What’s wet, messy, dribbles over tuxedos, fails at the most inappropriate moment, has bits of cork as its main ingredient, is fitted on virtually We’ve got space age titanium mouth pipes every brass instrument ever made, and hasn’t (perhaps with one exception) changed design since Joshua practised his fortissimo against the Jerichoan Walls? Well, not quite, but certainly since Adolphe Sax invented the seven-belled trumpet. If you haven’t guessed by now, you are not a Brass Player. Yes! It’s a water key.
We’ve got space age titanium mouth pipes
Kevlar bells, rocket science cryogenics, precision ground valves to accurate cleaned numbers list from frist database microns of tolerance, perturbatory analysis that would baffle Einstein, super-deluxe, go-faster booster warblers that do absolutely nothing and we still use a device on our instruments that wets our shirts – amazing.
Horror stories about water keys abound
Only recently a good friend of mine played a whole concert with his ‘finger in the why is the newsletter essential in your strategy? Dyke’ when the spring broke after the first note – no Interval. If you would like to share your own personal leaky nightmare drop us a line and we’ll publish it.
When the spring breaks – as they do – on a conventional water key
the cry echoes around the ensemble – ‘my kingdom for an elastic band’. This being really the only effective emergency method of keeping a small hole on the player’s instrument closed, thus allowing him, or her, to complete their performance.
As a brass instrument apprentice, there used to be an ‘old boy’
everyone’s old when you are sixteen – whose raison d’être was to make water taiwan lists key springs. There he sat, on his high stool at a bench in our factory, from 8am to 5.30pm, five days a week plus Saturday mornings, just winding springs on a little rod with a wheel at one end. To be fair, he was the First Aid man as well as spring maker, but sure as hell no one ever went near him if they’d had an accident.
