Dropping your instrument

[stiofan]

Kar - I've occasionally lost my grip on my cello bow (and lost my grip with reality, but that's another issue...) and dropped it, which usually means I'm too tired or just not paying attention to my grip. It doesn't happen much anymore, so I guess that means that it's part of the learning process. (it's kind of hard to drop the cello while playing, since it's resting on the ground via the endpin and between your knees) When I (briefly) tried learning the fiddle (after a few years on the cello) it seemed so light that I wondered how to possibly move both hands in some semblance of coordination and hold the instrument lightly under my chin, so I can certainly understand how such things could happen. I'm sure your teacher can give you advice on how tightly/lightly to rest/hold the fiddle under your chin and with the left hand. I'd just chalk this up to the kinds of things one experiences while learning the instrument, though I'd be as concerned just as you are of damaging the instrument. I think alot of it involves the tactile awareness that eventually develops in a player, particularly about how tightly/lightly to hold the instrument and bow, and being physically aware of it. I'm sure other fiddle players could give their opinion as well. As for whistles, I can't recall ever dropping a whistle while playing, though sometimes I find I'm carrying too many whistles at once (say from one room to another), when one of them slides from between my fingers, but I usually catch it before it completely drops. I also try to be careful about laying whistles on a table and having them roll off onto the floor. ouch. Now that I'm investing in higher-end whistles, I seem to be a bit more careful...

Stiofan

p.s. good luck with your fiddle playing - hope you can make it to the gathering this summer.

[fluter_d]

I haven't had too many problems with whistles (and no droppages, so far [touch wood] with fiddle). However, I did recently manage to catch a friend's Generation (she still is a friend) in the runners of the car seat. You know, the things that allow the front seats to slide back and forth. Yeah. So there were 2 pretty impressive dents/twists, but a little bit of coaxing with a metal rod soon straightened that out.

And then there was moment that I picked up my antique flute and managed to catch the keys of the footjoint in my sleeve, jerking the foot off and landing it on the flagstone floor. The ring moved a bit, and the wood is slightly dented (luckily it landed on the end), but otherwise there are no problems. It was an interesting moment though. I don't think I'll be trying to recreate it.

Deirdre

[markv]

I haven't ever dropped a whistle while playing but I have flipped a quena almost into the audience once. Playing a second octave D using the thumb hole and it was a slick blackwood one. Sucker flipped right out of my hands. Somehow I managed to catch it before it went out to far. Good thing, not a lightweight instrument.

I also once left a low G water weasel on the hood of my wifes car while I was working in the garage at my shop. Had it tucked up by the windshield wipers. She took off the next morning for the 10 mile trip into town via the interstate at 65+ mph. She noticed it right at the top of the exit ramp and of course that's when it flew off. Bounced behind the car for a while before another vehicle stopped it by running it over. Being the wonderfull wife she is she pulled over and hiked a block down the ramp to get it muttering vile oaths and thinking of where she was going to put it if it turned out to just be a piece of PVC I was working on. One little scuff and a nifty set of tire tracks was all it got. Amazing instrument

MArk V

[TonyHiggins]

Oh yeah, other instruments. Once, I lifted the banjo to get the strap over my head and jammed the end (with the tuning keys) into a very low ceiling. Who do you get mad at when those things happen??? (I usually blame God- 'why didn't you stop me??')

Wow, now these horrible suppressed memories are surfacing. grrr, Kar. I picked up my banjo case without closing the buckles and the banjo fell out onto the floor. And a piano, one time...I was lifting the bench over some heads of people sitting on the floor and landed one bench leg on the piano right in front of the keys. I was so horrified (and nervous playing in front of a lot of people) that I never looked to see if I took out any wood.

Once, I was playing appalachian dulcimer with a thin guitar pick for some people and the pick flew out of my fingers right into the sound hole. I felt stupid.

I guess the next topic is: who's been injured by a musical instrument. (Nothing worse than being poked by a metal string that I can recall.)
Tony

[DazedinLA]

Oh Lord, now I remember. In high school in the band room the cabinet that was devoted to our French Horns had two shelves, three compartments, and of course being the egotistical principal horn of the A band I claimed the entire top shelf (chest level and above) for myself. Well, I had a bad habit of leaving the latches to my horn case unlatched, and one evening I was running a bit late for marching band. Barbara, bless her soul (the radiantly beautiful secondchair horn player) wanted to help by taking my horn and loading it onto the bus before I got there. So she grabbed the case and dragged it out of the cabinet, and BOOMCRUNCH the gleamingly pristine silvery chromed Conn 8D leapt from its case and fell to the concrete floor, mashing a heart-wrenching dent in the bottom curve just above the bell. Mashed it flat. Your basic hornplayers worst nightmare, the event you dread every time you lovingly lift her out of her crushed velvet case. I'll never forget the horrified look Barb had on her face when I arrived and she sat me down to break the news to me, but I felt like Sh@t for havingleft the latches open anyway.

The local instrument repair guy did the usual metal bending thing to the instrument and straightened it out, mostly, but it was never quite the same. Please forgive me, Fran, I didn't mean it, really.

I dropped a harmonica on my fiddle last month and put a big ol' nick in the face. Sigh. Battlescars, stuff happens, ya know, but I really wonder how those Strads make it being played/used so many hundreds of years... I guess they get restored a lot.

[Karina]

I guess the next topic is: who's been injured by a musical instrument. (Nothing worse than being poked by a metal string that I can recall.)

When changing my E strings on my fiddles, I seem to inevitably get them stuck straight into my finger like a needle. Those are wicked wicked things!
As for dropping/damaging instruments... If it make you feel any better, Kar, my best friend was using a rental violin and had been TOTALLY careless with it and left it on the floor... And yeah, what goes on floors? Feet. She stepped on her rental violin, right on the neck. Fortunately the whole neck didn't break off, just the fingerboard, which she glued back on using superglue.

My old violin teacher was once practicing in a very small room before a performance. Because it was so small, she ended up right in front of the door. Someone walked in right as she was making a sweeping up bow and smack. There went her $10k bow. I would have cried. She probably did. The whole tip broke off. She had it repaired, but they couldn't put the broken tip back on, they had to shorten the bow and add a new one. It became too short for her, so she gave it to one of her students that had particularly short arms.

As for holding expensive violins... my old violin teacher occasionally let me play her $40k violin. I wanted to pass out. But as you get more comfortable playing the instrument, you will find it is no longer difficult to avoid dropping it. Your hands learn to know what they can do, you learn the balance of the instrument and what you can do and still keep it steady. And if it is any encouragement, with violins, the glues they use usually pop apart before the wood breaks, which makes for easier repair.

[Tyghress]

I dropped my guitar from the back of a bicycle once...put a good crack in its back.

Dropped my Burke too, nice little dent in its foot, but it didn't change the sound, so I decided not to fret with it. A friend has a lovely Shaw low D that he dropped and it got mashed, and he says its sound quality took a marked change for the better. Maybe tat's a new tweak for Jerry to try!

[dlovrien]

During high school marching practice one day (this one time, at band camp... not really), I got smacked right across the bell of my alto sax by a spinning flagpole. (I was in the right place - she wasn't - that's my story and I'm sticking to it!) Nice sharp crease right across the bell, plus the shock split my lip. Fortunately I was marching with my beginner horn and not my new Selmer Mark VII.

[Darwin]

I had that happen with an unlatched guitar case, but there was no damage to the guitar. It sure made me extra careful, though.

However, I was changing strings on the bed once, with the open case nearby. The guitar was standing on edge, and when I reached over to grab a string, it fell gently against one of the latches on the case, puting a 3/4" long, 1/8" wide, 1/16' deep gouge right in its previously perfect face. It hit parallel to the grain, so it really sunk in.

A friend set his fiddle on a wooden floor, leaning against the wall. He said that he looked over and saw it slowly sliding down, but couldn't move fast enough to catch it. Apparently it picked up speed, because when it landed, the neck popped right off. There was no other damage and he got it glued back on with no problem.

Another friend was playing in a Bluegrass band at a micro-brewery on Cannery Row. Some drunk was trying to dance and stumbled into his microphone stand, and the mic put a nice grid mark in the front of his brand-new, very expensive mandolin.

[TonyHiggins]

I have a teenaged daughter who laughs when you tell stories about hurting yourself. The more pain involved, the more the laughter. I guess she got it from me. I chuckled (I'm ashamed to admit) when I read the one about the drunk, the mic stand, and the grid mark in the expensive mandolin. Sorry.
Tony

[Guest]

Yup lot of times, flutes most often - I used despise them for slopping spit on my beautiful guitar in the days when fluters were 10 a penny - next I drop my harmonica regulary to help discourage bad behavior

Some instruments have to dropped to keep them in line.

Fiddles are sensitive things, very introspective and capable of incredible insights. Like great minds they have long memories and will get even if mistreated. Perhaps, unlike flutes which are easily made from a piece of sewer pipe, because a fiddle take months of careful skilled work to make.

Anyway the odd soft drop kick does them a world of good! it is like fiddle sex to them, stops them from being sassy.

You have to learn to play fiddles separate from learning tunes unlike flutes which are best learned while sitting on the poe. It pays to learn to hold them first then later to add the bow holding, course you musn't play any tunes for a year or so. After that you can begin to learn bowdrills - these are like DIY home improvement drills but you have to use a metronome and a mirror.

When I learned how to do bowing drills I had to look in the mirror while I did my ups and downs all the while keeping the bow 'square', ie at 90 degrees to the strings. Sounds easy, it ain't. The strings are at different angles to the bridge so you have to push the bowhand away moving from the E to the G. Then I next learned to bow ON the bridge and at the end of the fingerboard. That the tutor had put a little sponge over the strings where my left hand should be helped because the bowing made very little sound. BTW a the end of the course I had to learn to place and remove the leftie around the fiddle neck AS I did the bowdrills. Now that is really hard to do. Now I skip up and down 1st to 3rd position and don't even think about it.

Accordions like banjos don't like being dropped because it brakes them.

Bagpipes get kicked about a lot so dropping them is fine, in fact the odd stomping does them lots of good, and makes pipers less contrary.

Bodrawns are beaten all the time so throwing them off the roof is good for their image!

Harps don't need much thumping to get them to behave but the odd thwap
across the strings keeps the spiders at bay.

Concertinas are insane, don't drop them unless you want to die a zombie.

[chas]

I also once left a low G water weasel . . . One little scuff and a nifty set of tire tracks was all it got. Amazing instrument

Man, and I thought plumbing code on Water Weasels was cool . . . I'd LOVE one with tire tracks. Hmmm. . . guess I know what I'm doing this weekend.

[Dale]

Hi.

This is a thread about dropping whistles. Several people have posted to it.

Thank you,


Dale Wisely

[Norma]

After playing my Elfsong, if I go back to a lighter whistle I feel as though I might drop it...very distracting!

[Guest]

Oh - well ITC I should have explained I don't so much drop my Walton's, or is it a Genog... anyway the official name is long since worn off, as not be bothered to hold on to it. Sometimes the emotion overcomes and I throooow it across the house.