now that that is out of the way, Rapaire, we have the trumpet in common! I find myself sitting sometimes listening to a trumpet and looking down to find my right hand playing all the correct fingerings!   I love the trumpet and actually worked my way through college gigging in dance bands on trumpet. I played blackfaced minstral shows in the mid sixties and lots of dixieland also. I played French horn in college and studied with Samuel Ramsey in Silver Spring, Ron, who played in the Baltimore Symphony as well as a lot of Orchestral stuff around DC area.

I never felt I was very good on French Horn, however. It is an extremely difficult instrument to master as the harmonics are in a wierd place on the register of the horn so all the fingerings for treble clef area are a couple harmonics higher on trumpet and thus the amount of alternate fingerings and close harmonies makes it a difficult instrument to master.

We just rehearsed for an upcoming gig that wants a couple hours of music and my group is getting lazier all the time whern it comes to getting together to rehearse! It is frustrating to me, but we got through 24 songs tonight so a couple more run-thrus should get us reasonably ready.