For Emergency Only by Brent Laidler
The Director's Tool Kit
Nothing can substitute for the proper maintenance and repair of a musical instrument. But sometimes a director is forced to provide a "quick fix" in an emergency situation. Be sure to get the instrument to a qualified repair technician afterward to fix the problem properly and avoid even bigger emergencies later on.
Perhaps your music school didn't teach you what to do when you find yourself in the warm-up room minutes before a concert with a student whose horn won't play. That's why it's helpful to know how instruments work as well as how to play them. Also helpful: a tool kit for emergency repairs that can postpone factory repairs until after the concert or contest. Here are some hints and techniques that might get you out of a jam.
The tool kit
Inevitably, you'll be in the warm-up room and hear your soloist say, "I polished my flute last night and now it won't play." Or you'll be lining up to go on stage for the spring concert and you'll find out the sound a trombone makes when it falls down a flight of stairs. You need to do something fast, and it has to be something that works. Drag out the kit.
I played tuba in middle school in 1973. One day I caught the water key on the lid of the case and pulled it right off. With my head hung low, I showed it to the director. I'll never forget what happened next: He grabbed a pencil, rubbed the eraser almost to a point, pulled it off the pencil and shoved it into the hole. I could pull it out to empty the water, and it lasted through the Christmas concert. On the other hand, I recently had to charge $15 extra to solder a water key onto a trumpet because of all the super glue and layers of tape I had to remove from the instrument.
You can be a resourceful director like the one I had without too many tools. A small screwdriver set, spring hook, scissors, fine-point tweezers, round-nose pliers and duckbill pliers should take care of most woodwind repairs. A mouthpiece puller, truing tool and rawhide mallet (or small chime mallet) will cover most brass emergencies.
You'll need more supplies. Keep plenty of electrical tape or PVC tape on hand. Get contact cement, rotor string, valve stern felts, sheets or large pieces of pad leather and clear plastic wrap. Don't forget the assorted lubricants — valve oil, slide oil (or cream), rotor oil, rotor bearing oil, key oil (in a needle applicator bottle), bore oil, penetrating oil, slide grease and cork grease. Also keep a few cloths, swabs, cleaning snakes, elastic hair bands (not rubber bands) and a roll of soft paper towels.
Valentino Products' line of pads and synthetic cork material will help. Get peel-and-stick replacement pads for clarinet and piccolo, peel-and-stick cork, synthetic water-key corks, sax-key bumpers and thumb-rest pads.
Also keep on hand a half-dozen each of ligature screws, lyre screws, neck-tightening screws, flat spring screws, key-guard screws, pivot screws for flute, clarinet and sax, assorted adjustment screws, French horn stop-arm screws and string screws, baritone bell screws, water-key shafts and water-key springs for trumpet, trombone and tuba. It is a good idea to keep several brands of these items to ensure brand-specific fit. Keep at least one set of piston springs for trumpet, baritone and tuba, and maybe an extra snare and batter head as well as lugs for your snare drum, tom-toms and bass drums.
Putting these tools to work
Probably the most common problem you'll find on brass instruments is stuck mouthpieces. There are several "pullers" out on the market — one of the best is the Bobcat. Our dealership never charges to pull a mouthpiece. So, except in an emergency, this repair might be worth a trip to the store.
A key piece for mouthpiece repairs is a truing tool, which is a tapered steel shaft. I like the one with a T handle. Insert the taper into the shank of a dented mouthpiece until it stops, then tap gently around the side of the shank with the rawhide hammer while pressing the tool in further. That way, you won't split the end of the shank. A word to the wise: The first and only rule of the hammer is, "It's not how hard you hit it, it's how many times."
The truing tool can also be used to free stuck slides. Insert the small end into the inside curve of the crook until the taper fits, then tap gently on the side of the tool in the direction the slide pulls out. If the slide doesn't start moving soon, use some penetrating oil and try again.
About the only other thing that can go wrong with a brass instrument is for a valve to stick or hang up. Try pushing it out with finger pressure before resorting to more potentially damaging measures. First, make sure the tubing of the entire instrument lines up at least roughly parallel and there are no visible dents in the casing itself or the knuckles leading into it. Pull the slides down and run a snake through to see whether something is lodged in the ports. See whether the piston is bent. Check whether the stem has been bent and rubs on the cap. Make sure the guide is straight and lines up correctly. Only one valve problem in a thousand is caused by the spring. Replace springs that have been pulled out of shape. This sounds like a lot to consider, but once you get used to it, you can do it almost at a glance.
When making valve adjustments, be sure to pull common sense out of the kit. I remember an instance when a director brought me a trumpet from which he had driven a stuck piston with a drumstick and a hammer. The reason it had stuck was because a paper clip had gone down the bell and lodged half in and half out of the port. Now imagine what his "handiwork" did to the piston, but more importantly to the inside of the casing. The horn had to be replaced, and the parents were pretty upset.
Electrical tape can cover a multitude of problems. To get through a concert or contest, you can tape solder joints and braces that pop loose on brass instruments. Tape also covers holes and cracks in tubing and where water keys get knocked off. You can even tape a reed to a woodwind mouthpiece if the ligature is missing or broken. If you don't care for black, PVC tape is available in a rainbow of colors.
Speaking of woodwinds, I'd suggest you spend some time getting familiar with woodwind key action, especially adjustments of keys that are supposed to all close together. Some things on woodwinds are fairly universal. A missing cork can be temporarily replaced with the peel-and-stick cork in your kit. Make sure you have approximately the proper thickness and set the shape in place with tweezers. Secure clarinet tenon corks and sax neck corks with electrical tape.
For clarinets and piccolos, you can use the Valentino replacements. Remove as much of the original pad as you can, but it's OK to leave the cardboard. These pads are a synthetic material, very soft, and will usually seat themselves. Though they may feel a little spongy, they allow for combination keys to close properly. Sizes vary depending on brand. If the flute has a torn pad skin and will not seal, you can wrap the key with a small bit of plastic wrap to act as a new temporary skin. I've even seen college players get through a concert this way. Valentino pads also work well in alto and bass clarinets, neck keys, body-octave keys and palm keys on the sax.
Leather pads are a different story. I suggest keeping concert cement (not shellac-based) in your kit as a no-heat way to put sax pads back in when they have fallen out. As long as it's close enough, a little extra finger pressure should close it. Sometimes the pad is still there but there is a gaping tear in the leather. Cut a circle from your stock of pad leather, put a thin coat of contact cement on it and cover the surface of the pad with it.
Probably two of the most common and universal problems with woodwinds are a broken reed and a chipped or gouged mouthpiece. Don't overlook the obvious. You can often trace other problems in woodwinds to bent keys and shafts, broken or unhooked springs, or missing or improperly attached screws. Use elastic hair bands rather than rubber bands, which contain sulfur that will make deep and permanent marks in plated bodies and keys. In particular, a clarinet might have a too-tight G# adjustments screw or closure problems in the F/C-E/B combination. A flute might have a bent body or a misaligned head-joint cork. A saxophone might have a bent neck or octave key. Dents on a sax affect where posts line up and can warp tone holes.
What you include in your tool kit is up to you, but I hope you consider some of these tried-and-true tips. I've used them myself when I've had to make something work and only had a minute or two or didn't have access to a full range of tools and supplies. But always keep in mind that emergency repair is intended only for temporary solutions. Prevention is always best, and routine maintenance by your technician cannot be replaced by any "tricks of the trade." Musical instruments are subjected to some very harsh conditions. Keeping them in good shape is one of the best things you can do for your band.
