When you were in jr high why did you choose your instrument

[bearphonium]

We had the option of band or orchestra in the 5th grade. The kids that I didn't like went towards the orchestra, so my buddies and I went towards the band. They chose trumpet, and wanting to be different, I chose trombone. A photo exists of me, arm fully extended at a generous 4th position. I stuck with it, and when I went to Junior High, my folks bought me a Holton tenor 'bone. By the end of 8th grade, my buddies had switched to baritone and tuba.

When I got to high school, I meandered around 3rd and 4th chair. In 11th grade, another guy, who was state tuba champion, wanted to learn trombone so he could play in the stage band. We spent about two months of lunches in the band room, swapping horns and playing some interesting duets, that included a Eb upright, a good 4 valve upright euph and the BBb tuba and trombone to the point where he could join stage band. I had been playing bass 'bone in both stage band and orchestra, and was delighted to let him take over the bass 'bone in stage band. It was an OLD large bore, F-attachment with a funky mouthpiece and a funky odor. (I did the same thing over the summer, and swapped with another buddy who was a french horn player who wanted to join stage band, and as a result, taught myself how to play the french horn) As a result, at one concert, between my tuba buddy and me, we played a tenor 'bone, a valve 'bone and the bass 'bone, the BBb and Eb tubas, and an old straightened out mellophone.

I was still mucking about at 2nd or 3rd chair, and after high school, thought that my playing days were over. After I had been accepted into the local college, I got a call from the band director, Max McKee. He asked why I wasn't playing, I told him I wasn't real good, he suggested that he be the judge of that, and auditioned me. I was accepted into the wind ensamble and the marching band! When we came back to school at the start of winter quarter, there were 8 trombone players. I was the 8th trombone player, and we only had one french horn player. I switched over, and played mostly 3rd horn for the next 4 1/2 years. After graduation, they had no tuba players, so I came back and sat in as a community member, and played the tuba for one quarter (old, bell front 3 valve BBb).

I played in the alumni band for a while, then work stuff got in the way. I gave my nephew the french horn that I had, and he played it throughout high school. (He is starting the same school this fall, and will be playing french horn in the same band that I did!)

I had not played for about 15 years, and after a two-year period that saw my mother in law and my mother die 8 months apart, my parter go through an auto-immune disease, and me go through breast cancer, I decided life was really short, and I chose to start playing again. I bought a cheap ISO euphonium off e-bay, and went to join a New Horizons band. I showed up with my euph, and when I told the director about my music background, she said "you play the tuba?!?!?"

I now play tuba for both a New Horizons band and a "growing older but not up" marching band. I bought a 3/4 York Master BBb from Tubenetter fpoon, and march with a borrowed King sousaphone. I got to play this summer in a surprise retirement concert for Max McKee made up of American Band College grads and alumni of his. It was an awesome time!

Long post I know, but I've really enjoyed everybody's story and subjected you to my own.

[Davy]

Here's My musical Story...

4th Grade; wanted to play the Trumpet, French Horn, or Tuba. Itook the "Buzz" test on the mouthpieces, sounded best on tuba, and started there. In sixth grade I wanted to play In the Jazz ensamble, so I picked up Trombone with the help of my trombonist brother. Swithced to Bass 'bone in 9th grade. Went to the 2006 NYSSMA Conference All-State on Tuba in 11th Grade. Which brings us up to today, where I play Tuba(Looking for a personal horn), Bass Trombone(Have one), and Baritone in a Local Drum & Bugle Corp (I also beleive in playing multiple Instruments:) )

[Brassworks 4]

The morning of the first day of summer band (a couple weeks before 5th grade) my Dad asked me at breakfast what I was going to play. I had no idea but I knew it wasn't going to be the alto sax. I spent the summer teaching myself that "awful" instrument, as we had an extra laying around the house. I mastered the first book in Belwin - it was just too easy.

I asked Dad what he thought I should play. His response was "Play the baritone. You'll get all the great countermelodies in Sousa marches" I had no idea what the instrument looked like or how big it was (it looked huge to a little girl). But I choose it anyway - and STILL play all these years later.

Dad was right - countermelodies are great fun!! By the way, it wasn't long after I started playing when I taught my dad the term euphonium, not baritone.

Thanks Dad.

[The Big Ben]

I asked Dad what he thought I should play. His response was "Play the baritone. You'll get all the great countermelodies in Sousa marches" I had no idea what the instrument looked like or how big it was (it looked huge to a little girl). But I choose it anyway - and STILL play all these years later.

Yeah! That what makes it a great instrument!

Especially if your school uses "On Wisconsin" as the fight song. That has a *great* baritone part. And the director never, never, never complains if you play it loud. Pep band heaven!!!! Stuff like that makes disciplined etudes and scales worthwhile...

Thanks, Dad, indeed!!!!

[keronarts]

Now of course there seems to be a difference between "us choosing the tuba" and "the tuba choosing us". When I chose the tuba, it was more by default than anything else. I first wanted to start on trumpet, but all the spots were taken. Dejected as I was, and -- I finally feel safe in admitting this -- was almost on the verge of taking up viola. That's right -- a WILLING violist! But then the bandmaster said that they needed either an oboist or a sousaphone player. Now to a 5th grader in the 1960s, an oboe sounded about as cool as roasted bicycle chains in the south-side of hell. So ......

Sousaphone it was. Now of course we practiced at our "chosen" instrument, etc., and I knew I was doing at least something with it. But the real spark came when a good friend who also happened to be a fabulous high school trombonist -- musical family, big support system -- presented as someone whose character I felt I almost wanted to emulate through musical and artistic expression. It wasn't just the preponderance of beautiful sounds, but a real live person who I could relate to, who was actually making them believable. When that little bit of alchemy happened, I felt somehow the instrument was beginning to "choose me".

By that time I was working with a tuba for the most part -- not in marching band, of course. But, by looking at some of the finer side of it, very soon of course people like Harvey Phillips loomed on the horizon. While he of course was a huge innovator for us, I could also see by no stretch of the imagination that he was all there was in tuba-dom. Like most other people with an active pulse at the time, I was bowled over by Roger Bobo's record. But even Roger was just one of many fine, committed players out there. So, the concept of "community" in tuba-world seemed on its way to becoming viable. This was just something of a perceptible wave.

And catching and riding that wave seems to be where some active feeling of "the instrument choosing us" really begins to happen. Regardless of where we actually end up with our horns and careers, recognition of the sustaining mechanism of a viable community of kindred spirits seems to be an important step in deeper commitments over time with this, or perhaps any instrument. It seems to me more than a carrot on a stick -- it's all the sunshine on rainy days letting you know constantly of something brighter.

[keronarts]

I certainly have told my share of viola jokes, but then again so has David Allen Miller of Albany Symphony, David Zinman in Baltimore, etc., so perhaps I'm not in the worst of company. But violas and tubas actually have quite a bit in common -- especially in larger group formats where we have more of a
foundational role in overall sound. The direct sound of the tuba may not be so apparent as is the effect of overall coloration and group sound. Chuck Jackson, among others, has I believe commented quite succinctly about this issue of "coloring" a group sound. Though we may not be so out-front all the
time, the absence of the tuba quite often -- just like with absent violists -- leaves a hole in the overall sound carpet that you can drive a truck through. Bottom line -- violists are OK, and they don't even need to be frisked before we let them in the door ...

So "what was the music system like back in the day?" Wow, there's a topic for a good book or two. That was a different time and much has gone down the pipe since then, to be sure. What people coming into music these days might not have huge appreciation for is that we today really stand on the shoulders of giants. The age was one where I really think that there was a large number of highly skilled virtuoso players -- Fletch, Bobo, Harvey, Toby, Torchie, Joe Novotny, Chet Schmitz, Jake, Bill Bell, Ron Bishop, Tommy Johnson, etc, etc. -- with precious little to call their own in the way of professional outlet for all that talent. Harvey put together the 1st Intl Tba Symposium in 73 for the very purpose of shaking things up and openly and boldly declaring to the world, "Hey, we're pretty damn good here in the back row, and we need and deserve a better shake than what we've had ..." Now that was almost four years after Woodstock and the culminating tumult of the decade of the 60s , but that spirit of all and everything, we want the world and we want it NOW very much governed.

Things began to happen. For us, bold types of thinking and experimenting, characteristic of earlier times, never stopped. Worlds of sound shaping with many different horns, mouthpieces, electronic filtering and enabling, studio remixing and things oft relegated to hitherto limited ranges of solo-type
instruments -- trumpets, violins, guitars -- began to filter into our realm as well. But it was the imaginative construct of the players themselves that challenged and sought new potential avenues and new overall thinking about what the tuba and art really might be.

So the system seemed to take on something of a progressive evolution of "Hey you in the back, just do this ..." to "Well, Mr Tuba, what do you have for us today? ..." At least SOME recognition of what we MIGHT do seems to more forthcoming.

Our community here is a bi-product of that long roadway of development by grass-roots initiative, and its continued relevance is that we STILL very much have to carve our own future as players and professionals. Just as those folks did in preceding generations. Harvey has suggested that for us
unfortunately the development of the valve came perhaps 150 years too late. Had it happened in the baroque or classical eras, you can bet your shirt that we'd have broad opportunities today unlike anything except what we still dream of.

In spite of this little ramble here, "the system" seems to have evolved somewhat from a cry and demand in the wilderness, to broader recognition of capabilities that might, in fact, be. But a good running caveat that Roger Bobo, among other, has postulated is that still, for all that has happened, that extensive solo careering and a widespread cultural smile coming our way is still a baby yet unborn. There is life in our cocoon, to be sure. We know it, and a small slice of the world out there knows it. But if we're ever able to dry our wings, spread them and REALLY fly, much credit must go to the great dreams of our forebears -- however sketchy and broadly black and white they may have seemed at the time. Tomorrow's "system" might be more one of
collegial interaction among accepting peers than seeming long-haired barbarians clamoring at the gates for recognition they've long known themselves, and long deserved from the world in general.

[MaryAnn]

In 5th grade I was playing violin and piano.

Classical guitar came along, as did the viola.

When I was 45 I indulged a hankering for the sound of the (french) horn. At some point I did my "ebay learning experience" paying way too much for a King 2280. However I found that the mouthpiece difference was causing me to produce mostly pffing sounds.

But eventually a friend who conducts the local brass band wheedled me into coming in and playing the bass tbone part on the euph, and I found an affinity for low notes once I got used to it. After that she starting saying "Buy an Eb tuba!" several times every rehearsal.

So I did; more pffing sounds for a few months until the lips learned to flap more loosely. Followed by an F and a CC, and a stint in a couple local community orchestras as well as the brass band.

Now....eh, back to horn, concert band, and brass quntet, and I took up something I appear to actually have some talent on this summer, the oboe. At least I have enough wind for it, even if it does cause my head to explode. We'll see if the duck quacks mellow to more acceptable sounds after a few months on it.

Just yesterday the better community orchestra asked me to do the upcoming concert on tuba....Frank D minor and a couple other things. I must be over the hill....I said no because the rehearsal schedule really was more than I was interested in. As I get older I'm a lot more interested in my life being comfortable than in it being exciting. (And no, that does not explain the oboe; just color me cuckoo.)

MA, "Pffft, Quack"

[Steve Inman]

Piano 4th - 6th grade. Wanted to play (sorry) alto sax but the orthodontist claimed it would undo all his hard work correcting an overbite. So cornet was the choice for 6th grade and starting into 7th grade band.

Strange that I never made much progress. I suppose I should have practiced now and then. JRHS BD allowed if I was happy as the last tpt in the 3rd section, that was fine with him, but he didn't have anybody to play tuba (big metal sousies), and that I could play the FIRST TUBA PART! (sucker ...!)

I seemed to be much better at tuba than cornet, and never looked back.

Cheers,

[tubaguy9]

Well...my first semester of 6th grade I started out on Clarinet ...I realized that that was not my favorite, and that that would be a mistake to stay on... From there, I went to the Baritone, and tried it for some time, but there was a person on every instrument (except for the 'branched out' instruments, i.e. bassoon, tuba, tenor sax, bari sax, etc.). So, soon as I got to Jr. High, I immediately wanted to go to Tuba. Probably 'cause I was the only one to play it. And was the only one crazy enough...but the rest has been history.

[LoyalTubist]

Even though I was born in 1957, my music education (in school) was taken directly from a 1957 band textbook. I started out on trumpet in the fourth grade. Between elementary and junior high, I was given an Eb tuba to take home, much to the chagrin of my mother (and I lived with my parents, brother, and sister together in a 10' x 55' trailer house!) After a year, the music teacher gave me a BBb tuba to take home on weekends.

We didn't leave that little place until after I started college. But when I as 16, my parents gave me a CC tuba for a Christmas present. I also had an antique Buescher sousaphone (huge thing) and a Besson BBb tuba, which the band director wanted me to take home (both of them) for the Christmas holidays!

Anyway, the thing with beginning a former trumpet player on an Eb tuba is that you don't have to teach a different set of fingerings. An Eb below the staff in bass clef looks just like a middle C in treble clef. Just remember that, when you read the music this way you take away three flats. While reading the music, you begin to associate the bass clef names of the notes, then you are ready to begin playing on BBb tuba (theoretically).

Actually, if you started out on Eb tuba, learned the note names on that, THEN moved to a CC tuba, you could go back to the trumpet fingerings you used before using bass clef names!

[The Big Ben]

Even though I was born in 1957, my music education (in school) was taken directly from a 1957 band textbook. I started out on trumpet in the fourth grade. Between elementary and junior high, I was given an Eb tuba to take home, much to the chagrin of my mother (and I lived with my parents, brother, and sister together in a 10' x 55' trailer house!) After a year, the music teacher gave me a BBb tuba to take home on weekends.

We didn't leave that little place until after I started college. But when I as 16, my parents gave me a CC tuba for a Christmas present. I also had an antique Buescher sousaphone (huge thing) and a Besson BBb tuba, which the band director wanted me to take home (both of them) for the Christmas holidays!

With all of those horns and living in a 10 x 55 trailer house, you must have had to keep them in one of those little aluminum sheds people buy for their lawn mowers and stuff! (Or hanging from the ceiling by ropes!)

[OldsRecording]

Euphonium fit my face tuba close I chose euphonium and I like it becuce nobody aceppt my band direcotor and I can spell or pronsit or define it

Saving this for posterity...

What was that? "All of your base is belong to us"?
(No offense, Euphoniumguy.)

[LoyalTubist]

Even though I was born in 1957, my music education (in school) was taken directly from a 1957 band textbook. I started out on trumpet in the fourth grade. Between elementary and junior high, I was given an Eb tuba to take home, much to the chagrin of my mother (and I lived with my parents, brother, and sister together in a 10' x 55' trailer house!) After a year, the music teacher gave me a BBb tuba to take home on weekends.

We didn't leave that little place until after I started college. But when I as 16, my parents gave me a CC tuba for a Christmas present. I also had an antique Buescher sousaphone (huge thing) and a Besson BBb tuba, which the band director wanted me to take home (both of them) for the Christmas holidays!

With all of those horns and living in a 10 x 55 trailer house, you must have had to keep them in one of those little aluminum sheds people buy for their lawn mowers and stuff! (Or hanging from the ceiling by ropes!)

My dad was a little strange. He didn't believe in buying land but he also didn't like renting out a house or apartment. So I grew up in a trailer house (and for you mobile home fans, don't correct me... IT WAS A TRAILER!!! I WOULD HAVE HAD JUST AS MUCH ROOM IN ONE OF THOSE U-HAUL THINGS YOU RENT BY THE DAY!!!) My mother still lives in one, although it's a little bigger (24' x 65') and it hasn't had wheels in over thirty years (they were removed).

I say this because some tuba players might think they don't have enough room to be a tuba player--to keep the horns...

And, no, the tubas were kept on the floor in the combination living room/dining room/kitchen. If my dad was home, I would keep them in the back of his station wagon, with a blanket thrown over to deter thieves. Living in Southern California, only a few feet from the San Andreas Fault, you don't hang things from the ceiling. It might not be there in the morning.