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I've been wanting to ask all of you if the tuba was your first instrument or if you began on something else, then for one reason or another switched to tuba?

Think back to your days in elementary or grade school when you had to pick your first instrument.

For me, the tuba has been my first and only instrument. So you might consider me as a purist. However, down the road I might try the string bass or even the electric one. I like instruments that produce a low sound.

So take this poll and offer any stories.

Hank74

I started on baritone with every intention of switcing to tuba. In 5th grade I was much too small to manuever a tuba. I started tuba in 7th grade.

I started on the drums in the sixth grade and when I got to Junior high there were four drummers and no tubas. I switched because I was the biggest of the four.

I started tuba lessons (they were my first music lessons) late in my public school career. I was in my junior year of high school, and played a King Sousaphone (1250?) for the rest of that time.

I wanted to play sax, however we had a clarinet and my parents didn't think i'd stick with the band thing.. (boy were they wrong..)

so I started on clarinet, hated it, in 7th grade went to bass clarinet, then he asked for a tuba.. I jumped all over that because that was a "guys" instrument unlike, I thought, clarinet was.

I've since tried to switch to sax the year after starting tuba, but for some odd reason my director wouldnt' let me and so i've been playing tuba since.. I haven't touched clarinet for years and faintly remember that G is open.. and sax well I kept playing in jazz band for a few years but now a days instead of playing sax in band I try to talk them into letting me play tuba and/or do a dixie instead

1952: started piano
1959:.....F horn ( my main inst.)
1974ish...got first tuba
1977ish...viola
2004......finally making $$$$$ with tuba (actually ccccc)

Paul

Although tuba wasn't my first instrument, it was my first wind instrument. I started on cello in 4th grade (1965). I added tuba when I started High School.

I was on baritone for about 6 months before the euphonium, and here it is, my first ever euph., a Hawkes Excelsior Sonorous Class A;

http://www.euph9.freeserve.co.uk/LSB2.jpg

www.euph9.freeserve.co.uk

Tuba in 6th grade--the director needed tubas and I was a big guy, so----!
He later asked if I would double on string bass for jazz band (called dance band at the time!) and that led me to college audition on tuba and happening to mention to the dept chairman that I also played bass, so he had me grab a school bass and audition on that too. He said if I really wanted to major on tuba that would be ok, but then sweet-talked me into majoring on bass! A case of the greater need! Turns out that I made a heckuva lot more money playing bass than I did playing tuba, but enjoying it less.So, now I play only tuba.

No problem, the baritone is mostly cylindrical and smaller in more & bell sizes, usually with just 3 valves, and giving a sound closer to that of the trombone.
The euphonium is mostly conical, with a much larger bore and bell and ranges from 3 to 5 valves, though 4 valve compensating instruments are standard in the UK and its sound is much more closer to that of a tenor tuba.

CB

I was forced by a good-intending mother into piano lessons at age six (in 1952). I abandoned the piano at age 9 for an Eb tuba. Now.... I wish I had continued the piano lessons. I probably would have learned much more about music if I had.

Like others, my first instrumental music lessons were on piano. (There was also the summer of guitar lessons on the toy-store guitar, but it proved I didn't have the talen to deserve a better guitar, so I don't count it.)

Come to think of it, I didn't have much talent on the piano, either. I'm reminded of Vaughan Williams, describing the viola as "my musical salvation" after frustrations with the pianoforte, "which I never could play."

The tuba was my first instrument in school, and I started on it in the 7th grade (which was the first year of band where I grew up). My first instrument was a King fiberglass sousaphone, though I did buy my own sparkling Bach 24AW mouthpiece. I have no idea why I started on that mouthpiece, but I started on tuba because of the manipulation of the band director, who needed a tuba player and who figured I was big enough.

Rick "who fell in love with the sound at a later date" Denney

My dad started me on his silver Conn trumpet at about 8 years old. Played in a kids marching band til high school when a friend of dad's loaned us a double bell euphonium. When he took it back next year, the music teacher suggested I switch to an old Eb helicon sitting in her closet and I was lost to the ranks of 2d trumpet players forever, much to my father's disgust.

Don "on many a screen and fan" Shirer

Was forced to play piano at age 9,hated it,rebelled and finally was allowed to quit.I was forbidden to play tuba at age 13 because of the piano
fiasco but I loved tuba and my band director was so desparate he let me take lessons and not play any concerts for the first year.The parents heard me the begining of the second year and were won over.
At age 16 I was living in a monastery and found an Olds ambassador trumpet in a trunk full of costumes in a dramatics hall.The fingerings were the same as tuba,just higher.I practiced alone for six weeks and tried out
for the trumpet choir that played at Sunday mass in the main chapel with the six keyboard organ that had pipes that poked up thrugh the roof.What a thrill!
At age 17,I was allowed to play snare drum in all the Mardi Gras parades
and not have to lug that Conn sousie.
At age 22 my wife spent her first pay check from her first job to buy a Harmony guitar for me.Three months later I had bought a pickup for it and was picking country in this bar here in town.
At age 25 I got a Besson valve trombone at a hock shop for 25 bucks and alternated with the trumpet for my solos because I was and am a lousy lead guitar player.
At age 30,my son quit playing his Conn tenor trombone and I took it to work because my Besson burned up in a night club fire(melted the sauter joints,turned black and fell to pieces)Got to love that slide horn.
At 55 I bought my first tuba,a Russian Army issue piece of #%@* but played well enough to let me know that I am happiest blowing tuba.
The Fart Man

Highams wrote:No problem, the baritone is mostly cylindrical and smaller in more & bell sizes, usually with just 3 valves, and giving a sound closer to that of the trombone....

For Tubaboy (and our other American readers), understand that Highams is describing what Britons call euphoniums and baritones. The English-style baritone is an instrument that doesn't exist in American bands (unless they are modeled after British brass bands).

The instrument commonly referred to as a baritone in the U.S. is functionally identical to a euphonium, except that it is probably a bit older and therefore has a bit smaller bore a bell. But it's nothing like the British baritone.

Rick "trying to be clear, not controversial" Denney

My first formal musical training was on piano. But I was fascinated with low sounding instruments, particularly the tuba, from age 3.

Band was first offered in 4th grade. However, my well-intentioned but nonmusical parents would not give me permission. "You have piano lessons, chorus, and homework. That's enough." So my desire to play tuba had to wait for many years. I taught myself tuba in the the summer prior to my senior year in high school, because my parents finally said that I could take advantage of the last chance to be in band.

Piano continued as my major instrument in college. I became very serious about studying the tuba well into my adulthood. Now, I practice piano only when I absolutely must, because I feel like it is impinging upon my precious tuba practice time.

My first instrument was my voice. My parents say that I started talking at five months and would hum tunes I heard around me as a baby. There are some pictures of me sitting at the piano as a small baby with my fingers on the keys, but my first memory of the piano was around three years old when my mom taught me to sing and play along with some kind of Holloween song.

In the second grade I picked up violin and was doing some acting. I liked the music better because I found it way easier to memorize music than it was to remember lines. I went through three years of violin playing where I never learned to read music. I would listen to the teacher or another kid play and then play it by ear. The notes seemed like way too much work to learn at the time. I was more interested in soccer and baseball.

In junior high school I started on the trombone, mostly because it looked like the loudest instrument and the school had a King trombone (just happens to also be my name) and I thought that was very cool at the time. The next year our junior high band's tuba player got kicked out of school. The band director begged my to play tuba, and I fought it. I was a very tall, fat little boy, and didn't need any more jokes on the playground. But when I heard the band without a tuba, I realized that I could be playing all the time. The tuba seemed even more important than the loud trombone. The bass was needed, and I took a tuba home.

I remember practicing that Eb tuba for a few hours on Friday evening and then a few more on Sunday. On Monday I was playing tuba in the band. Six months later I performed Tubby the Tuba on CC with Richard Simmons narrating.

This happened at the Palms Jr. High Gifted Magnet in Los Angeles. I have come full circle, liturally. After 15 years of music and life experience I have landed my big tuba butt two whole blocks from my old Jr. High where I performed Tubby the Tuba in 1989. I'm sure as kids walk home from school in the afternoon they walk past my studio and hear me playing tuba or recording cartoon music. What a trip!

And I no longer worry about getting called "Lard-***" or "Tubby".

I started out on fluegelhorn, which makes out the main bulk of the typical "fanfare" called brass band (+saxes) in the Netherlands. Then I moved to a town with a wind band (so no fluegels) and I swtched to baritone. Got bored with that rather quickly (sorry ) and switched to french horn. Started studying french horn, with obligatory piano lessons which I hated, and with natural horn on the side, which I loved.
Got a job playing in a place far away where I couldn't play natural horn, got back here after being forgotten and replaced with better, younger models by the free-lance scene and now I'm working in a music library. Started BBb tuba for the heck of it, and because some bands in the area conducted by friends don't have enough of them..

piano in 3rd grade
sax in 6th
euph in 9th
tuba in 11th

My father had a relative who made money, without working very hard, running a dance band in the Northeast. He played sax, so I had to play sax. There was a semester of clarinet, a couple where I learned trombone, euphonium and string bass. Finally, the youth band I was in was going to take a trip to Minnesota. My family was poor so I couldn't afford to go, but somehow I learned that if I played tuba, they would take me for a reduced price, or maybe even, for free, thus began my tuba career. Some 30 years later, I own three of them.
I hate saxophones with a passion.