How to tell the band director that I don't like playing

tubatooter1940 · Post by **tubatooter1940** » Sat Sep 22, 2007 3:55 pm

Hi Serge,
If you have a burning love for music performance you will keep seeking a happy outlet for it just about everywhere you go.
If your most recent musical work is your best work so far, that is how you know progress is being made and you may be well off to stay at it.
If you feel stifled by anyone or anything outside yourself-it may be time to make a change.
I played tuba thrugh high school and college but started playing trumpet along with at age 16. I wanted to play guitar. I do so admire the instrument. I was a trumpeter in a rock band the first night I brought a guitar to a gig. The guys in the band hid my guitar while we set up. I managed to convince them to let me try it on one tune. I wasn't great but a second guitar is a lot of help and freed me to sing backup.
For the next 24 years I sang lead and backup,rhythm guitar and played solos on trumpet, trombone and rarely, guitar six nights a week until the U.S. Postal Service offered me a family health care plan.
Serge, I may be a maverick and you may be as well. Follow a road that brings you happiness and peace. If you're good to people along the way and able to hold most any job, you might wind up happy.

sloan · Post by **sloan** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 1:32 am

You ask: "How do I tell the band director X" and then write a long post describing 'X'.

The answer is simple: print out your original post and hand it to your band director.

then, discuss it.

One suspects that if there are really only 2 Sousaphone-carriers in your Marching Band, your choice might be to play the Sousaphone or join the choir.

Life is short. if you don't want to play the tuba...then don't.

LoyalTubist · Post by **LoyalTubist** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 7:45 am

Like Earl Hickey, I have a list of stupid things I did through my half of a century of life. Unlike Earl, my list is confidential and not even my wife is allowed to see it.

But first on that list is my resignation from my high school band prior to my senior year. I look upon my time in high school band as a happy time in my life but for some idiotic reason, I didn't like the way something was done and I quit. I missed playing at my own graduation (a big tradition at my high school) and I didn't get to do a lot of the stuff that everyone did with the band back in those days.

I apologized to my band directors about three years after my high school graduation... both the director and his assistant began working as college band directors. They accepted my apology.

The problem is that it has been 33 years and I can't forgive myself.

Stay in the band. No matter where you go from where you are you won't regret it.

geomiklas · Post by **geomiklas** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 4:01 pm

Kid, I can relate to your situation. In my case though, I didn't like the middle school band director (and maybe she didn't like me too).

In the 5th grade, I started playing a York trumpet that my parents bought at a yard sale. By the middle of 6th grade, I was so disgusted with the teacher that I smashed the lead pipe on the trumpet. My parents couldn't afford to fix the trumpet and the band director needed a baritone player, so you know what happened. I finished 6th grade playing baritone horn, bass clef. By the end of 6th grade, the band director told me that she needed a tuba in next year's 7th grade band and asked me to play it. I said "NO WAY", got a summer job and paid to get the trumpet fixed. It wasn't until writing this reply that I remembered how mean she was. There I was a trumpet player, and she wouldn't let me play Baritone T.C.. Her scheme was to get me to learn Bass Clef so she could switch me to tuba. So I got my trumpet fixed and played it again in 7th grade--the band director resigned at the end of the year.

At the beginning of my 8th grade, the band new director asked for volunteers to play the tuba--I didn't move, not quite yet. Then one day the band director announced that he was starting a stage band and the boosters were buying a bass guitar. That is when I asked if I could volunteer to play both the bass guitar and the tuba. The rest is history--just look at my signature.

gm

geomiklas · Post by **geomiklas** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 8:25 pm

SousaWarrior wrote:Coming to tubenet to find out how to get out of playing the tuba is like going to www.Peta.org to find out how to skin a cat.

I don't know the answer to the former but, to the latter, I recommend starting behind the ears.

Michael Vick might be qualified to give insight on this.

LoyalTubist · Post by **LoyalTubist** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 9:13 pm

geomiklas wrote:
SousaWarrior wrote:Coming to tubenet to find out how to get out of playing the tuba is like going to www.Peta.org to find out how to skin a cat.

I don't know the answer to the former but, to the latter, I recommend starting behind the ears.
Michael Vick might be qualified to give insight on this.

I am a member of PETA.

LoyalTubist · Post by **LoyalTubist** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 9:17 pm

I edited that while you were posting so it wouldn't seem like it was coming out of nowhere.