Tuba Performance Skills (summarized by category)

[hup_d_dup]

Mark,

Some things come to mind as I read through the thread ...

Rick, thank you for this post. You have suggested a number of valuable things for me to think about, particularly points 2 and 4. I also appreciate that your post was written in a helpful spirit, without the rancor evident in some of the other posts.

Hup

[mark38655]

Mark, who is your intended audience? Your writing style is too adult for 7th-graders, but the content is clearly aimed at beginners. The reading level seems to me at about grade 12, not 7. The content and the writing style should be at a consistent level, but you won't know that level until you are quite clear about your target audience. If you are targeting adult beginners, then you should be sensitive to their needs, including being succinct and getting to the point clearly and directly.

Rick, thanks again for your very constructive and insightful suggestions. I read them for the first time yesterday and recognized that I needed to think about how to implement before proceeding.

The intended audience is really broad in scope. The basic warm-up exercises are appropriate for the middle school student, but useful to the advanced player as well. Some of the technical exercises are a challenge to advanced high school players. The subject of playing in tune is very complicated, and the text is probably appropriate for a college music student, but the young student also needs to start learning about it early if he is going to compete successfully when it comes time to get into a good music school. This is a book of daily exercises, so it isn't one that a student progresses through and is done. Although the playing range of the book is three octaves and a fifth, the student is instructed to NOT play notes in the extreme range until he has developed the embouchure strength to do so without harming his chops. It is assumed that he already knows how to read music and will have a competent teacher to guide him through the book, so there is no specific formula given for determining when he should proceed to the extreme registers. (Each set of exercises starts in the middle range and progresses outward the extremes.) Most everything is described so that the student doesn't have to have much previous knowledge on the subject prior to beginning study or practice, but will be challenged to understand some subjects pretty well by reading the text.

As it stands currently, my aim is that this will be a book that will not only be a daily warm-up and technical scale study source, but also a reference on some of the important "how-to"s related to playing tuba.

I don't know if it is possible to refine the scope of the audience. It may be possible, but something that I haven't figured out yet. Thanks for challenging me to consider it though. It may be one of those things that will come to me in time and I will decide to break the book up into two (or even three) separate parts.

Thanks,

Mark Howle

[Rick Denney]

The intended audience is really broad in scope.

Mark, the challenge, then, is to write for a middle-school reading comprehension level but also say things insightful to adults. My issue with your summary is that the reading comprehension level may be more advanced than much of the content, which will lead to poor understanding by those at the right level for the content and a sense of being talked down to by those at the appropriate reading comprehension level. I think that's at the root of several of the negative comments your draft summary has attracted.

Examples abound of writing at a low reading comprehension level but saying things insightful to all performing skill levels. But for an example, pick up any of C. S. Lewis's non-fiction works (if you can't see past his religious topics, then read something like "An Experiment in Criticism"). His writing gift was clarity at all reading levels even when writing about extremely subtle concepts.

A more artless example would be any newspaper. Journalists are taught to write at the 8th-grade reading comprehension level. But too often they have little to say that interests anyone older than 13, especially those who might know the facts of the subject.

If you have a wide range of skills in your target audience, consider side-bar articles for topics too advanced (or too beginner) for the main text.

But all of that is still less important than conveying cause and effect. Knowing what to do is of little value to anyone without knowing why it works.

Rick "good luck" Denney

[Michael Bush]

The intended audience is really broad in scope.

Mark, the challenge, then, is to write for a middle-school reading comprehension level but also say things insightful to adults.

http://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Guide-Plai ... 906&sr=8-7

This may seem like typical TN snarkiness, but it isn't. Plain English is a valuable arrow to have in your quiver, even if you don't use it all the time.

This book was my introduction to plain English, and explains it helpfully:
http://www.amazon.com/Plain-English-Wor ... 466&sr=1-1" target="_blank