“Bonus points for bad intonation. Clarinets, I know you know what that means.” As someone who’s going on 17 years of clarinet, you are absolutely right! 😅😂
When my kids were in band, they performed harry potter one night. The band started playing and one of the clarinets was off. The band director stopped, apologized to the audience, then coached the student on how to properly play the part. The song began again, and someone else messed it up. The director apologized profusely to the audience. “This has never happened before. I don’t know why.” About that time a student walked up. “Here’s what the problem is. You are using the wrong baton.” Offered a box, then the band director pulled out the elder wand. Everybody cracked up. When things settled down, they played the piece flawlessly. Afterwards my son told me that the students pitched the idea to the band director just before the performance.
MY BAND DID THAT WITH STAR WARS! We gave the idea to him the day before the performance, and a percussionist walked off stage like they forgot something. They brought back a light-saber and the lights went fully off. He turned on the light-saber and we played star wars almost perfectly but it was amazing.
When it's an ensemble member's birthday, my current conductor tells us all to play happy birthday in whatever style and key we choose (which doesn't sound too far from this) and always conducts us with a massive grin on his face 😂
Is this just a thing with band directors? My band director would give us a “starting note” on the piano which was just a bad chord and have us sing as off key as possible. Top tier band humor I guess! 😂
@@Anonymous-mt1tv the funny thing is i play high every day and the only thing i got marked for on my solo and ensemble was i couldve been a little louder in the mix. but my defense is, our trumpet wasnt there, so the teacher had to play his part, and our teacher started on trumpet in 5th grade, so hes very loud lmfao.
I love watching those videos where orchestras prank their conductors with beautiful, clever, well-rehearsed "Happy Birthday"s. This might have surpassed them all.
Your band director took this pretty well, I have to say. He was only confused, never upset. One of my band directors while I was in school was a grumpy and mostly humorless older man who was given to snapping at the students when they displeased him, and I can only imagine what his reaction would have been had we been audacious enough to do this to him. We'd have all been given detention, I think.
My band director was a wonderful lady. Sometimes we would learn songs on our own (usually meme songs) and play them I stead of the scale for warm up to mess with her. She loved it.
Our main band director in Jr High (we had an assistant band director as well and he was chill af) would go into rages and literally throw music stands. He almost hit one of the flute players at least once. Poor girl was really shaken up. I can't even imagine what he would have done, but it probably would have ended with at least one injured student.
@@brucej.coluccio3101 Nope small town in Southern Indiana. I was wondering if it was the same person for a bit there too though NGL. Dude was... Something.
At uni, we played the French national anthem for our lecturer on his birthday. We were all sound engineers, and we were in a studio kitted out with some of the nicest outboard you can buy. So for our little twist, we put the anthem through tons of distortion and compression. It was the cringiest, yet also the warmest anthem I've ever heard. Oh, and we spelled his name out by turning on LEDs on the console. This thing had 72 channels with an EQ and compressor stage on each channel, so we had 70 channel strips to make it work. He was impressed and horrified. Good times. What I love about this video is, like us, they went to great technical length to ensure the cringiest outcome.
My band did this because two of our seniors had the same birthday and we happened to have pep band that day. My director quite literally said “just pick a key, hope for the best, squeaking gives it character”
This reminds me when I was in Brevard Music Camp in 1982, and the routine was to have somebody play Reveille on their trumpet to wake us up early each morning. Well, late in the summer, 4 trumpeters got together and decided to do a special version: The 4 of them playing spread out by intervals of a quarter tone, and SLOW to make sure that they got the parallel quarter tones properly coordinated. Now THAT was a wakeup call.
This is great! My band instructor, whenever a member of our band has a birthday, always tells us to pull out our mouthpieces and play IN THE DIRECTION of whoever's birthday it is. Sounds like a more high pitched version of this, plus some cracks when someone plays a little too hard
As a non-musician, can you try to explain what this would sound like? I understand the mouthpiece is probably a reed, but does... could this direct saliva/spit at them?
@@CynnabunFaith For woodwinds, it would be the entire mouthpiece, so the reed + what it's attached to. For brass, it's just the bell shaped part that you play out of. As for spit, depends on if they just started playing. If they've been playing for a while, absolutely. And Jessica is correct lol, it would sound like a bunch of ducks/geese with some squeals in there too
The best time to listen to this is at 3am in the morning when you can't fall asleep and trying not laugh out loud so you won't get any noise complaints 🤣
"What's up guys, this is _your_ daily dose of Internet. Today we see a wind symphony playing a prank on their teacher for his birthday!" (Sorry I'm late, I couldn't resist lmao)
The absolute dischord that rang out after that little intro was just perfection. I was dying. "We're going to pretend like we're normal" lol band kids aren't normal lol. Normal is for the jocks. Normal is boring. This was great. If my highschool band experience had been even remotely this fun, I probably would have kept up my instrument.
Its was super impressive that everyone was off key just right to sound like a, for lack of a better term, "sad clown on his birthday", and nail it too. Movie producers pay big money to convey moods like that.
This is just 100% delightful. I love everyone's excitement as they prepared it, and I love a prank that is truly funny and doesn't harm anyone. And as a full-on music geek, tritones are just so much FUN! Several years ago my birthday fell during a tour, and a few of my colleagues sang happy birthday to me in organum a perfect tritone apart. It was my only birthday request. Thank you for sharing this with us!
We pranked our beloved band teacher, Terry Grove, from time to time (Federal Way H S 1969-1971) and he was always a good sport. We formed up near his house one New Years morning and marched to him playing the school fight song. After a concert, some of us hid in a spot until everyone left. Then we filled his office with wadded up newspapers. There were other pranks as well. We were a happy little family those years.
Reminded of when I was an underclassman and my high school pep band pranked the band director in the intermission before the varsity home basketball game. We had a standard opening list for the first three songs; a few conspirators decided we were going to open with the surf-rock "California Sun" not ordinarily in the pre-game set & which starts on a similar 4-count to whatever the first song was, and went around whispering the change to the band members. Being on tenor sax, I was front row at the right end of the bleachers because of how my instrument needed to hang down beside me, so I got to see up close the director be surprised then gesture like "well, for heaven's sake keep playing"!
This takes me back to messing with my High School Band teacher. There’s a dedicated insta meme page for him now. Anyway the person holding the cam has a super genuine looking smile, I feel like you’re really good at making friends
When I studied acting, we had a teacher/director that worked with us for 2 years, and everytime he left the room or the theater and he came back, we sang happy birthday to him LOL every freaking time, without fail.
we would play a really annoying swing version of happy birthday in my jazz ensemble. it got to the point where people wouldn’t say it was their birthday because it was so agonizing😂
This was life-changing. I suddenly decided to get out of bed with tears. My lower legs are completely paralyzed, yet when I came to a stand, I walked over to my laptop. I sat down, all while listening to this, and placed an application in for Harvard. And the next thing I knew, I was accepted. Fast forward a few seconds, I became a world-famous trombone player. So thank you, I am moved. This is life-changing.
We used to do that in my orchestra, whenever it was someone's birthday, the conductor would tell us a starting note and then all hell would break loose. It was great
It always amuses me how different people react to this. I've seen the whole spectrum from hilarity to outright anger and indignation. The band has fun no matter what!
I just love these kids. I hope they keep their senses of humor all their lives. 🤎 And play music all their lives, too, even if it’s only evenings after work for their own pleasure. 🤎
