5 musical annoyances

I've made some observations recently about various musical truths/things that irritate me...

1. If a band's saxophone section has members who play the type of sax as assigned by their section leader, often the section leader will play Bari. If the rest of the saxophone section is weak, the altos take the brunt of the criticism and the Bari player tries to help, but ultimately the altos are set up for failure.

2. Horns are beautiful. Euphoniums/Baritones are beautiful, but are better placed in a brass band where they aren't stealing from the Horns, pretending to be Trombones, or being covered up in a sea of boringness from a part written by a composer who doesn't know what he is doing because of number 3. Euphoniums are best placed in a Brass Band where they can be properly appreciated and given a part deserving of the instrument without encroaching on the Horn's space.

3. Medley composers usually are using the medley as a trial run in their composing career. SO often do I see a medley that is just so poorly written! I get a distinct impression that the composer writes out the whole song for a few instruments first. They might hear a trumpet part here and a sax solo there, but for the most part, the whole thing is written around 3 or 4 instruments at most. Then the composer looks at the other parts and is like "umm... what should I put there? Oh! How about lots of really high whole notes with no rest! That would be awesome, and I'm sure they wouldn't mind a boring part that will wear them out with one runthrough!"

4. Good Horn players are so hard to find because most are either a) technically good or b) musically good. Rarely is a Horn player great in both categories, and if a Horn player is, he could potentially go a long ways in a Horn career.

5. If your musicians are worn out, telling them to play louder and still sound good doesn't work. At that point, it is one or the other... mezzo forte and great, or loud and middle school.