I'd like to hear if anyone has had any mishaps at a gig/recital/concert playing an instrument other than the bass.

A few years ago, I was at the winter band concert. I had recently started the trombone and was still a little clumsey with the slide and the slide lock. During a session where the Jazz Band was playing, I lost my concentration and let go of the slide, having it slip off the instrument, down the stairs and into the audience. It was awful.

I was playing the final concert of the year for the 4th jazz band in college on my string bass.

The bass starts to slip out of tune, can't imagine why... I adjust my hand position to bring it back in... it keeps dropping... suddenly the strings go LIMP. It took me what seemed like a week to realize that the bridge had FALLEN OUT!

Fortunately, I was playing through an amp and had my electric there. Amazingly enough, I only lost about three or four bars before I had the electric strapped on, plugged in, and playing again.

Got a special round of applause at the end of that tune. Coulda done without earning it that way, though...

Talk about bringing a dead topic back to life... but anyway...

I play the cello in my school orchestra (yes, I'm 14 years old... probably one of the younger people here... oh well), and we were playing a piece at a concert that I had somewhat of a solo for the majority of the song.

Well, I had just adjusted my endpen before we started playing, and I didn't screw it in tightly enough.

About 10 measures into the piece, I heard this scraping sound and all the sudden my cello started slowly sliding downward towards the ground. I had to hold it up with my left (fingering) hand, which was ok until I needed to shift up to a higher position... when I did so, the cello completely slid out of my hands and...well...I ended up playing while squatting on the floor, much to my stand partner's...and the audience's amusement.

Note to self: double check my endpen from now on.

Of course, this wasn't as bad as the time I had my cello stepped on and smashed before a concert, but that was years ago...

at my director's old school, they had a special day where the naval band sat in with the top group to play a tune. in the middle of a song, theres this big crash, and everyone knows that its a lost trombone slide. the music stops, and everyone looks over. and which trombone player doesnt have a slide? the navy guy.

brought a few harmonicas to a blues show my band was doing so a handful of songs we just wrote (Im the only one who can play harmonica, but lucky me I get to do that and play bass at the same time)

so I take out my harmonica (marine band, A) and there's like a horrible gurgling noise inside of it. So I took it off that shoulder rest thing, and replace with an E I think (can't remember) same thing, took out the C and f-ing christ, every single harmonica was busted. Dunno how it happened, and I dunno if water ruins harmonicas. (Maybe they got wet?)

I sorta whistle-hummed a harmonica impression during those songs.

Another song, it had a banjo ending, and I was doing that, and I deciding to finish the song by slapping all the strings still with my hand. Well... my hand went through it.

Yeah, from experience, water ruins harmonicas. It rusts out the reeds...

I figured as much, as they were basically new. It was raining that night, but the hammies didnt seem wet.

You know the harp part on You Don't Know How It Feels intro by Tom Petty? I play it and the bass at the same time. One time I picked up the harp from the wrong end and started the harp piece while playing bass.
We got a good chuckle and so did the audience. Maybe someday we can afford a real harp player.

During the first song of the first rock-band type gig I ever had, I put a whole through my kick drum's batter head with my pedal. Luckily I had a double pedal, and somehow found the interdependance necessary to play the kick with my left instead of my right (I was a junior in high school and a relatively young drummer). The drum head was probably 10 years old at that point, so I wasn't that surprised :hyper:

Talk about bringing a dead topic back to life... but anyway...

I play the cello in my school orchestra (yes, I'm 14 years old... probably one of the younger people here... oh well), and we were playing a piece at a concert that I had somewhat of a solo for the majority of the song.

Well, I had just adjusted my endpen before we started playing, and I didn't screw it in tightly enough.

About 10 measures into the piece, I heard this scraping sound and all the sudden my cello started slowly sliding downward towards the ground. I had to hold it up with my left (fingering) hand, which was ok until I needed to shift up to a higher position... when I did so, the cello completely slid out of my hands and...well...I ended up playing while squatting on the floor, much to my stand partner's...and the audience's amusement.

Note to self: double check my endpen from now on.

Of course, this wasn't as bad as the time I had my cello stepped on and smashed before a concert, but that was years ago...

i had that happen to me before too, got to have those things in tight, just not in a concert.

Also had my cello lose it's footing (no rockstop) on stage, it scares you because you almost drop it.