Instrument Jokes
The amazing conductor
|When a young hotshot conductor was making his debut at the Met, he showed the jaded and skeptical orchestra how well he knew the music by singing all parts of the Lucia sextet during rehearsal.Afterwards, one musician was overheard whispering to the other, impressed, "Well, this kid really knows his stuff!"The other replied, "I don't think he is so hot. Did you notice how flat his high E was at the end?"
Arriving at Heaven
|A soprano died and went to Heaven. St. Peter stopped her at the gate asking, "Well, how many false notes did you sing in your life?"The soprano answers, "Three.""Three times, fellows!" says Pete, and along comes an angel and sticks the soprano three times with a needle."Ow! What was that for?" asks the soprano.Pete explains, "Here in heaven, we stick you once for each false note you've sung down on Earth.""Oh," says the soprano, and is just about to step through the gates when she suddenly hears a horrible screaming from behind a door. "Oh my goodness, what is that?" asks the soprano, horrified."Oh," says Pete, "that's a tenor we got some time back. He's just about to start his third week in the sewing machine."
Operas that never made it
|Britten: A Midsummer Nightmare.Mozart: The Magic Tuba.Puccini: La Bamba.Rossini: The Plumber of Seville.Verdi: Rigatoni.
Orchestra jokes
|Q: What is the definition of a Soviet String Quartet?A: A Soviet Symphony Orchestra after a tour of the USA!Q: What do you do with percussionists that lose one of their drumsticks?A: Stick them up front of the group and tell them to wave their arms!Q: How many conductors does it take to change a light bulb?A: Seven. [Indignant nose upturning] Of course, I wouldn't expect you to understand.Q: Why are conductors' hearts popular for transplants?A: They've had little use.
George Bernard Shaw
|While at a concert being performed by a very bad orchestra, George Bernard Shaw was asked what he'd like them to play next. "Dominoes," he replied.
Playing music
|Last summer, the local orchestra decided to play Beethoven's 9th symphony.However, it being quite hot, the players were working up quite a sweat, until a neighbor let them use the ventilators in her house.However, the wind from these ventilators was causing the notes to blow all over the place, so they had to tie them down to the note holders.The din from the ventilators was so bad that the bassists decided it didn't matter if they downed a few drinks and got royally drunk.Two of the bassists got so drunk that they pass out.One of the violinists, in disgust, decided to go home but slipped and fell.Thus, it was the bottom of the 9th, the bassists were loaded, the score was tied with two men out, and the fans were roaring wild when one of the players slid home.
Efficiency
|From: Efficiency & Ticket, Ltd., Management ConsultantsTo: Chairman, The London Symphony OrchestraRe: Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B minor.After attending a rehearsal of this work we make the following observations and recommendations:1. We note that the twelve first violins were playing identical notes, as were the second violins. Three violins in each section, suitably amplified, would seem to us to be adequate.2. Much unnecessary labour is involved in the number of demisemiquavers in this work; we suggest that many of these could be rounded up to the nearest semiquaver thus saving practice time for the individual player and rehearsal time for the entire ensemble. The simplification would also permit more use of trainee and less-skilled players with only marginal loss of precision.3. We could find no productivity value in string passages being repeated by the horns; all tutti repeats could also be eliminated without any reduction of efficiency.4. In so labour-intensive an undertaking as a symphony, we regard the long oboe tacet passages to be extremely wasteful. What notes this instrument is called upon to play could, subject to a satisfactory demarcation conference with the Musician's Union, be shared out equitably amongst the other instruments.Conclusion: if the above recommendations are implemented the piece under condsideration could be played through in less than half an hour with concomitant savings in overtime, lighting and heating, wear and tear on the instruments and hall rental fees. Also, had the composer been aware of modern cost-effective procedures he might well have finished this work.
May I speak to the conductor
|A musician calls the orchestra office, asks for the conductor, and is told that he is dead.The musician calls back 25 times more and gets the same message from receptionist.She asks why he keeps calling. He replies, "I just like to hear you say it."
Musical jokes
|Q: What do you get when you play a new age song backwards?A: A new age song.Q: What happens if you sing country music backwards?A: You get your job and your wife back.Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.Q: How can you tell someone is a true music lover?A: When they even put their ear up to the bathroom keyhole.After silence, music comes closest to expressing the inexpressible.Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
Any last requests?
|A cowboy and a biker are on death row, and are to be executed on the same day. The day comes, and they are brought to the gas chamber. The warden asks the cowboy if he has a last request, to which the cowboy replies, "Ah shore do, wardn. Ah'd be mighty grateful if'n yoo'd play 'Achy Breaky Heart' fur me bahfore ah hafta go.""Sure enough, cowboy, we can do that," says the warden. He turns to the biker, "And you, biker, what's your last request?""That you kill me first."
Top Ten Signs The Concert You're Attending is Not The Real Woodstock
|From "Late Show with David Letterman" on Tuesday, August 9, 199410. It's hosted by Ed McMahon.9. "Amplifiers" are just enormous dixie cups.8. Every song contains a plug for Green Giant frozen vegetables.7. You're asked to put on a hat and sunglasses and the next thing you know, you're being introduced as Bob Dylan.6. One word: polkas.5. Guy sitting next to you brought a glove and has caught three foul balls.4. "Santana" turns out to be a jolly bearded guy with a sackful of presents.3. They're playing "May we turn the hose on you, please?" [All night Dave sprayed the crowd which gathers outside for each night's show with a hose.]2. You spot Rush Limbaugh stage-diving.1. The crowd is chanting, "Tito! Tito! Tito!"
Glossary of music terms
|Accent: An unusual manner of pronunciation, e.g. "Y'all sang that real good!"Accidentals: Wrong notesAd Libitum: A premiere.Agitato: A string player's state of mind when a peg slips in the middle of a piece.Agnus dei: A famous female church composer.Allegro: Leg fertilizer.Altered Chord: A sonority that has been spayed.Atonality: Disease that many modern composers suffer from. The most prominent symptom is the patient's lacking ability to make decisions.Augmented fifth: A 36-ounce bottle.Bar Line: A gathering of people, usually among which may be found a musician or two.Beat: What music students to do each other with their musical instruments. The down beat is performed on the top of the head, while the up beat is struck under the chin.Bravo: Literally, "How bold!" or "What nerve!" This is a spontaneous expression of appreciation on the part of the concertgoer after a particularly trying performance.Breve: The way a sustained note sounds when a violinist runs out of bow.Broken consort: When somebody in the ensemble has to leave and go to the restroom.Cadence: When everybody hopes you're going to stop, but you don't.Cadenza: The heroine in Monteverdi's opera "Frottola".Cantus firmus: The part you get when you can only play four notes.Chansons de geste: Dirty songs.Chord: Usually spelled with an "s" on the end, means a particular type of pants, e.g. "He wears chords."Chromatic Scale: An instrument for weighing that indicates half-pounds.Clausula: Mrs. Santa.Coloratura Soprano: A singer who has great trouble finding the proper note, but who has a wild time hunting for it.Compound Meter: A place to park your car that requires two dimes.Con Brio: Done with scouring pads and washboards.Conductor: A musician who is adept at following many people at the same time.Conductus: The process of getting Vire into the cloister.Counterpoint: A favorite device of many Baroque composers, all of whom are dead, though no direct connection between these two facts has been established. Still taught in many schools, as a form of punishment.Countertenor: A singing waiter.Crescendo: A reminder to the performer that he has been playing too loudly.Crotchet: 1) A tritone with a bent prong. 2) It's like knitting, but it's faster. 3) An unpleasant illness that occurs after the Lai, if prolation is not used.Cut time: When you're going twice as fast as everybody else in the ensemble.Da capo al fine: I like your hat!Detache: An indication that the trombones are to play with the slides removed.Di lasso: Popular with Italian cowboys.Discord: Not to be confused with Datcord.Drone: The sound of a single monk during an attack of Crotchet.Ductia: 1) A lot of mallards. 2) Vire's organum.Duration: Can be used to describe how long a music teacher can exercise self-control.Embouchre: The way you look when you've been playing the Krummhorn.English horn: A woodwind that got its name because it's neither English nor a horn. Not to be confused with French horn, which is German.Espressivo: Close eyes and play with a wide vibrato.Estampie: What they put on letters in QuebecFermata: A brand of girdle made especially for opera singers.Fermented fifth: What the percussion players keep behind the tympani, which resolves to a 'distilled fifth', which is what the conductor uses backstage.Fine: That was great!Flute: A sophisticated pea shooter with a range of up to 500 yards, blown transversely to confuse the enemy.Garglefinklein: A tiny recorder played by neums.Glissando: The musical equivalent of slipping on a banana peel. Also, a technique adopted by string players for difficult runs.Gregorian chant: A way of singing in unison, invented by monks to hide snoring.Half Step: The pace used by a cellist when carrying his instrument.Harmonic Minor: A good music student.Harmony: A corn-like food eaten by people with accents (see above for definition of accent).Hemiola: A hereditary blood disease caused by chromatics.Heroic Tenor: A singer who gets by on sheer nerve and tight clothing.Hocket: The thing that fits into a crochet to produce a rackett.Hurdy-gurdy: A truss for medieval percussionists who get Organistrum.Interval: How long it takes you to find the right note. There are three kinds: Major Interval: a long time; Minor Interval: a few bars; Inverted Interval: when you have to back one bar and try again.Intonation: Singing through one's nose. Considered highly desirable in the Middle AgesIsorhythm: The individual process of relief when Vire is out of town.Isorhythmic motet: When half of the ensemble got a different photocopy than the other halfLai: What monks give up when they take their vows.Lamentoso: With handkerchiefs.Lasso: The 6th and 5th steps of a descending scale.Lauda: The difference between shawms and krummhornsLonga: The time between visits with Vire.Major Triad: The name of the head of the Music Department. (Minor Triad: the name of the wife of the head of the Music Department.)Mean-Tone Temperament: One's state of mind when everybody's trying to tune at the same time.Messiah: An oratorio by Handel performed every Christmas by choirs that believe they are good enough, in cooperation with musicians who need the money.etronome: A dwarf who lives in the city.Minim: The time you spend with Vire when there is a long line. Breve: The time you spend when the line is short.Minnesinger: A boy soprano or Mickey's girlfriend in the opera.Modulation: "Nothing is bad in modulation."Motet: Where you meet Vire if the cloister is guraded.Musica ficta: When you lose your place and have to bluff till you find it again. Also known as 'faking'.Neums: Renaissance midgetsOpus: A penguin in Kansas.Orchestral suites: Naughty women who follow touring orchestras.Ordo: The hero in Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings".Organistrum: A job-related hazard for careless medieval percussionists, caused by getting one's tapper caught in the clapper.Organum: You may not participate in the Lai without one.Paralell organum: Everybody standing in a double line, waiting for Vire.Pause: A short period in an individual voice in which there should be relative quiet. Useful when turning to the next page in the score, breathing, emptying the horn of salvia, coughing, etc. Is rarely heard in baroque music. Today, the minimum requirements for pauses in individual pieces are those of the Musicians' Union (usually one per bar, or 15 minutes per hour).Pneumatic melisma: A bronchial disorder caused by hockets.Prolation: Precautions taken before the Lai.Quaver: Beginning viol class.Rackett: Capped reeds class.Recitative: A disease that Monteverdi had.Rhythmic drone: The sound of many monks suffering with Crotchet.Ritornello: An opera by Verdi.Rota: An early Italian method of teaching music without score or parts.Rubato: Expression used to describe irregular behaviour in a performer with sensations of angst in the mating period. Especially common amongst tenors.Sancta: Clausula's husband.Score: A pile of all the individual orchestral voices, transposed to C so that nobody else can understand anything. This is what conductors follow when they conduct, and it's assumed that they have studied it carefully. Very few conductors can read a score.Sine proprietate: Cussing in church.Solesme: The state of mind after a rough case of Crotchet.Stops: Something Bach did not have on his organ.Supertonic: Schweppes.Tempo: This is where a headache begins.Tempus imperfectum: Vire had to leave early.Tempus perfectum: A good time was had by all.Tone Cluster: A chordal orgy first discovered by a well-endowed woman pianist leaning forward for a page turn.Transposition: An advanced recorder technique where you change from alto to soprano fingering (or vice-versa) in the middle of a piece.Trill: The musical equivalent of an epileptic seizure.Trope: A malevolent Neum.Trotto: An early Italian form of Montezuma's Revenge.Tutti: A lot of sackbuts.Vibrato: The singer's equivalent of an epileptic seizure.Vibrato: Used by singers to hide the fact that they are on the wrong pitch.Virelai: A local woman known for her expertise in the Lai.Virtuoso: A musician with very high morals
How to buy a stero
|1. Carefully calculate power requirements, based on room dimensions, etc. Multiply by a factor of 100.2. The ideal system should have as many lights as possible, preferably blinking and flashing in time with the music.3. The components should all have black metal finish, and generally look very cool.4. The system should be broken up into as many components as possible. (e.g. pre-amp, pre-pre-amp, pre-menstrual-amp, post-amp, post-menopause-amp, etc.)5. The most important part of a stereo system is the speakers, they should look very cool. Size and number of sub-speakers and varieties of components pointed at the listener is important. (e.g. tweeters, hooters, sub-woofers, super-sub-woofers, seismic noise generators, etc.)6. The system should resemble the cockpit of an F16 or 757 aircraft; the more knobs and dials you can turn, the better.7. The system should have full remote control capability, including over the mobile auto cellular phone so that the stereo can be playing as you get home.8. Should have the capability of playing different music in every room of the house.9. Components should have a cool names; this means no department store brands.10. The complete set-up should put a major recording studio or large radio station to shame. After all, you may be trying to duplicate the exciting feeling of being at a heavy metal concert in a football stadium with 70,000 screaming fans.11. Having state-of-the-art equipment is not enough. You should be a year or two ahead of everyone else. Equipment over the warranty period is obsolete and should be disposed of promptly.12. The most important factor--out of everyone you know who owns stereo equipment, yours should be better.
Musician jokes
|Q: How many musicians does it take to change a light bulb?A: Twenty. 1 to do it and the other 19 to stand around and say, "I can do that!"Q: What do you get if Bach falls off a horse, but has the courage to get on again and continue riding?A: Bach in the saddle again.Q: How many bluegrass musicians does it take to screw in a light bulb?A: Two. One to screw it in, and one to complain that it's electrified.Q: How many musicians does it take to change a light bulb?A: Twenty. 1 to hold the bulb, 2 to turn the ladder, and 17 to be on the guest list.Q: How many folk musicians does it take to change a light bulb?A: Seven; one to change and the other six to sing about how good the old one was.Q: Why don't they know where Mozart is buried?A: Because he's Haydn!Q: What's musical and handy in a supermarket?A: A Chopin Liszt.Q: What do you get if Bach dies and is reincarnated as twins?A: A pair of Re-bachs.Q: What do you call a male quartet?A: Three men and a tenor.
Where are we?
|Fritz Kriesler and Rachmaninov had a recital in Carnegie Hall once. In the middle of the music, Kriesler got lost and turned around to ask Rachmaninov, "Where are we?"Rachmaninov said, "Carnegie Hall, sir!"
What's that sound?
|A tourist is sightseeing in a European city. She comes upon the tomb of Beethoven, and begins reading the commerative plaque, only to be distracted by a low scratching noise, as if something was rubbing against a piece of paper.She collars a passing native and asks what the scratching sound is.The local person replies, "Oh, that is Beethoven. He's decomposing."
Arriving in Heaven
|Arriving in HeavenThree men die and go to heaven and queue to meet St. Peter.St. Peter: Hi, what's your name?Paul: My name is Paul.St. Peter: Hi, Paul. Tell me, when you died, how much were you earning?Paul: 120K.St. Peter: Wow! Tell me, Paul, what were you doing to earn that kind of money?Paul: I was a lawyer.St. Peter: That's great. Come on in. St. Peter then turned to the second man. Hi, what's your name?Roger: My name is Roger.St. Peter: Hi, Roger. Tell me, when you died, how much were you earning?Roger: 60K.St. Peter: Hey, that's great! Tell me, Roger:, what did you do for a living?Roger: I was an accountant.St. Peter: That's very good. Come on in. St. Peter then turned to the second man. Hi, what's your name?John: My name is John.St. Peter: Hi, John. Tell me, John, how much were you earning when you died?John: About $23,000.St. Peter: Hey, that's fantastic, John! Tell me, what instrument did you play?
Phone songs
|All of the following songs may be played on a touch-tone phone. Commas are pauses, and hyphens are held notes.Mary Had A Little Lamb3212333, 222, 399, 3212333322321 or3212333, 222, 133, 3212333322321 Jingle Bells333, 333, 39123, 666-663333322329, 333, 333, 39123, 666-6633, 399621 Frere Jacques1231, 1231, 369, 369, 9*9631, 9*9631, 111, 111 Olympic Fanfare3-9-91231, 2222-32112312, 3-9-91231, 2222-32112321 The Butterfly Song963, 23621, 3693236236932362, 963, 23621 Happy Birthday112, 163, 112, 196, 110, 8521, 008, 121
<< Prev 0 1 2