Why not start on CC?

[pigman]

Take Rodger Bobos advice

Eb to start

[LoyalTubist]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the ideal compromise instrument: the B-natural tuba. They are quite inexpensive on e-Bay, which makes it easy to avoid all of this BBb/CC argument stuff.

Next to come: the E-natural tuba, for those who have trouble deciding between an Eb or an F bass tuba.

Cheers,
Allen
who claims to think there should be tubas in twelve keys

And have twelve different fingerings? NO WAY!

So why do trumpet players, who also have various keyed instruments (Eb, C, D, F, G) always start with a Bb instrument?

Let's not get too complicated here. Most of the world plays BBb tubas. And that's the reason...

(I don't have a BBb tuba at this time.. I have a CC, an Eb, and an F. And I started on an Eb tuba, just like Roger Bobo suggested.)

[MaryAnn]

Tubaray wrote:

I believe this is one challenge we don't address often enough, nor sufficiently. We spend a disproportionate amount of our time and money on students who are either unable or unwilling to produce much, if anything.

In an interesting parallel, this same incorrect focus is often found in the workplace; the supervisor spends the vast majority of his/her time on the 1-2% of employees who are not producing up to snuff, and ignores those who are producing. This leads to a lot of problems, in that consciously or unconsciously the productive employees learn that the way to get attention is to cease being productive. Part of management training where I work is a course that presents this concept and recommends a change in focus towards those who are productive, to encourage and reward them, and to just let the non-productive ones go.

MA

[LoyalTubist]

… I started on an Eb tuba, just like Roger Bobo suggested …

Roger Bobo was your beginning band teacher???

No, but, remember, I grew up in the Los Angeles area and his methods were very popular among area band directors, with regards to tuba players.

My beginning band director was Heinrich Schmidt, a veteran of the Luftwaffe Band in Munich during World War II, he played (French) horn. In the last two years of the war, he was taken as a prisoner of war by the Americans after he was wounded by an attack. He met an American Red Cross worker in the hospital. The war was declared over while he was recouperating from his wounds. He married the woman and she followed him to Hollywood, where he tried to get into a motion picture studio orchestra. That didn't work, so he got a scholarship to the University of Redlands and earned a degree in music education. After he retired in 1974, he moved to his wife's hometown area in Washington state. He passed away in 1979.

I admit this posting isn't related to anything here, but, Wade, you asked who my beginning band director was. It was Mr. Schmidt. He was my teacher from 1966-69 at three different schools.

[Ace]

Interesting story, Loyal Tubist. I was principal trumpet in the Redlands Orchestra 1954-56, and there was a French horn player in the group that had a really heavy German accent. Maybe that was Schmidt. Principal horn at that time was Evan Vail who had played in the Twentieth Century Fox studio orchestra.

[windshieldbug]

BoB!!!!

Good to see you guy! How them false tones hangin'?

[TubaRay]

How them false tones hangin'?

Better than yours!

Same ol' Bob. Having a good day?

[TubaRay]

fund raising

You really need to watch your language on TubeNet.

@#!!*@#!!!

And again!

[windshieldbug]

Yay, un-dead Bob!!

... or "un-Bob"

[LoyalTubist]

Interesting story, Loyal Tubist. I was principal trumpet in the Redlands Orchestra 1954-56, and there was a French horn player in the group that had a really heavy German accent. Maybe that was Schmidt. Principal horn at that time was Evan Vail who had played in the Twentieth Century Fox studio orchestra.

That was the man. Most folks called him Henry.