That didnt sound like a happy birthday to me. Maybe a depressed birthday or a clinically insane birthday, but not a happy one

Them doing this is an accurate representation of how it sounds when people sing happy birthday together

“Bonus points for bad intonation. Clarinets, I know you know what that means.” As someone who’s going on 17 years of clarinet, you are absolutely right! 😅😂

When my kids were in band, they performed harry potter one night. The band started playing and one of the clarinets was off. The band director stopped, apologized to the audience, then coached the student on how to properly play the part. The song began again, and someone else messed it up. The director apologized profusely to the audience. “This has never happened before. I don’t know why.” About that time a student walked up. “Here’s what the problem is. You are using the wrong baton.” Offered a box, then the band director pulled out the elder wand. Everybody cracked up. When things settled down, they played the piece flawlessly. Afterwards my son told me that the students pitched the idea to the band director just before the performance.

When it's an ensemble member's birthday, my current conductor tells us all to play happy birthday in whatever style and key we choose (which doesn't sound too far from this) and always conducts us with a massive grin on his face 😂

Teacher: How many tri tones did you play? Students: All of them.

this is the most disconcordant villain version of happy birthday i have ever heard & i love it 😂

Lmao the trombones glissing into every note really sells it

I love watching those videos where orchestras prank their conductors with beautiful, clever, well-rehearsed "Happy Birthday"s. This might have surpassed them all.

Your band director took this pretty well, I have to say. He was only confused, never upset. One of my band directors while I was in school was a grumpy and mostly humorless older man who was given to snapping at the students when they displeased him, and I can only imagine what his reaction would have been had we been audacious enough to do this to him. We'd have all been given detention, I think.

I believe this is what they played every year at Stravinsky’s birthday party. Amazing you were able to play it on accident

At uni, we played the French national anthem for our lecturer on his birthday. We were all sound engineers, and we were in a studio kitted out with some of the nicest outboard you can buy. So for our little twist, we put the anthem through tons of distortion and compression. It was the cringiest, yet also the warmest anthem I've ever heard. Oh, and we spelled his name out by turning on LEDs on the console. This thing had 72 channels with an EQ and compressor stage on each channel, so we had 70 channel strips to make it work. He was impressed and horrified. Good times. What I love about this video is, like us, they went to great technical length to ensure the cringiest outcome.

when non-musical friends try to sing you happy birthday together :

My band did this because two of our seniors had the same birthday and we happened to have pep band that day. My director quite literally said “just pick a key, hope for the best, squeaking gives it character”

It takes A LOT of talent to mess up intentionally. This is amazing lol

This reminds me when I was in Brevard Music Camp in 1982, and the routine was to have somebody play Reveille on their trumpet to wake us up early each morning. Well, late in the summer, 4 trumpeters got together and decided to do a special version: The 4 of them playing spread out by intervals of a quarter tone, and SLOW to make sure that they got the parallel quarter tones properly coordinated. Now THAT was a wakeup call.

The trombone gliss absolutely killed me

Can't believe your orchestra managed to accurately portray what it's like to hear people sing Happy Birthday at you lmao

The best time to listen to this is at 3am in the morning when you can't fall asleep and trying not laugh out loud so you won't get any noise complaints 🤣

This is great! My band instructor, whenever a member of our band has a birthday, always tells us to pull out our mouthpieces and play IN THE DIRECTION of whoever's birthday it is. Sounds like a more high pitched version of this, plus some cracks when someone plays a little too hard

We did this every time it was someone’s birthday in marching band and every time it was “alright everyone pick your favorite key” lmao

thats not happy birthday thats just birthday

This deserves to be on daily dose of internet

this gave me so much joy- i miss my band days of community chaos

Band classes just have this wonderful energy that no other subject can match

Most harmonious and fast-paced rendition of happy birthday to ever be recorded.

Its was super impressive that everyone was off key just right to sound like a, for lack of a better term, "sad clown on his birthday", and nail it too. Movie producers pay big money to convey moods like that.

I taught academic subjects at an arts school for many years. The music majors were always some of the sharpest, hardest working and fun kids.

Reminded of when I was an underclassman and my high school pep band pranked the band director in the intermission before the varsity home basketball game. We had a standard opening list for the first three songs; a few conspirators decided we were going to open with the surf-rock "California Sun" not ordinarily in the pre-game set & which starts on a similar 4-count to whatever the first song was, and went around whispering the change to the band members. Being on tenor sax, I was front row at the right end of the bleachers because of how my instrument needed to hang down beside me, so I got to see up close the director be surprised then gesture like "well, for heaven's sake keep playing"!

I love how the trumpets are being trumpets and playing as high as humanly possible.

The absolute dischord that rang out after that little intro was just perfection. I was dying. "We're going to pretend like we're normal" lol band kids aren't normal lol. Normal is for the jocks. Normal is boring. This was great. If my highschool band experience had been even remotely this fun, I probably would have kept up my instrument.

Dude this is the most accurate thing to all the singing in all the birthday parties I've ever been to.

I would've been delighted with that rendition on any birthday I've ever had.

This is just 100% delightful. I love everyone's excitement as they prepared it, and I love a prank that is truly funny and doesn't harm anyone. And as a full-on music geek, tritones are just so much FUN! Several years ago my birthday fell during a tour, and a few of my colleagues sang happy birthday to me in organum a perfect tritone apart. It was my only birthday request. Thank you for sharing this with us!

We pranked our beloved band teacher, Terry Grove, from time to time (Federal Way H S 1969-1971) and he was always a good sport. We formed up near his house one New Years morning and marched to him playing the school fight song. After a concert, some of us hid in a spot until everyone left. Then we filled his office with wadded up newspapers. There were other pranks as well. We were a happy little family those years.

I strive for that level of chaos.

I really like whoever was squeeking. Adds a lot of flavor to the song.

we would play a really annoying swing version of happy birthday in my jazz ensemble. it got to the point where people wouldn’t say it was their birthday because it was so agonizing😂

The level of musicianship has really improved since I was in high school.

This takes me back to messing with my High School Band teacher. There’s a dedicated insta meme page for him now. Anyway the person holding the cam has a super genuine looking smile, I feel like you’re really good at making friends

This is all that happens in band. And it's hilarious when the teacher comes in to see/hear it.

Love the bassoonist excitedly waving energy, like, woah somebody finally noticed the bassoon section!!1

Reminds me of when I was in a steel drum ensemble and we pranked the teacher by playing under the sea instead of what we were supposed to be playing

When I studied acting, we had a teacher/director that worked with us for 2 years, and everytime he left the room or the theater and he came back, we sang happy birthday to him LOL every freaking time, without fail.

I love this. Gorgeous cacophony.

Even when well-lubricated P.D.Q. Bach was never able to produce something quite like this. Nicely done.

2:50 a trombone snuck in bolero thinking nobody would notice lol

The teacher didn’t appreciate that nearly enough. I would’ve been laughing my head off 😂

This is like a regular singing of a happy birthday song at any birthday party but with instruments!

It's so beautiful!! Best rendition of Happy Birthday EVER!!!

LOL! It sounded like the instrumental equivalent of a bunch of folks singing "Happy Birthday" in a restaurant, each in their own key. 😀

As a band kid I really wish my band teacher was like that but *noooo* The coolest thing he's done is planned and not gone through with a flash mob.

That was the most dramatically engaging birthday I've ever heard.

"if you mess up it's better" lmaooo

The fact that they didn't even get the date right is the cherry on top

"Hello, teacher. Have a birthday."

Oh the lovely band humor. This makes me miss band in high school.

They're showing their teacher that he's much needed!😂

Slightly freaked out by how much I enjoyed that, um, piece.

Great job, Students. I thought it was a Great Idea and caught the Teacher completely off guard. 😬👍🙏

I love everything about this.

KP was my band director at FLA in the 90’s, so this is awesome!

depicts accurately how my plans are in reality because they don't match what I expected

I have to say the warm up was the funniest! Especially the clarinets squeaking.

Absolute LEGENDS, every one of you!

The percussionist running in the back is so relatable as a percussionist myself you have no idea 😭

We used to do that in my orchestra, whenever it was someone's birthday, the conductor would tell us a starting note and then all hell would break loose. It was great

"If you mess it up, it's better" The making of a jazz pianist.

Absolutely brilliant. Nice job guys.

LOL Mr. P’s reactions are priceless!! You guys got him good!

Everytime I play my clarinet it basically sounds liket this band.... (This is a compliment)

This was life-changing. I suddenly decided to get out of bed with tears. My lower legs are completely paralyzed, yet when I came to a stand, I walked over to my laptop. I sat down, all while listening to this, and placed an application in for Harvard. And the next thing I knew, I was accepted. Fast forward a few seconds, I became a world-famous trombone player. So thank you, I am moved. This is life-changing.

that clarinet is seriously doing olympic hurdles over those ledger lines (this is so me)

I used to work at an office where we sang happy birthday to people like this. After a while, it evolved into a dirge.

We always go out of our way to impress our favorite music teachers! Job well done!

Speechless at the beauty of this performance.

It always amuses me how different people react to this. I've seen the whole spectrum from hilarity to outright anger and indignation. The band has fun no matter what!

This was a running gag at my school where our band teacher, anytime someone had a birthday, we would play random notes to the rhythm of happy birthday.

"Here's what we're going to do now. We're gonna pretend we're normal" Me talking to myself in the mirror before heading out

The entire instrumental sounds like all of my classmates singing happy birthday, but the instrumental's slightly better lol

As a fellow percussionist and band member, thank you for sharing this.

His face was priceless hahahahaha. He was like " The heck is this?!" 😂😂😂

Oh, you found the key people sing it in at parties! LOL

That was awesome and got the reaction it deserved

I love the very clear “womp womp” at 2:50 it very succinctly summarizes this whole video

Damn. This makes me miss school band 😓some of the best times of my childhood

I love how much skill is involved to play extra bad

Oh my gosh, that was so bad it was hillarious! Well done! 😂😂😂😭🤧🤣🤣🤣🙏❤️❤️👏👏👏😁 Love from Norway! ❤️

A funny coincidence that KZfaq offered me this video to watch - on my birthday!

At least its in time

If ur a band kid ur automatically not normal its part of the job😂😂😂

It isn't discordant, it's _avant-garde_

Charles Ives. Beautiful.

OMG! That was egregious, and perfect!! So beautifully discordant! I LOVED IT!!! 😂😂

This is how my Orchestra sounds when we play Happy Birthday for real.

Sounds like my high school band warm up

Happy birthday indeed, Messien

I especially like the sarcastic comical slurring of the trombones thrown in there...

Ahhhhh on my bday of all days. I love it!

I’m gonna make sure that gets played at my funeral