And sometimes the clarinet is not broken and you have to give up things you love doing for things that you are simply capable of

Part of a band teacher's job is maintaining the instruments. The band teacher deserves all the blame attributed to those bad pads.

Hi. It me. The clarinet.

Lesson here is that I should definitely buy the new set of golf clubs

Ah yes, the weighted training clarinet

this happened to me.

i wasn't last chair, I was "always second" but I was stuck with a hand me down clarinet with shit pads.

my mom was too poor to even look into having it repadded for years.

i silenced the class and got moved to first chair after playing with proper pads.

it was frustrating and glorious. you're just not allowed to blame your instrument. but I think we can all agree.

fuck em.

Sometimes your clarinet is just broken.

Happens more and more as you get older.

I can be in board with this story until he moved from last to first overnight. While I realize that’s exaggeration, at most I’d believe he moved up a bit unless he also changed schools or the band teacher changed. That would require the band instructor to admit they were wrong in their judgement of the student, which almost never happens.

Systems theory in a nutshell. If we judge a fish for its inability to climb a tree it'll go through the rest of its life thinking it's dumb.

When learning to weld, it's recommended that you start with Stick welding if you want to be serious and learn all the types eventually. It's harder to start with, but forces you to learn better hand control. Stick welding isn't like a broken clarinet, but the story reminded me of that.

If I ever get to retire, I would love to repair instruments for public schools.

This story is a good analogy for when they try to force kids to learn by certain methods instead of accepting that another method might suit them better

Laughs in oboe If all the instruments need repair, everyone gets to suck at oboe

Sports never have been and probably never will be my thing. I hated gym class because almost all the activity was just exhaustive. Just doing a thing to get tired for the sake of exercise.

And sports went the opposite direction, with a focus on winning and competition, on top of the exhaustion and typically overbearing coaches.

I started band in 5th grade and did it all the way through high school including marching band. And marching band is where it really started to click, having performative rather than exhaustive exercise.

Years later I discovered Muay Thai and that was surprisingly very similar in terms of a focus on form rather than speed or power. Really helped me dial in my physical awareness to the next level.

The point of my story is that even if you feel like you’ll never be able to do or be a certain thing, you may find later on that it’s actually a great fit, even if it doesn’t make sense from the outside.

This must be why Harry Kim joined Starfleet.

How do you get that far without knowing basic instrument maintenance?

I played clarinet in 5th grade and was last chair. I challenged the girl next to me a couple of times and won, but then she'd take it back the next week. In my case it was because I didn't practice and didn't want to play the clarinet, I wanted to play the sax, but we already had a clarinet, so that's what I got. I still have the clarinet, it's in my closet.

this might be the kick in the ass i need to repair my saxophone

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