TubeNet

Do any instrument makers offer internships or apprenticeships of any sort? I'm really interested in getting involved in building and repairing brass instruments and have no clue where to start.

jorgeskid wrote:Do any instrument makers offer internships or apprenticeships of any sort? I'm really interested in getting involved in building and repairing brass instruments and have no clue where to start.

Great question. I don't have any first-hand information about internships or apprenticeships in the horn building industry other than to say that if they do exist, those positions will be few and far between.

I'm sure some of the larger store-front music stores have some sort of entry level position but probably would not lead to actual horn building but rather working to maintain a rental fleet for the music store.

For a little information about where one might begin some sort of training... you might give this a look see: http://www.napbirt.org/about-napbirt---

When I was thinking about this line of work, The school to go to was called Red Wing Tech, but I guess they got absorbed into Minn. State Tech.
http://www.redwingmusicrepair.org/" target="_blank

If you want to learn to build brass instruments you need to learn German and move to Germany. There are a number of instrument building school here that will teach you everything you need to know. Programs here on average take three years. There are two different ways to go about it. One is to go to the school full time. It's like college for building horns. The other way is if you are already working for a company you learn on the job for 2-4 months and then go to a school for 4-6 weeks. Rinse and repeat for three years. Both take about 3 years. At the end of your time you have an exam. You have to build either a trumpet for flugelhorn (if your focus is brass, I have not looked into woodwind or string programs) you build the entire thing yourself (save for the bell and valves, those are specialized jobs here) and they grade it. If you pass you get your journeymens certificate. Many companies take on people to train them. Alexander has I believe 3 positions at a time. However, just because they train you doesn't mean that you'll have a job at the end of the three years.

It doesn't seem to me that you can get this kind of training in the states. There are repair schools but not building schools. If you are serious about this I recommend looking for something out here.

Curmudgeon wrote:Do they accept foreign (non-German) students?

Yes but you must take a German proficiency test first. Some of the factories are okay with sub par German (one worker at Alexander is a native Italian speaker) but the schools are pretty strict about that.

For one example of someone who became a custom brass instrument maker in part as a result of his educational path, take a look at http://medlinhorns.com/jacobmedlin/. It's at least one approach that would work if you could find a similar situation.

(Jacob is also a very nice guy and extremely helpful. He's helped me a bunch with some repair issues. I think he would respond to any questions you might ask.)

You might want to start by reading the Erik Brandt book on brass repair and combing Youtube for videos. There are quite a few on various aspects of brass repair. There are also a few CDs (birds eye view videos) that one of the guys who does Youtube videos sells that focus on disassembly and assembly of various instruments.

A little googling and the Napbrit site will find you the schools that specialize in this stuff. You can either go to one of these or apprentice with a (well known if possible) tech for a while. While there are some tricks to learn, a lot of the skill building just requires a lot of practice. You could even put together a small set of tools and start repairing junk horns which you could get off ebay. If you don't find a master to apprentice with, you will need $500 to $1000 worth of tools to really start repairing trumpets and horns.

If it's tubas you're interested in, that is fairly specialized work and you'd eventually have to find a tuba repair shop at which to apprentice. Doing a lot of tuba dent removal might require a dent removal machine such as Ferree's sells and that costs some extra bucks. You don't really have to have this for smaller horns . . .