Return to playing after 25 years - how and what to play

[windshieldbug]

how to approach it

Approach it from the back.

[Rick Denney]

I have pulled my old Reynolds Bb tuba from my father's attic. I have not played since high school, when I was a fairly serious player. I have not touched my horn since about 1980 until now. For various reasons, I would like to start playing again.

I wonder if anyone could share suggestions for materials to use to start playing again, and how to approach it.

Welcome back!

My strong advice to you: Find a local professional tuba player and take a lesson or two. Get him or her to show you how to breathe and to set you up with practice materials. The teacher will tell you how to approach your first practices and what you should think about in making sounds again.

Then, find a good beginner method book and work through it, not advancing to the next lesson until the previous lesson is mastered. Always, always, always focus on sound. If you cheat to increase your range too fast, such as by using too much pressure, you'll know it because your sound will lose clarity and richness. You'll know you have mastered a lesson when you can play it with good sound.

Finally, get recordings of high-end players and listen to them. Go listen to your local symphony if possible. Do what you can to fill your head with superior tuba sound, and then let that be your goal.

Being focused towards goals is the main difference between adult returnees and young beginners. They just want to make notes, while adults are more apt to want to make music. They also have the discipline to work towards those goals with some direction. But the training required for the lips and the lungs is the same either way.

Rick "been there, done that" Denney

[Dean E]

I wonder if anyone could share suggestions for materials to use to start playing again, and how to approach it.

Thank you.

Buy some valve oil, look on the web for some community bands, and start playing. Go to some Tubachristmases and have a blast!

[Dan Schultz]

Welcome back! I quit playing in 1968 when I left the Navy and did not pick up a tuba again until about ten years ago. Find a community band in your area by going to this site and posting.

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/c- ... d=69777241

I know there is one about 30 miles or so northwest of Boston and another on the east end of Boston.

[ScotGJ]

I started playing again just this June and I too last played in 1980 (graduated from college as a Tuba major). I have found this forum a great source of information and support. When I first asked for suggestions on recovering sound there were several folks that recommended long tones.

I have been very pleased with the results of spending time every morning with my long tone routine. It makes it easy to stay focussed on quality sound and air. I particularly like the sequence at the beginning of the William Bell book.

Playing again is like coming home. I am totally obsessed; and it is the best feeling an obsession has had (and yes I have had several). Hopefully you can find a good teacher. I am in western Colorado and there is not a pro within 200 miles. I have found help from some of the faculty at the local college but there is no tuba prof. I'll probably be making the trip over the hill to Denver this summer to catch a quality lesson.--- Hope you have as much fun on re-entry as I have had.

[iiipopes]

Welcome back! As for me, what all these guys said and more! After just being back for only about two years, the local university community band had a great formal concert last week, and I had the upper part of the tuba duet in Jager's variations on Schumann's Happy Farmer Theme. Life is grand.

[Allen]

Welcome back! Now is the time to start getting (re)connected to the local music scene.

I have sent you a PM.

Cheers,
Allen Walker

[MaryAnn]

That proves that your three year old daughter has a more relaxed embouchure than you do! Let us know when you pass her up, heh.

MA

[iiipopes]

Infants and toddlers, although they feel discomfort, general sadness and a few other basic emotions, have not progressed in the hard wiring to feel higher level stress as we do. So when they cry, they do not tense as we sometimes do when breathing. So her production of a good tone is probably because she's taking a good deep breath for support without knowing it, and isn't tensing anything else up along the way to get in the way. We can all learn from that. My son, now eight, from the age of at least six could do the same thing, and I watched his little belly expand like anything when he took his deep breath, without stress, without having to think about it, and without my having to tell him how to do it. The rest of us, myself included, had to re-learn all this in coming back to it.