"I'm gonna need even less tuba"

[windshieldbug]

Those choral directors are all alike.
(besides, even less can be interpreted as an F or Eb instead of a CC where the score originally called for BBb... )

[Three Valves]

Should have said “trombone”

[BopEuph]

Reminds me when I was in college and the director told me the solo isn't actually a solo in Colonial Song; that it's actually a support role and Grainger was known for being cryptic and not meaning exactly what he wrote in his pieces (!). He kept playing that section over and over, telling me each time I'm still too loud, until I got pissed and mimed playing the solo and he told me it was "almost there."

I mimed playing in rehearsal for the next 2 weeks and he never caught on.

[iiipopes]

Last autumn, from right after Labor Day until close to Christmas, I had bouts of laryngitis so bad I couldn't even sing in church choir. I sent the cartoon to my choir director, with a note that he was probably relieved that I didn't think of this at the time! He loved it and downloaded it.

[windshieldbug]

I mimed playing in rehearsal for the next 2 weeks and he never caught on.

Years ago had a Pops series where the Music Director (whom the trombone section affectionately knew as "the diode" (or semi-conductor)) insisted that I was continuously too loud in one passage. I mimed it and he said that it was now just right, but that I was a little flat. I made a show of pushing in the 1st valve slide and mimed again. "That's better!", he pronounced. I thought the bass trombone was going to bust a gut!

[toobagrowl]

Been there, done that. On more than one occasion, I've had a director say there was too much tuba, even when I was playing as softly as possible Just a year and a half ago this was the case in a very large symphonic band + strings ensemble that I've been doing the past 7 or 8 years. One piece of music called for tutti low brass and the guest director (who "plays" bass bone in the group) kept saying the low brass were still "too heavy" on a particular passage. He was talking about us tubas.
After a couple run-throughs of that section he kept bitching about it, even though me and the other tuba player were playing as delicate/soft as possible. I leaned over to the other tuba player and told him that we will just lay out and let the trombones play it because they had the same passage. Keep in mind there were a dozen damn trombones playing the same part! This old guy is one of the bass bone players in this ensemble, and I don't think I've heard a note from him. He also plays piano and (I think) a music director of his church, so he is one of those diva/legend-in-his-own-mind type of people
Luckily, he only directed that one piece of music. I've learned to 'deal with' certain directors and musicians over the years

[Tubaru]

The responses in this thread remind me of a conversation I had recently with a fellow tuba player. He is looking to upgrade to a 6/4 tuba from a 4/4 tuba because he feels he can't play loud enough on the 4/4 to play over the orchestra. I wonder why he wants to play over the orchestra instead of blending with the orchestra.

I was recently at a professional symphony concert where the tubist playing his 6/4 was easily over powering the entire orchestra while only playing about a mezzo forte. I'm sure part of that was the scoring and the way the sound bounced around the hall but I just don't understand the need for a tuba that plays loud instead of a tuba that blends. Someone fill the in please.