The Music of Thomas Coates

If you follow me on twitter you know that I play French Horn and Alto Horn in a few groups in the Baltimore area. An Alto Horn is a kind of instrument used in modern British style brass bands that, oddly enough, plays the alto line of the music. I play it primarily in the Benfield Brass Band as one of the Solo part players. The other is long time member and section leader Beryl Flynn. I am in no shape way or form close to a professional player. We have some awesome musical moments in the group and from hearing our live recordings and audience reactions we do pretty well.

Out of the blue back in June I got an email from a person I didn't know, Michael O'Connor with the subject of "Alto Horn Needed".

I’m looking for a solid alto horn player to help with a professional recording of Civil War Band music in August. The group recording is my 47th PA Regt Band. The group is made up of professional brass players (some don’t actually make their living in music, but could have) from NY, PA, NH, MD, and I’m in FL. We are recording mostly the music of Thomas Coates, who led the 47th PA band from 1861-62. We can provide an authentic 1860s instrument and mouthpiece for you and pay [you].

A professional that I have played with in a few groups referred me which is how they knew to reach out to me. The idea of doing a recording was pretty scary but wasn't something I was going to pass up.

So a few weeks ago I got in the car, drove for 5 hours and showed up at a church in Pawling, NY to play an instrument I've never played before for a professional recording. The instrument in question, pictured below, is over 100 years old.

From Thomas Coates Recording

This horn is tuned 'high pitch'. At the time there was some disagreement on what frequency to tune instruments to. The music we recorded was all tuned to A = 452, which gives it a very interesting sound (A is usually 440 or 441 in modern orchestras). If you check out the rest of the pictures in the link above you will see that it has a strange pigtail. This can be replaced with a elbow to convert it from a rear-facing 'field' configuration to an upright 'concert' configuration. I played it rear facing which meant I had my very own microphone!

I took a few qik.com videos including this one which has pretty good sound quality. Most of the others are too poor to link to but you can see them all if you dig around. We played for 45 minutes to an hour at a time and then took 15 minute breaks, taking each song section by section until everyone was at least satisfied they got a few good takes.

Blowing Hard

I got into a conversation regarding wind power I'd like to share. Since I had listened to Alex Epstein's great Power Hour Interview with Robert Bryce I was a bit more informed then my left leaning friend on energy issues. He did manage to stump me at one point so here is how the conversation went.

First, I brought up the fact that "When power demand is highest, wind energy’s output is generally low. The reverse is also true: Wind-energy production is usually highest during the middle of the night, when electricity use is lowest." (NRO) . The "intermittency and extreme variability of wind energy" means that you have to build as much conventional (coal, natural gas, nuclear, etc.) capacity wherever you build wind turbines.

Next I pointed out that wind has a very low power density. To understand what this means imagine filling a pool with a garden hose. When I turn the water on it will take a really long time to fill. Now imagine I do the same thing and fill the pool with a fire hose. This time the pool fills very quickly. In both cases the amount of water (ie. energy) is the same, but when I used the firehouse I put the water in much faster. That is what power is -- how fast I can produce (or consume) energy in a given amount of time. It is measured in kilowatt-hours. Solar, notorious for low power density kicks wind's ass. Wind is especially poor when you consider the amount of resources (steel and concrete for example) that it takes per kilowatt hour.

I did get asked a question though that stumped me initially. My friend asked me, why if wind is so poor is Denmark in the process of switching almost entierly to wind? Well the answer can be found in Chapter 10 of Bryson's book "Power Hungry":

1. Denmark has the most expensive electricity in the modern world due to exorbitant taxes
2. 2/3 of the wind power generated is exported to neighboring countries below cost (wind blows a lot when you don't need it)
3. Hydroelectric power is purchased at peak demand rates ($expensive$) to meet high demand (wind doesn't blow when you need it)

If the goal is using the least amount of resources to generate ever greater energy at increasing rates, then the free market is the best way to determine this. We see it now, where the market isn't distorted by government, from natural gas power generation. I'd encourage folks to pick up Bryson's book for some great facts. The only criticism I would have to say up front is that he talks a lot about reducing dependence on foreign oil and on lowering carbon emissions. Some of that is accepting bad premises that these things are bad or can be solved by government intervention into economics. If you can look past those side discussions there is a lot you can take away.