I started some years ago to decorate my sousaphone for all the summer jazzgigs, just to separate our band from the others.
(And it works. I often meet other musicians that don't remember me by name, but remember that they have seen my sousaphone.)
The first year, I had just been to New Orleans. And the logic thing was to decorate my horn with Mardi Grass beads.
It looked great, and I was able to put the horn in the gigbag with out having to take the beads of. But after a month, I noticed that my sousaphone got scratched by the beads, and I took them of.
Next year, I put our band name on the bell with bright sparkling purple letters. It worked great, until I had to sub in another band. The letters came of.
I sadly do not have any pictures of this.
It then became Christmas. See below:
This works great. It is made in a way that I am able to take it of and put it on in 15min. I use this every year now. I have since bought a diode light chain, and there are 40 lights going all around the bell.
I then bought an extra bell for my sousaphone, because all the tape and decorations, despite my best efforts,was scratching my bell heavily.
That summer I bought a lot of roses and put them on the new bell.
This looked great! But after a month in the gigbag, it was totally destroyed.
And last year it looked like this:
I glued all the individual flower leafs (petals??) to the bell, and it lasted for 2 years.
Does anybody have a good idea to what I could decorate my tuba with next year? The only rules are that I will not drill any holes in the bell, and it should preferably be able to be carried in my gigbag.
All suggestions are welcome.
