Testimony for the MN0 Sinfonia Revival!

"I don't think we scared any small children!"
"Not the worst thing I've ever heard!"
"Some of the tunes were recognizable!"


Instruments: Recorder, French Horn, Xaphoon, Accordion, Ocarina, Jaw Harp

So, five fine fellows met one fine afternoon with the goal of making horrible music. The original plan was to hand out sheet music of various jazz standards (hey, some of us could read music), play around with the instruments for awhile, and then record something akin to "Don't Get Around Much Anymore", or maybe "So What". Um. We quickly realized just how impossible that was going to be, and settled for some free improvisation. An improvement? Listen for yourself and be the judge.

Some comments from the performers:

Dok H: Personally I find the parts where we were all improvising at once and creating a random cacophony to be less painful than the parts where somebody attempts to play a specific tune and fails miserably. Also while attempting anything more complex was clearly a mistake, we were able to play a bad-but-clearly-recognizable version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" at one point. (This is undocumented due to technical difficulties; that's probably for the best.)

hiab: Wow. What a delightful time. Music is so easy when you don't care whether or not you hit the notes! I was happy because the last time I tried to play a brass instrument, nothing at all happened. And this time I was even able to change the pitch. Intentionally!

Darkaardvark: Learning some new instruments went better than others. I could produce tones (I wouldn't call them notes) on the xaphoon, while the jaw harp simply ended up hitting my teeth. I am amazed, as always, that people managed to pass by such a cacophony without even a glance. You can see in the video of the final performance how hard they try to not look.

hiab: Oh, whatever, DA. Your xaphoon rickroll was totally fab


And now a moment of silence.
I dedicate this praxis to the memory of a particularly lovely rendition of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" that we performed on accordion, recorder, and xaphoon, apparently lost forever in the mists of cyberspace.