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So last week one of my 6th grade tuba students comes to his lesson and his chops are doing some funky stuff. He is all over the place, missing partials, and that's not normal for this student. I asked him if he had been doing a lot of practicing, or no practicing or what was up, and he tells me that he spent the whole weekend practicing trumpet.

"WHAT? Why?"
"The band director checked it out to me"
"Are you switching to trumpet."
"No"
"Why would he check you out a trumpet?"
"I wanted to try one because my mom might buy one"
"Why would she want to buy a trumpet?"
"Well, I read the miles davis biography, and he played tuba and trumpet and trumpet is cheaper than tuba"
"But you still want to play tuba?"
"Yeah, but I thought practicing trumpet might help my tuba high range."
"Umm... yeah, but so would practicing tuba."

The background on this student is that he is obsessed with Jazz, which is great! I've given him some tuba jazz recordings to get him excited and we've played some simple blues solos, (He's a beginner).

I don't want to discourage him on exploring music of any kind, and I guess practicing any instrument is better than practicing none, though I'm not totally sure about that. But it's pretty frustrating to work on building good fundamentals with a student and then have incorrect habits develop from something like this.

ALSO- who the heck lets their 12 yr old read the miles davis autobiography??? If he missed the heavy drug usage, he surely noticed the part about beating up hookers!

Why don't you turn your student on to some funky groovy tuba stuff like: "gravity" or "youngblood" or "jon sass"?

You could play some funky lines in your lessons. I do this with my students and they love it, and, it MUST be more fun than playing the trumpet.

Your best allies in this situation would be the parents. They will be the deciding factor in whether your students decides to focus on one instrument or spread himself too thin and make sure he gets discouraged. That early on in playing is not a time to be learning two instruments that are so contradictory for the embouchure. This might be especially important since they are paying you to work with this kid and the trumpet is just wasting their money at this time.

If there is no dissuading the kid or his parents, you might suggest that a much better jazz double would be the electric or upright bass. Good price point and no messing with the face.

Good luck,
Sou

oooh good suggestion! I had mentioned trombone would be a better double, but I hadn't thought of bass. Even better!

It's almost ridiculous to even talk about a double right now though, because he can barely play his major scales. I agree that the parents are a better way to approach this.

I wish I could say that this student loves jazz because he's from Denton, and he has a rich cultural background, and it's part of his soul, etc. Unfortunately, he's just a dorky kid from the mid-cities that heard that jazz was the cool thing to do. But, if giving him jazz music to work on will keep him playing music, then I am all too happy to oblige.

Student tubas ought to cost $500 and TRUMPETS should cost $10,000! THAT would keep the numbers down a bit!

bloke wrote:

TubaTinker wrote:Student tubas ought to cost $500 and TRUMPETS should cost $10,000! THAT would keep the numbers down a bit!

Trumpets are a necessary evil. Besides their function of blasting out the melody to those patrons who can't seem to find (much less carry) the tune, where else would all of those wild neckties and Korean sports cars be sold?

bloke "I believe you need to shift your emphasis to alto saxophones, TubaTinker."

OOOHHH! Can't do that! My wife plays alto sax