# Horror stories..whats yours?



## stevens (Jun 23, 2014)

First of all, sorry for my poor english. Now:

I was invited to play an organconcert in a church at the countryside in the middle of....the countryside. I choosed a Bach programme.
I showed up 40 minutes before the concert to check the organ and what organ voices to choose for the various pieces.
-However,..and what become chocking, when I pressed down the keys, it was almost stuck!! I couldnt press down the keys! I have never ever experienced that! Whats wrong?? -What to do? I checked the organ...couldnt find anything that I could adjust. I ran down and asked the very old verger (what is it called in english? sexton, beadle? -well the caretaker) I said, (cried) Whats wrong whith the organ?? I can hardly press down the keys!!
-He answered calmy; "well, ..they say its a bit heavy. Is it?"
-Oh my God,...what to do? The audience began to come (mostly tourists). I ran back to the organ but couldnt figure out how to adjust the mechanics. -Should I play at the grand piano instead? No! this Bach programme had been advertised....and I couldn in this panic start to check the piano.
Ok end of the story.
-How did it go? Well, i played the intended Bach programme at the organ but in below the half tempo ...(much below) I had to HIT down every single note. Embarrassing!


-So, next time....I check out the instrument!


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I don't have any horror stories, but I very much enjoyed reading yours, even while feeling sorry you had to endure that experience.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I avoided the musical instrument horror story by never learning an instrument and so never having to perform before an audience. But you are in the better position to be able to play and get stuck with a bad instrument at a performance than to not be able to play at all. Though I am sure at the time it was a very horrible experience. Now I probably do have horror stories in other areas of life, but that is for a thread in a different forum.


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

Wow, worst thing ever happened to me was because of a lack of preparation, I forgot an entire passage in a Rachmaninoff prelude. I just repeated the last passage, skipped to the end and hardly anyone in the audience knew it. It was a high school recital, so it is a far cry from the nightmare of the OP. That must have been horrible. My heart goes out to you.

V


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

stevens said:


> First of all, sorry for my poor english. Now:
> 
> I was invited to play an organconcert in a church at the countryside in the middle of....the countryside. I choosed a Bach programme.
> I showed up 40 minutes before the concert to check the organ and what organ voices to choose for the various pieces.
> ...


Which is why you should always carry with you an accordion ... or at least a harmonica.


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## kikko (Jun 19, 2014)

It's 4 A.M. here and I can't ******* sleep because I just saw the beginning of the Evil Dead.


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

kikko said:


> It's 4 A.M. here and I can't ******* sleep because I just saw the beginning of the Evil Dead.


The original or the remake?

V


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

One time I accidentally sat on my viola. That was pretty bad.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

violadude said:


> One time I accidentally sat on my viola. That was pretty bad.


I hope it wasn't broken. That sounded pretty bad.


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## 38157 (Jul 4, 2014)

Couple of months ago I had to play a recital for university. It was as a unit of 5: myself on tenor sax and guitar, two pianists, electric violin and trap kit (plus an unannounced (even to the examiner, which was a risky move) guesting pianist and a tech man who we also put on alto sax - that was the first time he ever even touched a sax in his life). We played two Zappa pieces which we segued, so it ran through as one (King Kong - Big Swifty). I had to transcribe and arrange them, and it took a long time to teach everyone this music.
It was all going well between me, the violinst and pianist #2, but pianist #1 would procrastinate (he didn't start on his part for "Big Swifty" until a week before performance - I had to take out the entire right hand to make it possible, leaving only the bass-line, and even then, he played it poorly. He also tried to learn Beethoven's 3rd movement of Moonlight Sonata in a week for an important recital, so you get that he's to relaxed). Also, our drummer dropped out at the last minute, and the replacement could only make two rehearsals. On the day, he played with us cold - no rehearsal with him on the day of performance. I had to conduct the band, and the drummer, due to his lack of rehearsal, was having a couple of timing problems, and at one point in "King Kong", everyone was so out it was awful - I was trying to conduct a regular pulse, but no one followed, so it just looked to the examiner and audience that I was just waving my hands at random. We ****** up the segue into "Big Swifty", and made an awful dissonant noise (luckily, we just did some very dissonant improvisations, so it sounded like part of it), but we made up for it in the improv. section (where the "mystery" pianist - Joe - burst into the room. We went through a routine where he plays a while, then I kick him out). My tech man was too busy page-turning for pianist #1, so I had to adjust the level of my guitar myself during the improvs and return to theme. Luckily, the recapitulation of the head went very smoothly. We were awarded a 1st, but I will never know why. That day was the first day I was glad Zappa is dead - I would hate for him to hear that awful mess. Felt like we should all have been wearing aprons and called ourselves "The Butchers".


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## kikko (Jun 19, 2014)

Varick said:


> The original or the remake?
> 
> V


the bloody remake


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

kikko said:


> the bloody remake


The remake is cheap and nasty. Which is not to say that the original isn't also, but it has a charm to it.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

violadude said:


> One time I accidentally sat on my viola. That was pretty bad.


Did it play a bum note?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I wanted to learn the clarinet so I signed up at a local music school for a package of lessons.

The teacher was competent, though an hour of instruction consisted of about 37 minutes of political discourse and 23 minutes of music.

I would recommend this particular music school to anyone wishing to run for government office. You will learn a lot.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

****** said:


> That day was the first day I was glad Zappa is dead - I would hate for him to hear that awful mess.


As a matter of fact, he DID hear it. And he's got friends in high places nowadays...


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## 38157 (Jul 4, 2014)

Oh well - I'd like to think I at least made up for it by recapturing the spirit of The Mothers (and with my tasteful Bartok quotes during the guitar solos).


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## stevens (Jun 23, 2014)

violadude said:


> One time I accidentally sat on my viola. That was pretty bad.


Why does viola players sit on their instruments? Its appears quite common or?
The joke goes:

Why is viola called "bratsche" in Germany? 
-Because that's the sound it makes when you sit down on it


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

I've posted this on here before...but have no problems showing it again as it's not me  I didn't perform that evening.
Our percussionist is still called Donkey Gong.

Play at 32:50


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## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

I was 12 years old and was playing a Horn solo. Just me, the pianist and the audience. Handel, Largo from Xerxes, everybody learns it at some time. Well, I was a new horn player and slaughtered it. The more I "played" the worse it got. Although I became a pretty good horn player, best in the low range so a 2nd and 4th horn, playing horn solos still gives me jitters. Solos on other instruments are not a problem, but the horn will always be.


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## stevens (Jun 23, 2014)

I remember when I was about ten or eleven years old and I was promted to play a classical piece in front of my class (I was bullied because I only liked classical music). My bones was shaking to the extent that I couldnt use the sustain pedal.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

On the day of a concert last year, my violin teacher was in his music room tuning his best baroque fiddle when a fellow-musician who had been staying in the bedroom overhead hit his foot on a floorboard, stumbled, and put his foot through the ceiling, scattering plaster and dust all over the fiddle. It could have been worse - nobody was hurt and the fiddle just needed dusting. My teacher hasn't repaired the ceiling, just stuck a walking boot in among the twisted laths. It is supposed to be secure, but I think of it as the boot of Damocles, and always move my chair away from it during lessons.


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

Ingélou said:


> On the day of a concert last year, my violin teacher was in his music room tuning his best baroque fiddle when a fellow-musician *who had been staying in the bedroom overhead hit his foot on a floorboard, stumbled, and put his foot through the ceiling*, scattering plaster and dust all over the fiddle. It could have been worse - nobody was hurt and the fiddle just needed dusting. My teacher hasn't repaired the ceiling, just stuck a walking boot in among the twisted laths. It is supposed to be secure, but I think of it as the boot of Damocles, and always move my chair away from it during lessons.
> 
> View attachment 47056


I'm a builder & custom woodworker. If someone can put their foot through a floor, there are some SERIOUS structural problems. I'd be afraid of sitting ANYWHERE downstairs.

Regardless, it is a VERY funny story!

V


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## Radames (Feb 27, 2013)

Varick said:


> Wow, worst thing ever happened to me was because of a lack of preparation, I forgot an entire passage in a Rachmaninoff prelude. I just repeated the last passage, skipped to the end and hardly anyone in the audience knew it. It was a high school recital, so it is a far cry from the nightmare of the OP. That must have been horrible. My heart goes out to you.
> 
> V


I saw a young violinist do that in Hartford a few years back during her encore. She just stopped and said she had done it wrong. She started the encore over again and did the same thing again. So she said sorry and left. We gave her a big ovation anyway - what she did play she played very well. I wasn't familiar with the piece and if she had just made some things up or repeated some other passages she knew I bet very few people would have noticed. But she was too young to have learned that trick yet.


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## rrudolph (Sep 15, 2011)

When I was in my early twenties (oh so long ago), I was doing a summer orchestra gig in Austria. I got hired to do a "new music" chamber concert; the music I was to play (as part of an ensemble of mixed instruments) was a somewhat complicated multiple percussion part involving vibraphone and several other instruments. It was the sort of part that I would normally spend at least a month preparing, since in addition to just learning the actual notes I had to work out the choreography between the various instruments, stick and mallet changes, etc. I got the part one week before the performance. Since it was a side gig, I couldn't use the orchestra's instruments (also since I was away from home I didn't have any way to move large pieces of equipment); I was told instruments would be provided. I asked the contractor when I could get my hands on the instruments so I could learn the music and was told "the instruments will be at the concert"! I did my best to at least learn the notes in the vibe part (on the orchestra's xylophone!), but needless to say I was nowhere near adequately prepared. I faked the performance as well as I could; probably about 70%-to 80% of what I played was just an approximation of what was intended. Afterward, I felt like I had been forced into doing a disservice to the composer, the audience and the music and that it would have been better if the performance had never happened. I felt lower than a snake's belly about the whole thing.
The next day, there was a glowingly positive review in the local newspaper, praising in particular the "precision" with which I interpreted the percussion part.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Okay, this was a dream, but it was so vivid and musically accurate that it might as well have been real: I was rehearsing an orchestra and chorus in the "Benedictus" of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. The movement is in a cantabile 12/8, so I has just told everyone that I would conduct it in a broad four (each representing three eighths), which is a perfectly reasonable way to break it down. The concertmaster hurried up to me and said that, no, I had to beat out all of the eighth notes in each measure so the players would know exactly where they were. So I went nearly apoplectic trying to figure out a pattern fort depicting 12/8!


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## SuperTonic (Jun 3, 2010)

I wanted to respond to this thread with my performance horror story, but as I was typing it up I realized it was way too long for to go here. I posted it as a blog post instead, which you can read here if you wish.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

My horror story? I was born into this world. The end.


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## rrudolph (Sep 15, 2011)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> My horror story? I was born into this world. The end.


Ah, but it's NOT the end yet, if you're still able to post...


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

SuperTonic said:


> I wanted to respond to this thread with my performance horror story, but as I was typing it up I realized it was way too long for to go here. I posted it as a blog post instead, which you can read here if you wish.


Well, that was a horror story indeed - but a very interesting read, and thanks for posting it! :tiphat:


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> My horror story? I was born into this world. The end.


You are a cynical [email protected]@rd, aren't you?!


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

violadude said:


> One time I accidentally sat on my viola. That was pretty bad.


When you sit down on your viola and nobody is there to hear, does it make a sound?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Serge said:


> When you sit down on your viola and nobody is there to hear, does it make a sound?


You mean a violist is nobody? I know they're supposedly *tone*-deaf but i thought they might be a) vaguely somebody and b) capable of some hearing.


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Makes me wonder now what possessed George Harrison to write While My Guitar Gently Weeps...


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## OldFashionedGirl (Jul 21, 2013)

hpowders said:


> I wanted to learn the clarinet so I signed up at a local music school for a package of lessons.
> 
> The teacher was competent, though an hour of instruction consisted of about 37 minutes of political discourse and 23 minutes of music.
> 
> I would recommend this particular music school to anyone wishing to run for government office. You will learn a lot.


I am in a local "school music." I gonna learn the clarinet and for the past four months all I have been doing is rhythmic exercises. The "school" only have teacher teaching like 14 students with differents levels and who play different instruments. Some like me are beggining, others have just started to play their respective instrument and others are in an advanced level and play in the local band. The past saturday I have like 5 minutes of music and an hour and half of staring at the walls of the "classroom". And he talks like a parrot, instead of teaching music.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Horror stories? You mean on TC or in my other life? I have plenty of both.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

OldFashionedGirl said:


> I am in a local "school music." I gonna learn the clarinet and for the past four months all I have been doing is rhythmic exercises. The "school" only have teacher teaching like 14 students with differents levels and who play different instruments. Some like me are beggining, others have just started to play their respective instrument and others are in an advanced level and play in the local band. The past saturday I have like 5 minutes of music and an hour and half of staring at the walls of the "classroom". And he talks like a parrot, instead of teaching music.


Sorry to LOL, but it sounds like the clarinet teacher I had. An hour and 10 minutes of politics; 20 minutes of clarinet.


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## Bruce (Jan 2, 2013)

The way this post began--with the organ concert--reminds me of an incident at an organ concert I attended about 15 years ago in Iceland. I went to a concert at the Hallgrimskirkja, attended by about 100 people. After the first work, instead of applause, there was utter silence. The organist turned around, as if in surprise. I began to applaud, upon which many others joined in, though it seemed to me with less enthusiasm than the performance demanded. While the second piece was being played, it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps, in Iceland at least, it was considered bad form to applaud either in a church, or at an organ concert, or both. The organist was very good, so I don't think applause was withheld because of poor playing. Since then, I've never known whether or not I broke any unspoken rules by beginning to applaud after the individual works were played. Does anyone know of traditions regarding applause at organ concerts in churches in Iceland?


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Ha, I once walked with my hat on into a church. Didn't intend to go in there but I wasn't alone. And that's probably the last time that I ever walked into a church. Good times.


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## OldFashionedGirl (Jul 21, 2013)

hpowders said:


> Sorry to LOL, but it sounds like the clarinet teacher I had. An hour and 10 minutes of politics; 20 minutes of clarinet.


He should have a career in politics instead of teaching music.
Hpowders. the dog of your avatar is too cute.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Bruce said:


> Does anyone know of traditions regarding applause at organ concerts in churches in Iceland?


For a moment there, I thought I was viewing the "Stupid thread titles" thread... 

I suppose the thing to do is to watch what everyone else does: when in Iceland, do as the Icelanders do.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

OldFashionedGirl said:


> He should have a career in politics instead of teaching music.


He did: he found the switch from clarinet to saxophone fairly easy, but then ended up spending so much time with his favourite White House intern that he seldom practiced.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Horror story of the future: I go log on to TC and all the stupid thread ideas have not only been posted on TC, but have all gone on for 6 months or longer with no end in sight.


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## Brad (Mar 27, 2014)

SONNET CLV said:


> Which is why you should always carry with you an accordion ... or at least a harmonica.


OR you could install your own personal organ at every venue you play in beforehand. Problem solved forever. You're welcome.


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## Brad (Mar 27, 2014)

hpowders said:


> Horror story of the future: I go log on to TC and all the stupid thread ideas have not only been posted on TC, but have all gone on for 6 months or longer with no end in sight.


Oh come on, you have to admit that at least some of them would be fun to try out


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## Brad (Mar 27, 2014)

I was at an organ concert this summer at a church in Prague. The place was filled with tourists who looked like they had never been to any kind of concert/recital, so I half expected this.

There were about 7 different works played. They clapped in between each movement, yes..movement. Then to finish it all off in the finale, Boellmann's famous toccata (right before the final 4 chords or so), they began applauding. Thinking it had ended, their cheers were drowned out by the belting out of the final chords.

Needless to say, I had quite a distinguished mark from facepalming


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

OldFashionedGirl said:


> He should have a career in politics instead of teaching music.
> Hpowders. the dog of your avatar is too cute.


Thank you, OldFashionedGirl! I took care of him for a week and now I miss him terribly. Where he went, there is no classical music, so maybe he will come running back! Ha! Ha!

Yeah, the guy who taught me clarinet loved his politics. I think he found teaching clarinet boring.


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