octoberfest

The Bitterroot Brewing Company hosted an Octoberfest celebration that included US! The Bitterroot Community Band (a subset thereof, actually) filled the corner stage to overflowing with German music … and I DO MEAN GERMAN.

It was my first experience reading, or attempting to read music in German. The words had no meaning to me, but the notes and MOST of the symbols where the same. Complicating things for me was that my eyes could not make the small, old sheet music come into focus.

Before I go any further, let me state
unequivocably, irrefuteably that . . . . . . We Had A Ball !!!

Not completely irrelevant was the fact that our host provided [almost] all of us with samples of their products
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Ohmygosh – Their products are very, very good hand crafted beers, ales and stouts. I have not been drinking beer much lately, certainly not draft, and most definitely not of this quality.

I can only personally vouch for the nut brown ale and their octoberfest, but my mates loved everything they tasted as much as I did my samples.

I am very definitely a pro-musician now. The pay for last night’s gig was high indeed. Oh yeah, and my ‘new’ 55 year old Conn 6H has pleasantly acquitted itself in its first gig. It, we, played well together and made sounds that came out very much like I wanted them to.

As for my reading difficulties, my sight reading isn’t the greatest, the light on my music stand was not good and I still haven’t found my intermediate focal length glasses since our move north. I will be working on solutions.

My best songs were the two where in one case I had NO music and the other I had only page one of two. I simply made up my part and played out of my head. In one I pretended to have the tuba part (we really missed having a tuba for this type of music). In the other, the lead melody line called out to me. Quite flattering to me, the really good musicians and music teachers around me had NO IDEA I wasn’t playing a written part. It sounded good to them.