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Hey guys,

just wanted to share a nice weekend experience.
Meinl-Weston had invited to weekend seminars with the Melton Tuba Quartet right there in Geretsried, Germany.
There were tubists of all kinds of playing levels from mere beginners via advanced amateurs all the way to performance majors.
I went to the course on Sunday morning. There were some 30 people attending.
First Heiko Triebener had a short lecture on the history of the tuba, introducing serpent and ophicleide. Heiko is a fun person and really managed to add some infotainment here.
After a brief warm-up with Uli Haas we were split in smaller groups for further lessons. To do so we were divided into "F, BBb, and other", so lucky me got to be in a 3-person (CC,CC,EEb) group taught by Heiko Triebener. The following 1.5 hours we spent on intonation and how to avoid it

After lunch there was a great concert on which the quartet presented mostly repertoire from their latest CD "Wonderful World".
It was really amazing and a humorous show.

I know all of you are curious about the new MW-models, but I´ll have to disappoint you. There was a selection of their already well known horns. I got to play various F (45SLZ, sweet…) and the three 21x5 as well as the Fafner BBb. I figured the "Tubadome" equipment had gone to Frankfurt already.
I really liked the 2040/5 someone had brought.

I really appreciate such opportunities to test, meet´n´greet and get taught. It was fun and well worth the travel.

Oh, just some basic techniques amateurs tend to forget about frequently.
Basically we took a non-virtuoso canon (Dona Nobis Pacem, F-Major) and discussed what would be necessary to make this piece sing when played as a trio.
Heiko pointed out the third in a Major chord (Read: A in F-Major) needing to be rather on the flat side as opposed to the same note played by itself.
We also tried out ways to get unison notes in tune. (Quickest result: think sound-hum pitch-play note. Next step: Play note in "unison" and consciously bend it up and down together, returning to the note´s center. It WAS in tune when we returned to that center. Obviously not for on-stage use).
We also spent some time finding individual intonation quirks (the horns´ as well as the players´) and looked if we could figure out ways around them (alternate fingerings, slide pulling).
Time was too short to adress all this REALLY elaborately.