Tuba Lockers/Storage at College

[zachattck514]

Hi all,

I'm a graduate student at Boston University. The College of Fine Arts is currently undergoing a major renovation project. As a result we are losing our private studios, which for the past 25 years, have been used as storage for our equipment. The renovation to the basement includes 125 new Wenger practice rooms as well as a full line up of Debourgh lockers. The problem we are currently facing is that the Debourgh lockers are not quite big enough for our C tubas. I was hoping some people here on the tubenet might be able to offer me some information on the tuba locker and/or storage setup at other major schools of music and conservatories here in the US. Specific details that I'm looking for are: number of students, number of lockers per student, number of instruments per student, manufacturer and model of tubas used, size of locker or storage area, manufacturer of lockers, alternative storage setups.

Any information you can give me, the more specific the better, will be a tremendous help in presenting my case to the administration here at Boston University. Feel free to post your response here on the Tubenet or email me at zdevries (at) bu (dot) edu.

Thanks for your help!
Zach

[Davy]

I'm not sure what other schools around here do, but as far as Storage goes here at SUNY Fredonia, we have 5 rooms that we share for tuba storage. 5 rooms for 10 tuba majors, and 2 other players. so, we share with one other person, and the biggest room is shared between 4 people. I am not sure about the size of the room, but it is big enough for 2 (at least) tubas, and an upright piano. This is a school with around 600 Music Students (instrumental and Vocal).

Good luck with your case

[tubafatness]

Here at the University of Northern Iowa, things are working out okay, in terms of storage. The mitigating factor here is that the main music building, Russell Hall, just got a multi-million dollar renovation. With that renovation came a huge change in the practice room and instrument storage setup. From what I've heard, the tuba studio used to have its own storage room-there were instrument storage shelves, as well as space to put instruments in either gig bags or cases. Every tuba student had a key to the room, and it was always kept lock. In short, this was the ideal place to store our instruments Then, a handful of years back, that room was confiscated. There was a reason for it, but I'm not going to get into politics right now...

Now, the current setup is not as ideal, but it still serves its purpose just fine. There are lockers available in various sizes both in Russell Hall and the Performing Arts Center. Most of the people with large instruments get lockers in both buildings. In the PAC, the lockers allotted to the tuba players are nothing more than cello lockers-hence the very tight fit. I was able to fit two tubas in their, if I put one upside down. Even then, I had to open the door carefully, to avoid any spillage.

In the newly done Russell Hall, there are large horizontal lockers available for the bigger instruments. These are both wide enough to fit a tuba laying down, and tall enough to allow two tubas in gig bags, one on top of the other. This works better, but is still not completely ideal. One of these storage areas serves as the studio mute storage locker, (which is always a disaster trying to open!)

So, the bottom line is this: lockers that are large enough for tubas are a must, but a studio storage room is ideal. I would suggest letting the administration know that adequate storage for personally owned multi-thousand dollar instruments is a must. When the Russell Hall renovation was in full swing last year, a couple of the tuba players were forced to leave their personal instruments lying on the floor in the instrument storage room. Needless to say, that didn't fly for very long.

Hope this helps!

Aaron Hynds, B.M.-Music Ed student at the University of Northern Iowa

[tubashaman2]

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[TMurphy]

At Rutgers, we had a tuba room (room 007, which I thought was kinda cool), with about 12 tuba-sized shelves in it. Horns fit on the shelves with gig bags quite easily, with enough room for music and other accessories. Euphs were usually 2 or 3 to a shelf. Only the tuba and euphonium students had access. Since it was a smallish studio, and we all knew each other, it worked well.

[The Big Ben]

Only comment I have to make is to consider push button combination locks on the doors rather than keys. Only people who need access to the room has the combo and, as that list of people ebbs and flows, the combos can be changed easily. Controlling keys is a major problem in the security of locked areas.

These are frequently used for rooms which change their tenants frequently. If desired, the music school could change the combo on the door each quarter/semester.

[tubashaman2]

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[The Big Ben]

Shows how old I am!

The electronic key card sounds like an even better idea.

[Biggs]

http://www.uiowa.edu/~maps/v/vmb1.htm

Lockers are for wimps anyway.

[Bill Troiano]

Hi Zach!! I hope we can get together when you're home for the holidays! As far as lockers, in Fredonia, we had a tuba room and then when they built the new wing, there were lockers for the tubas made of some kind of fiberglass built into the wall. You stored the tuba in a bag or without, but a hard case would never fit. At IU, we had a large room in the basement for the tubas too. At Eastman and with Dan at Ithaca, someone built wooden lockers from plywood. The Eastman ones were like giant toy boxes and were in the boiler room in the basement. The IC ones are built and stacked on top of ech other, 3 high, also in the basement. It's a stretch if you have a locker on the top. Again, in both instances, hard cases are out of the question. I think the best storage situation is a large room if one is available, but then all of the tuba players would have access to it. I think we have the Wenger practice rooms at Five Towns. If they are Wenger's, they're lousy for one tuba and near impossible for 2 tubas. See you soon!

[dwaskew]

At UNCG, we are quite fortunate to have a goodly number of individual lockers for both school and personal instruments. The lockers are Wenger, I think. big enough for a tuba in a hard case, except anything 5/4 and above. Then, then horn/bag setup is fine. I honestly dont' know how many we have here, but there are enough to handle 19 personal, 7 school, and probably 4-6 music ed tubas. Similarly, enough euphonium/horn sized lockers to handle 7 personal, 8 school, and 6 music ed euphs. There's also a storage room for several school instruments, which those who need have keys to. Stored in cases in that room.