in the actual instrument. Moving from a small tube to a larger one lowers the air pressure a bit. Also, the interior of an instrument is at room temperature, which is cooler than body temperature (or so we hope). Even after the player has “warmed up,” the air inside an instrument will usually never be as quite warm as inside the player’s body. (Hot summer days outside are another story.)
Thinking in terms of weather, what happens when a stream of warm, moist air drops in temperature and pressure?
It rains.
This is exactly what happens in a wind instrument, and is why moisture accumulates in large instruments such as the tuba or contrabassoon long after you’ve put them away. There’s warm, moist air still hanging around inside the tubing, and as it cools off, guess what happens? It condenses. Obviously, it happens faster when you’re actually playing.
I hope this helps. “Spit valve” is a misnomer. There can be some amount of spit, yes–depending on the player, some slobber more than others–but mostly it’s the same condensation as when you blow onto a cold window. In other words, water.
“Mystery spit.” I hope it’s now not a mystery at all.