Baby Steps

[Gorilla Tuba]

This has been a great week for me and I want to brag about it!

Literally, my 1 year old baby girl took her first steps today. Proud pappa here.

More metaphorically, my studio has started taking steps, too.

When I arrived at this job last year, I had plenty of tuba students, some of which were actually pretty solid players. However, they were all part of a long tradition of players who only practiced minimally. Further, only one or two owned their own mouthpieces. Owning their own tuba was never even thought of. Most didn't even know CC tubas existed. I don't think a CC tuba is right for many of these guys, but certainly owning your own tuba is important for a music major. The students are all good guys and decent band players, but the studio never strived for more than mediocrity. This was not due to a poor teacher, just an attitude that I have seen at many smaller state universities.

I am jumping for joy because I am beginning to see the seeds of a change in mentality develop. On the horn issue, one student bought his own tuba in November (a Mirafone 185 CC). Now the other guys are scheeming to raise money for their horns. These are the same guys who swore that they could never afford their own horns just a year ago.

More importantly than getting their own horns is that, Posted on the door to the tuba storage room, I found a practice log. The guys got together and set a goal to practice 100 hours per week (thats 10 hours per week per person). I know that isn't a huge amount of practice time, but I am excited to see them doing this. I had nothing to do with this. They just recognized that they were not being leaders in the music department and decided to fix the problem. This week was the first week that I didn't have to fail anybody in lessons, in fact, they were all playing better than at anytime since I've been here.

The tuba culture has not fully developed here yet, but it is thrilling to see the attitude changing. My daugher walking is pretty cool, too.