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I am a retired Pastor, self taught tuba player. We take worship to nursing homes and the primary instrument is the tuba, everyone can sing with a tuba! As with most community bands they take the summer off, in my opinion this is the best time to play. This summer I have done something totally different to challenge myself and it has increased my range, tone, speed and fun.

I took the melody line, treble clef, soprano voice of many hymns and all of the patriotic songs I could find, transposed them to bass clef and then picked a key that my wife could sing along with the tuba. All of a sudden I was forced to play in four or five flats and always in a two octave range. My warm up is an Ab scale in two octaves. By playing for the folks in the retirement homes encouraging them to sing along I have grown as a tuba play and had a great time doing it.

I hope when my local community band starts up in the fall they will notice how much better I sound.

Thanks for sharing this!

(from a fellow Sonora player)

Excellent. I played my tuba for the nursing home where my mom is this past Christmas, they really enjoyed the performance. I'll do this again over the summer (tuba, and keyboard, sing-a-long).

Adam

Just did a patriotic sing a long at local nursing home. Everyone really loved it. We had people participate this time that normally just sit there. They were "dancing in the aisles" so to speak. Lots of fun, made our 4th really special.

This sounds like great entertainment, since many get involved. Is there any way you could scan your transcriptions and post in PDF format? My father-in-law lives in assisted living and loves this idea, especially since my daughter is a gifted singer and could accompany me,

Music on very old computer not hooked up to internet but would be willing to copy and send by way of snail mail if you like. The more the merrier.
Blessings,

bloke wrote:Even something as mysterious to some as learning to "play by ear" starts out with "taking songs that a person knows in their head, and working through them on their instrument". Actually, that's are there IS to "playing by ear"...It's just a matter of how quickly someone can do this with no errors.

Is playing by ear a special talent, or something most people can learn? Is this a realistic aspiration? Doing this "with no errors" is the difficult part for me.