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So, you want to be a professional tuba player? Playing the tuba is your life? You want to
share your skills and joy with the rest of the world and earn your living doing it? Here's
10 questions you might ask yourself before embarking on this life.

1. Are you willing to relocate to where the work is? Do you even know where the work is?
2. Are you willing to travel extensively? How do you feel about living out of a different hotel room every night? You won't
be paid much, so it's not a very nice hotel room.
3. How do you feel about wearing the same clothes every day and trying to find a laundromat in a strange town when
you finally can't stand it any longer?
4. Would you like a steady diet of fast food? What makes you think you'll be able to afford anything but fast food? Or have time for
a proper meal? Oh, the customer is feeding the band? The bad news? It's the 3rd time this week you're being served brats
and canned sauerkraut.
5. Do you enjoy being treated like the hired help? After all, that's what you are.
6. How's your health? How's it after 3 months on the road? What health insurance?
7. How do you feel about being cut when a better player shows up? There's always a better player. And he's related to someone in the band.
8. How do you feel about requests? What if it's the 10th time this week you've had to play the Macarena? Or the Pachabel?
9. It's the 3rd set. The customer hasn't written the check yet. He's half tanked on whatever they're drinking and reeks of
garlic encrusted escargot (or brats) and just remembered he used to play tuba in middle school. And he wants to sit in and
play yours. Using your mouthpiece. Isn't playing tuba for a living fun?
10. And, finally, you just arrived at the gig site. The truck driver forgot to close the rear cargo door and your tuba fell out
150 miles ago. You had it insured, right? You can get another one before tonight's gig here in Podunk? Which starts in 30
minutes. Oh, you flew into Podunk? Where did your tuba fly to? Will it ever be seen again? In one playable piece?

Almost every one of these things I've personally experienced. My tuba never fell out of the truck, but the trumpet player's horn
did. My tuba didn't get crushed by the airline, but the guest tuba player's did. (And it was the Chicken Dance.)

I don't earn my living with my tuba. Couldn't afford to.

Jim "Got another oom-pah gig tonight .. facing yet another Chicken Dance" Wagner

Aw, c'mon, quit holdin' back! VENT! (it's that little hole you had drilled in your first valve casing... )

If you don't like what you are doing you should change something. That goes for musicians, lawyers and anyone else. Why live unhappy.

However, we musicians do understand that being a musician is a lot like be addicted to drugs. It's hard to quit.

Huh. Amen to that!

Too bad we spend so much time doing things before we figure out that we don't like it and should change things. I suppose it's a good thing too. Otherwise we wouldn't really try new and interesting things. Playing tuba has definitely made my life more "interesting" (invoking the ancient curse).

Uh, I think the point was missed.

I don't and never wanted to earn my living playing tuba. Don't get me wrong, I love to play. I also like to eat.

But I've seen enough and experienced enough as a regularly and still gigging amateur to offer a little Real World 101 for those who think they want to be professional musicians and haven't thought about the realities.

If you accept the realities, then by all means go for it.

You reality may vary.

Jim Wagner

Someone is a little bitter.

Alex C wrote:If you don't like what you are doing you should change something. That goes for musicians, lawyers and anyone else. Why live unhappy.

This is true.

Alex C wrote:However, we musicians do understand that being a musician is a lot like be addicted to drugs. It's hard to quit.

This, too, is quite true.

Alex C wrote:However, we musicians do understand that being a musician is a lot like be addicted to drugs. It's hard to quit.

And having previously 'played' the cash register and the shovel, I assure you, playing the tuba is easier.

"Bitter, party of 2, your table is now ready... "

Doo doo doo dee doo..

Ralph

I think lgb&dtuba's core message is still totally valid. Playing tuba professionally in an ensemble is a lifestyle choice as much as it is a career choice. try to see through what may seem like a gripe and you will find a good lesson there.

I don't understand the comments about bitterness either. lgb&dtuba does not play tuba for money and seems to be happy to do so - this is not bitterness. What led to the original post? Who knows. Maybe there was a sense of naïveté floating around the board that some (not all) music majors seem to ooze, and maybe it seeped into a post here and there. I am sure that those of us who did the schooling or who are still doing the schooling would agree that there are a lot of players in school who really don't know what they are getting into.

I would have to agree that lgb&dtuba probably had a chimpanzee as a tour manager though. Let's not fool oursleves. There are a number of chimps managing tours, picking music for the season, and in some cases negotiating contracts.

There are certainly worse gigs than touring in orchestras. I believe UncleBeer mentioned a shovel. But there are a million options better and worse out there. Keep your options open at all times.

To those of you braving the schooling and audition circuit, rock on! We salute you. If it wasn't meant to be though, life has a way of finding other things for you to do. Just be sure you know what you are in for. The sooner you figure yourself out, the happier you will be.

Hmm. I guess you missed the part where I have a gig tonight? I never said I don't enjoy gigging or have given it up. I merely point out that there are certain realities to being a gigging musician that tend not to be readily apparant to a young, dewy eyed wannabe.

Gig long enough in enough places and you too can have a nice long list of war stories. I'm sure there are pros and amateurs alike on this list who can easily "top" my stories. And continue to gig, too.

Was there a poll once here that showed how many on this list actually earn 100 percent of their income as professional gigging musicians? Not as professional teachers or in some other aspect of the music business and part time musicians, but full time playing. And I'd eliminate military musicians from that, not because they aren't fine hard working musicians but because their paychecks aren't directly tied to how often they play.

Jim Wagner

lgb&dtuba wrote:I'd eliminate military musicians from that, not because they aren't fine hard working musicians but because their paychecks aren't directly tied to how often they play.

Neither are the paychecks of guys with orchestra gigs. You're thinking freelance only.

I have a question for the non-orchestral/ military tubists who went to school for many years and have a performance degree(s). How essential is what you learned in college in your job/gigs/whatever? In other words, could you have managed to get the same job while being a worse tuba player? Do you need to know how to play The Ride, or the theory behind the Hindemith Sonata (assuming, of course, that there is theory behind it), or to play the Vaughn Williams Concerto for your most occurant playing position? How much expertise in needed for the average (non-orchestral/military) gig?

if you want an entry level,bottow rung military gig,you could possibly get that without college.You will be a soldier first and an M16 will be your main axe.If you aspire to DC or other higher level bands,get ready for all-out competition for the gigs.Stay in school and learn the theory behind the Hindemith...

Playing or singing for your supper can get rough sometimes as we found out when the hotel we were playing at was seized by the former owners who refused to pay us requiring us to plead for our hotel room for free on Sunday so we could hock our instruments on Monday for gas money to get home. Or it can be sweet playing for the home town crowd and selling every C.D. we brought and having to jot down addresses to send more to well pleased fans.
Dennis Gray
tubatooter1940
www.johnreno.com/

yeah,and a 20 year old girl once won a MAJOR symphony audition.Normal people should plan on MANY years of training AND 6 hrs per day focused practice.

An education is not required to be a professional tuba player. If you can play well and win an audition, it isn't about where you went to school (or even IF you went to school!) In fact, theoretically, you don't even have to be a high school graduate! It's how well you play and how well you blend with the players you work with.

Oh, and about the military, I was in the Army band program for seven years. It was a different time back then. Each instrument had its own MOS (military occupation specialty) number--tuba player was 02F. Now there is one for regular bands (42R) and one for special bands (42S). There was not a war going on at that time but we did a lot of combat field training. We took our instruments with us, so, we saw our instruments more than we saw anything else we used during those times. There are many good players in military bands. I think the bitter comments are uncalled for in this area.

What I ment was, for those of you that are freelancers not playing in a "steady" ensemble, how often are you asked to play music that registers to you as "hard?" How difficult is the music that tuba players encounter in the "real world?"

THE TUBA wrote:What I ment was, for those of you that are freelancers not playing in a "steady" ensemble, how often are you asked to play music that registers to you as "hard?" How difficult is the music that tuba players encounter in the "real world?"

most of the time the music I play in pits and stage shows and pops orchestras and bands is not very tough, but then when you least expect it POW some kller part comes at you. Our pops Orch played at a jazz fest in town last week with David Benoit. Mostly goose eggs and rests all over the page.
then all of a sudden out of nowhere come a part on a tune call Re-Bach in unison with the bass bone, celli and bassi, starting on hi D and lots of 16th notes and ending on a low A, so go figure. when it rains it pours....

ken k