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Option A: Gun him down like a dog and be done with it.
Option B: Try to help the little snot anyway you can. After all, this is a church orchestra and you may want to remain true to the spirit of the thing.
Option C: Wait for him to fall over from the weight of his own stupidity and step out of the way and let him go down.
Option D: Launch a crusade for the hearts and minds of all the other orchestra members against him.
That's all I can think of at the moment. Anyone else have any further options to help our buddy, Shlep?

Maybe record the ensemble and play it back for the kid. See if he has any ears?

Let's see ...
Have somebody else listen to the recording and say "Eewww what is that awful tuba sound."

Swap the valves around.
Spitballs lodged in the tuning slide.
Find that dead bow rat featured elsewhere on Tubenet and see if you can borrow it.

Schlep,
Have you played the horn when he isn't looking to see if there ISN'T already a dead bat in there? Looked at his mouthpiece to see that you CAN blow through? If not, you could introduce him to cleaning brushes and be the hero of all. Then again, you could always throw his music out in traffic...

Paul M wrote:Put tobasco sauce in the mouthpiece when he gets up to use the restroom.

Won't work. Tobasco is too thin, let alone that it isn't hot enough. There are some really hot pastes out there; using something that won't run right off the mouthpiece before he played it would be nice.

Nick

Well, if you really wanna be an asshole, you can destroy his lips and his mouthpiece at the same time. Blair's 3 AM Pepper extract is almost 3,000,000 Scoville units... in other words, 1000 times hotter than Tobasco. He'll blister up and the metal on the mouthpiece will be eaten away.

-Billy.

PS - It is $35.00 though... may be too much but then again, it could be fun .

Oh, DCI pranks...y'all just brought back a TON of memeries. Here's another:
Ask a female member of the orchestra if you can borrow a little perfume, and spray it into the mouthpiece. I was the victim of this prank during my days with the Cavaliers (yes, there are females on the staff), and after playing just one note, I had the worst case of cotton-mouth imagineable (not to mention the taste...YUCK!). I couldn't play another note until I dumped about a gallon of water & gatorade down my throat.

To get back to the original question...

My favorite move line: "The kids these days, they're terrible. They're almost half as bad as we were."

I would try some honesty and directness. I'd tell him that it's obvious that he is having trouble controlling his tuba, and you would like to talk to his teacher and coordinate with the teacher and help him, etc. Of course it's possible he doesn't have a real teacher; if so you could offer to give him some pointers.

Yes, he certainly won't like your words and opinions, but it's truly an unkindness to let him get away with his youthful arrogance, and to actively spoil the musical experience for everyone. Perhaps you can enlist other members of the ensemble in this; that would make it harder for him to think that you are saying those things out of sheer jealousy of his wonderful playing.

Rememer, you're the grown-up and he's the kid. Even though the MTV generation doesn't think they have anything to learn from their elders, you can ignore that. You know both music and the tuba and he doesn't; you should behave like you are completely aware of this truth. You and the others can do this with kindness, and make it difficult for him to be arrogant.

If the kid is educable, the results will (eventually) be good. If the kid isn't educable, you might have the good luck to drive him away.

Best of luck!!

Allen Walker

Rather than a "prank" (which will just cement in his mind that you see him as a threat), maybe you just need to "forget" to bring your horn to rehearsal one day, and let the chips fall on whom they may...

schlepporello wrote:I'll be out of action next week due to a visit with the oral surgeon.

Best of luck with that, Schlep!

windshieldbug wrote:

schlepporello wrote:I'll be out of action next week due to a visit with the oral surgeon.

Best of luck with that, Schlep!

Hope everything goes well for you! Could be quite an eye-opener for "Mr. Wonderful", too ...

"Never worng", eh?

SplatterTone wrote:Maybe record the ensemble and play it back for the kid. See if he has any ears?

I played (very briefly) in a group with a trumpet player that couldn't put three notes together correctly. We were recorded just after I joined, and I was sure he would hear how bad he sounded. He didn't.

windshieldbug wrote:Rather than a "prank" (which will just cement in his mind that you see him as a threat), maybe you just need to "forget" to bring your horn to rehearsal one day, and let the chips fall on whom they may...

This is the best idea yet. (And, one of the few that don't technically qualifiy as misdemeanor assualt.)

schlepporello wrote:he's already asking our minister of music if we can have "chair try-outs

Are you two the only tuba players in this band? If so, I commend your patience and not giving him what's coming.

Sometimes you have to just pick your battles, and I don't know if this one is worth it. You can give him some advice, but you're not his teacher and you're not getting paid, so I wouldn't lose sleep over it. I've played with some poor players, and you really just have to make sure that you're doing your part, then you can't be faulted.

I had a somewhat similar situation, and I just decided to, pardon my language, be an *** about it. There was no other way to convince the kid to keep his ego down then to over-inflate my own. For instance, when he missed a note repeatedly in one passage, I bluntly told him, "You're missing that note, that's not good." I know that it is the wrong thing to do in almost every case, but this was my last resort. And, hey, he did improve! Now we get along fine, and he misses less notes.

schlepporello wrote:... Next week he gets it all to himself for a week.

That should be "interesting"! Keep us posted ...

schlepporello wrote:... I'm having two wisdom teeth cut out that day though. I'm not even messing with trying to be there.

I would hope not! Hope it goes well.

schlepporello wrote:he's already asking our minister of music if we can have "chair try-outs"

It's a no-brainer: have chair try-outs and beat him quite handily. Both of my teachers have taught me to always, always let my playing do the talking.

Your job is to show up and play tuba.

You have no responsibility to do anything else.

Let the playing do the talking.

You can force the playing to do the talking by doing exactly what was suggested...just happen to "forget" your tuba or be "sick" for a rehearsal in order to force him into a "sink or swim" situation.