Sometimes oboists can go bad and snap. Including me. So here's where I vent..

Do you want to rant?

Ranting for 04/03/2001

Okay, to all you first chair oboes out there. It's called an A 440 and learn how to do it. It’s not hard. Just whip out your tuner and check before everyone has to wait for you to lip it down or up, depending on your problem. I don't have a problem with it and I'm not even a first chair in an orchestra anymore, well, for now anyways... Pardon me. I digress. And furthermore, when you play an A, try it for more than 5 seconds. It's tough to tune to someone who can't not only play the A in tune for the first 2 seconds, but who can't keep it sustained for more than 5. Ahh, that felt good. Keep tuned for more ranting. Knowing me, there's bound to be more to come.

Ranting for 04/07/2001

Reeds. The bane of our existence. I just got done auditioning here at UWEC to become an official music composition major. I was feeling good, nicely confident, rather sure of my ability to play. My reed was doing well, blowing easily and sounding clear. So I was waiting for 15 minutes outside of the room with my reed in my mouth (yeah, I'm a spit soaker, so sue me) so the reed should have been good... I get into the room and the reed doesn't work like it should. It sounded dry, and wasn't responding. I'd just like to say to all the reeds out there that I HAVE run over a reed with my car, and if you push me too far I'll do it to you as well. I can prove it too. The reed is sitting in my case... let that be a lesson to the rest of you.

Ranting for 4/18/2001

This isn't really a ranting, but it should really be said. If you're a first chair sitting ahead of me, do NOT miss a rehearsal and allow me access to your music, because I WILL show you up. Nothing against you personally, but I've got what it takes. I've got the strong A, I've got the tone, I've got the technique, I've got it all. This is not to be pompous or anything, it's just the way it is. I can't help it, and unless you clean up your playing, you can't either. (Please note, this is not directed to any specific person, thank you)

Ranting for 4/22/2001

Johann Strauss sucks. I hate waltzes. Every last one of them sounds just like the other. I had to play in a ball this weekend and I could not be more tired of playing Strauss waltzes. Every last one just sounds more and more like the one before, every note more useless than the last. The only good thing that I can say about them is that they're more fun after two Long Island Iced Teas and a few good imported beers from Munich.

Rant for 4/30/2001

I recently saw a musical at a small high school near Eau Claire. It was pretty good, some of the actors seemed like they were purposefully deadpanning their characters, but I think that was just lack of acting ability. Well, the point is, there was no oboe in the pit. What kind a shameful production is without an oboe? I don't care if the musical is something like "Grease" which is based on rock music (though not very good rock music for that show in my humble opinion), there must always be an oboe. Listen to the background music during movies; every time there is a soft, tender, sad or joyful part, you hear an oboe carrying the melody. There is a reason that movies make more money than musicals... could it be the steady use of the oboe?

Ranting for 5/2/2001

REHEARSALS ARE NOT STRING SECTIONALS! REHEARSALS ARE NOT STRING SECTIONALS!! REHEARSALS ARE NOT STRING SECTIONALS!!! That said, let me add: REHEARSALS ARE NOT STRING SECTIONALS!!!! And they aren't, confound it. If you are a conductor, director or maestro (depending on what you like to call yourself) let me say to you, if you are going to have a hour and a half rehearsal and during that rehearsal you only have the winds play for ten of those minutes... please, just have a string sectional. And please, DON'T spend the entire rehearsal on one movement of a twelve movement mass. It just doesn't add up.

Ranting for 6/11/2001

Music is beautiful... is life?

Ranting for 6/19/01

Youngin's... I don't know about them. They've got their entire musical and oboe futures in front of them, and I'm trying to help. When I tell my students to try to open up their sound, stand with a more relaxed posture, and play the high notes of their scales with faster air, I mean it. It will make a world of difference. When I say "play that high C as loud as you possibly can without losing your tone", I mean it confound it. Just blow. Use good support. Is it so much to ask? (Special thanks to Prof. Ivar Lunde Jr. of UW-Eau Claire for the principles of good sound)

Ranting for 8/5/01

Yeah, it's been a while, like I'm sure many have noticed... but I blame Angelfire/Lycos. They all of a sudden change how the sign in procedure works, all of a sudden my old password doesn't work... and does anybody tell me? Of course not. I'm sure I had lots of rants to put up here, but forgot most of them in the wait. Thanks a lot Angelfire/Lycos.

Ranting for 9/1/01

Back to school... Back to school... Back to school to prove to daddy that I'm not a fool... Oh yeah, and I'm also back to school to kick some ass. I'm smelling that first chair position. And it smells good. It smells real good.

Ranting for 9/7/01

Okay, so auditions didn't go as well as I had hoped. Actually I shouldn't say that. There were four oboes going for four spots in two groups, Wind Symphony and Orchestra. I got first chair in Wind Symphony, but I WANTED first chair in orchestra. You know how it is, better solos and all. I suppose I'll manage, if there's any english horn parts in orchestra I'll probably get the nod to do second oboe... but still... it just isn't the same.

Ranting for 9/20/01

I'm a freakin' musician. Yeah. That's right. We're all freakin' musicians. Some people might not know it, but we're all musicians at heart. Nothing can touch the human spirit and soul like music can, and for those of us who know the secrets of music (oboists and composers we'll say) are a cut above the rest of humanity. So stand strong says I, and don't let jug-headed football players push you around... especially when you're bigger than many of them... like me. Heh heh heh.

Ranting for 10/20/01

This isn't really a ranting, really it's more of a philosophical statement. Life is a series of events. It is much like watching a bike wheel pass in slow motion. There are ever so few periods where you see the actual spokes of the wheel pass, the rest of the time you see nothing at all. Those spokes are the points in our lives that we must focus on. Everyone has, at some point in their lives, a spoke come across, and it are those times that we must focus on. No matter how much pain may be brought about by those moments, they are the moments that will shape our lives. I'm not sure how this relates to oboing. Maybe a spoke comes across at the time that some of us realize that we will never be a great oboist, or even musician, no matter how much we love the oboe or music. Maybe that spoke even comes across because of an oboist. I don't know. I barely even know what I'm talking about, but, then, does anybody really know? My point is, always know the spokes in your lives. Every life has points painful and pleasurable. Every one of those points makes us what we may become.

11/29/01

George Harrison, 1943-2001... "Love one-another"

Ranting for 12/07/01

Who here has heard of "chance music"? It was made well known by "composer" John Cage, the infamous creator of a piece that is nothing but silence (the music is in the sounds of the crowd... or something like that), and a piece titled "Imaginary Landscape No.4" which is a piece for 12 radios. Yes, that's right radios. You see, John Cage is from the school of "chance music". His rhythms, tone colors and even pitches are often determined by something random; the roll of a dice, or the flip of a coin, for example. Let me tell you something. It insults me as an aspiring composer to hear these kind of people called composers. If you let chance determine what happens with your music, there is no way you have the right to take credit for it. And further more, why would you want to? It's crap. Every last bit of it. Bah, I feel bad even mentioning this supposed "music" when the anniversary of John Lennon's death draws near. Chance music and John Cage don't deserve to be mentioned within a year of any uttering of the name John Lennon.

12/8/01

This was going to be just a nice little spot to praise the life of John Lennon, but I'm too damn mad to leave it at just that. My car was broken into last night and my CD player was stolen. Luckily they left my CD's... except for one. The CD that was in the player... Lewis Black "The White Album". They stole my Lewis Black CD! I know it's not music, its only stand-up, but it's the funniest damn stand-up there is. And now there's glass all over my car and on top of all of that, one of my tires is flat. A splendid day it has been... you'd think waking up at 7:00 for a rehearsal for music that you hate, while you have a killer hangover mind you, is as bad as it gets... well I was wrong. Today got worse. It's bad enough that John Lennon was killed 21 years ago. Well... I think despite my problems a brief word on John Lennon is appropriate... I am a dreamer too John, and I would love to join you...

Ranting for 1/30/02

I was just watching one of my favorite shows, South Park, and I noticed that they have made a horrible insult to oboists everywhere. In episode 317 "World Wide Recorder Concert" the children from South Park are playing in a 4 million-piece recorder group... they were led by Kenny G. All is good and fine until I look more carefully and notice that Kenny G is holding an oboe, not a soprano sax. To show Kenny G with an oboe is an egregious insult. I think most of us would agree that Kenny G plays nothing but watered down wuss music. I certainly don't respect him as a musician, and South Park has him holding an oboe. He doesn't deserve to hold an oboe. For shame South Park...

Ranting for 3/13/02

Okay, so I was playing in orchestra for our Children's concerts and I was telling all the youngins about how oboes are supposed to be made out of grenadilla wood, but have lately been made out of other materials, rosewood, violet wood, high-density resin, etc... because of the fact that there just isn't enough good grenadilla wood out there to work with. And I got to thinking. It's all because of those rat bastard clarinets. Where do clarinets get off taking our wood? Oboes have been around longer, are a more sophisticated instrument and are the far superior instrument. So next time your grenadilla wood oboe cracks because it hasn't been aged properly because of clarinets, you find nearest clarinet and you give them a good punch in the face for me.

Ranting for 3/27/02

Well, I FINALLY got my first submission in the ranting section for other people, and I've got to say, its about time. If you're an oboist I KNOW you've got something to be disgruntled about... either that or I'm unusually angry about things. I suppose that's a possibility. Oh, and one more thing, just so you know I will not clean up your submissions, be it typos, misspellings, or bad grammar... in fact, I might change things to make you look mad... well, no that wouldn't be nice... but then I suppose I'm not known for being especially nice.

Ranting for 4/01/02

Today I was at my grandmother's funeral. Now there's no need to feel sorry for me, death is a stark inevitability of life and I'll be just fine. This rant is not about that. It's about how religion can often times screw up faith. My grandma was Catholic and as such the funeral was a Catholic mass. At said mass come the time of communion all baptized Catholics were invited to come up to receive communion. All CATHOLICS mind you. I and my brother happen to be the only immediate family that are Lutherans... well, actually I'm really more of a agnostic Deist while he's pretty much a atheist, but that's besides the point. My point is that there are enough problems with religions not working together, much less different denominations in those religions not working together. I KNOW that it didn't matter to my grandma that my brother and I aren't Catholics and I just fail to see why it should matter to the Pope.

Ranting for 4/02/02

Sometimes you have to cut your losses and scrap a project. I just decided to stop writing "Overture of the Twin Towers" because it sucked. In listening to it, in ten minutes I think I heard two musical ideas that I deemed good and I decided that such an important event deserved better than what I was writing. It pains this egocentric and arrogant oboist to admit defeat in the face of my own lack of present knowledge in composition, but I suppose it had to happen eventually. I suspect that most of what I've written up to this point I'll have to go back to and totally change once I figure out what I'm doing.

Ranting for 5/20/02

Last night I came up with something of consequence to say, but I forgot it. I'll just say that if you haven't already you should go see Star Wars... I can't possibly describe it in the small amount of space I have left on my website.

Ranting for 08/01/2002

Well, its once again been awhile, but since school is out for the summer I've been taking a break from oboing... you've got to be careful to not burn out you know. But I'm bugged again with angelfire/lycos. Ages ago they reduced the account size to 20MB, but I've had this website since before ages ago and they never called me on having too much (about 29 MB too much), but now they are so I've got to remove stuff. It pains me, but I'll be taking down the oboe MP3's. I doubt most people really download them too often. If nothing else I'll leave a list up of what I've got and let people contact me if they want something. Who knows... maybe I'll start up my own site served from my computer so this won't be a problem, but as of now, say goodbye to the MP3 files.

Ranting for 08/20/2002

Wow. I've actually got two things to say today after a summer of mostly silence. First of all, don't advertise on my guestbook. I'd rather hear what you have to say or suggest than hear what you have to sell. Second of all is this. I picked up this old book at a thrift store a few days ago called "The Music Lovers Handbook". There's all sorts of neat stuff in it, but when a read up on the double reeds, check out what it says for the English Horn... "In its lusciousness it runs a close second to the cellos: in fact it is the only wind instrument whose timbre approaches the emotional quality of string tone." Pardon my language, but that's pretty damn subjective. I really don't think there's anything that has the potential for emotion that the oboe does, and yes, that's subjective too, but I'm not going to say that double reeds are the best emotional sounding instrument, that's just ludicrous... but not as ludicrousas saying it's strings.

Ranting for 09/07/2002

The world is upside down. I've seen many points that prove this thought in recent days, though I'm sure I've forgotten some of them. Let's go with the obvious first of all. Team USA losses in basketball, not only do they lose, but they lose twice in a row and are now out of medal contention. I'm sure I don't need to explain why this shouldn't be. Second of all... you can buy fresh sea food at my local Wal-Mart. Fresh seafood? At Wal-Mart? Yep. But that's not the clincher. The clincher is this: You can buy frog legs at Wal-Mart. FROG LEGS. Now, I consider my palette rather refined, especially compared to your average Wal-Mart shopper, and I have NO idea how to use frog legs. I've never even fathomed using them, so it leads me to wonder if they ever actually sell any frog legs, and, therefore, how fresh they really are. Now, third point, Porsche is making a SUV. That is messed up beyond reason. Porsche, the essence of cool, the company that defined sports car, is making a SUV. I can't find the words to describe my befuddlement. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but I think this has gone on long enough and these three points do the job.

Ranting for 10/23/2002

Tis the season to get a cold. This can be difficult for everyone involved in music. It can be hard for a musician, especially one who plays a wind, as was evidenced by my recent exceptionally poor performance during a concert, but it can be worse for somebody in the audience. Let me say this, if you have a cold and need to clear your throat, try to do it during a loud portion of the song being performed, and then, don't make as loud of a "horking" sound as is humanly possible. I was at a choral concert, and there was a person behind me who was sneezing and sniffling constantly. Then, immediately as a nice pianissimo set in, I heard the loudest, most revolting, sound a human can make from this fellow. It was most disturbing. I suggest against doing it if you ever are attending a concert and have a cold.

Ranting for 2/28/2003

Again, it’s been awhile, but such is life and right now something is bothering me. It's about this whole Iraq thing. For much of this thing I've been on the side of the government and I've been a loud opponent of those whom I have labeled "peace mongers". These are the people who spew out the common phrases of "war is still stupid", "war is not the answer", and the like. Sometimes war is the only answer, and peace only works when both sides desire it. For most of this time I've felt that war was inevitable if we want to avoid Iraq developing some nasty weapons and giving them to terrorists, and thus I have felt that the pre-emptive strike has been called for, but in recent days it has seemed that Iraq might be actually making some moves towards peace... but now our dear president Shrub won't have any of it since he really needs a war to pull attention away from his idiocy. Despite my support of some of his policies, I still hate Bush, with all my heart, and I feel that he should not rightly be our president, but that's not the point. My point is that if we have a chance for peace we should go with it and not ignore it... make no mistake however, we should not hesitate to use force if it is called for. I'm on nobody's side in this argument... I'm just on the side of my nation and my people.

Ranting for 5/16/2003

Another school year draws to the end and it’s been a long time since this site has seen any activity. I think this summer I’m going to try to revamp this site, it’s been sitting stale for a few years now. But, before that happens, I’ll leave you with some thoughts I’ve had recently.

It’s funny how something small can make such a difference in this world. When we look back on our lives and see all that has happened and all that has been lost, I wonder what it is we remember. I, personally, remember a little screwdriver, such that you would use on an oboe. I know, that doesn’t make any sense. A screwdriver? Well, yes, a screwdriver. You may ask why… well, I’m not going to tell you why. It’s personal. There are very few people who know why. I’m one of them and I know another who might know what I’m talking about won’t be reading anything on this site anytime soon. This all kind of goes with my next thought.

Time moves inexorably on and there’s nothing we can really do about it. Some moments that I feel really shaped my life took place during the summer before, and while I was a senior in high school. Next year I will be a senior in college. That’s four years my friends. One fifth of my life. It’s funny to see how much I’ve changed and how much I’ve stayed the same. I hope these past few years have seen you doing well, and I hope the future ones will be better. I may not know you, but, Good Luck, and maybe I’ll see you around sometime.

Ranting for 11/9/2004

Well, it's only been about a year and a half later, and it's probably become apparent that I'm not putting much effort into the site; there's just too much to do in life. I'll still throw up anything new I write and, when I get to it, rants that others send in, but other than that I'm out of the business. That being said, anybody who wants to take over the site, I'm willing to take on a protege. Just email me.

Ranting for 01/29/2006

I've seen something crazy on