WESTLAKE VILLAGE, CALIFORNIA (API*): Guitar Center subsidiary Woodwind and Brasswind, an online marketer of musical instruments, reported today sharp increases in cornet sales over the past three months, with sales of trumpets plummeting worldwide.
While manufacturers and retailers were taken aback by this abrupt turn of events, many musicians and music educators welcomed it.
“Cornets were the mainstays of brass bands and orchestras during the latter half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century”, said Susan S. A. Sousa, assistant professor of brasswinds at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, and a distant relative of the famous American bandleader. “They are fine instruments, and it is well past time that they came back into their own. They lost favor with musicians in the ‘big band’ era, because they had a hard time projecting their sound over the saxophone sections of these bands. With modern sound amplification techniques, we don’t have to worry about that sort of thing anymore, and audiences today will surely appreciate the more cultured tone of the cornet. Let’s face it. Trumpets don’t tweet. They blast.”
“Look, [deleted]”, said Miles, a recent convert to cornet playing who refused to give his last name, “if the saxes want those lines so badly, far as I’m concerned, they can have ’em. I’ll be [deleted] damned if I ever play a honky horn with a combover.”
The collapse in trumpet sales has reportedly also been accompanied by a collapse in the sale of trumpet music. A spokesperson for the Herb Alpert Foundation indicated that Mr. Alpert was considering forming a new band to re-record the Tijuana Brass catalogue with cornets, in a bid to recapture some market share. Mr. Alpert, now 81 years old, was expected to hold auditions soon for cornetists who would take over his role with the TB. However, Mr. Mark Knopfler refused to consider altering the lyrics of the Dire Straits song “Sultans of Swing”, considering the line “don’t give a damn ’bout any trumpet-playing band” to be, under today’s circumstances, particularly apt.
Rumors have surfaced that the Trumpet Players International Network (TPIN) is sponsoring an advocacy group, Trumpet Anti-Defamation League (TADL), to protect the reputations and livelihoods of TPIN members. The initiative is facing opposition, from groups eager to point out that the perceptions TADL is fighting actually align well with the egotistical arrogance that has long been thought a defining characteristic of trumpet players. These opponents spell out TADL as “TAD Late”. Sousa said, “Cornets are far more mellow and musical. So are cornetists.”
* API = Amoeba Press International #FakeNewsPathToRiches