Conductor to orchestra at the start of rehearsal:
“Please get out your pencils. We have some marking to do. The first two bars are in 3/4, not 4/4 as written. Next, in the 5th bar, change it to 7/8 and this remains to the end. In bar 7 we lower the pitch half a step. In bar 13 lower the pitch one whole step and this will remain to the end. In bar 26 where it says strict tempo, cross that out and write in molto rubato. In bar 32 cross out the grand pause. And in bar 44, take out the legato and write in staccato. Thank you. Let’s begin.”
Soprano soloist: “Excuse me, Maestro. What would you like me to change?”
Conductor: “Nothing at all, Madam. Sing it exactly as you did yesterday.”
And one for the theory geeks:
Heinrich Schenker dies and goes to Hell. He meets Satan at the gates: the Devil exclaims “Maestro! So good to have you here! We’ve been looking forward to your arrival. We have a room prepared for you.” Schenker follows Satan down the hall until they come to a door with “Schenker” on the name plate. Satan ushers Schenker in.
Inside the room is a full symphony orchestra, populated by the greatest players of all time. Paganini, Heifetz, they’re all there. The Devil gestures to the podium and says, “your task for eternity is to conduct this orchestra in this piece.” Laying open on the stand is Beethoven’s 9th. “Well,” thinks Schenker, “this isn’t so bad. I thought Hell was supposed to be pain and suffering.” He walks up to the podium, raises his baton, and gives his downbeat. The orchestra plays…
A drummer decided he wanted to learn other instruments so he went to a music store and looked around at the selection. After a while he went to the clerk and said “I’d like to buy that bagpipe” and pointed, “and that accordion,” and pointed again.
The clerk looked, thought for a moment and told the drummer “Well, I can let you have the fire extinguisher for $20 but the radiator’s not for sale.”
What’s the difference between a chain saw and a banjo?The chain saw has dynamic range.
What do you call a crazy person who hangs around with musicians? The drummer.
One of my favorite musical jokes was from King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, who noted of his band’s central instrument (with no small exasperation):
“Tuning a mellotron doesn’t.”
What do you get when you drop a piano down a mine shaft?
A flat minor
What do you get when you drop a piano on army base?
A flat major
A musical director was having a lot of trouble with one drummer. He talked and talked and talked with the drummer, but his performance simply didn’t improve.
Finally, before the whole orchestra, he said, “When a musician just can’t handle his instrument and doesn’t improve when given help, they take away the instrument, and give him two sticks, and make him a drummer.”
A stage whisper was heard from the percussion section: “And if he can’t handle even that, they take away one of his sticks and make him a conductor.”
Scientists exhumed Beethoven to discover the cause of his deafness. To their surprise and horror, they discovered the corpse furiously erasing pages of sheet music.
They shouldn’t have been surprised to find him decomposing!
Ya’ see, the waveform for tones below 440 C (Like a common 220 C or lip splitting 110 C) is so large that even with significant adjustments to the valve length the human ear is…
Wait a minute…
I’m not a tuba player any more, haven’t been for 20 years.
