The realities of the "tuba job market" - great article

[kontrabass]

Everyone should take a moment to read and appreciate this article about the huge problem of supply and demand faced by the "tuba industry".
I don't think I've ever read a more thoughtful and well-researched article on the tuba. I think it really nails the realities of trying to make a career as a young tuba player in modern times (when was the last time our audition board had an actual job? these days it's almost all colleges and universities, trying to recruit more future unemployed tuba players...)

http://priceonomics.com/too-many-tubas/" target="_blank

[bighonkintuba]

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=65243" target="_blank

A question for tuba-euphonium 'studio' students:

Before your enrolled in their program, did your tuba-euphonium studio proprietor provide you with an honest assessment of the tuba-euphonium employment market?

If so, what exactly did they tell you?

If they didn't mention it, why do you think this is the case?

[Three Valves]

If the people approving my student loan didn't ask, why should I??

[dave_matheson]

I'm glad I'm not reliant on "Tuba dollars" to earn a living ... I toot my horn for fun

[Three Valves]

It's tuba sluts like us giving it away for free that keeps the "pros" hurting for business!!

[windshieldbug]

If so, what exactly did they tell you?

"Don't give up your day job.
Don't have one? Get one."

[bort]

I wasn't a music major, but was similarly disappointed by any "career preparation" or even career mention while I was in school. Looking back, I was naive, and as a young adult, it really was my responsibility, not theirs.

That said, for music students, I think it would only be polite and responsible for instructors to mention the lack of career possibilities, but beyond that, it's up to the student to decide for themselves. Instructors should never oversell the concept or make unreasonable promises, but give some facts and let people decide for themselves. Yes, it's extremely difficult and the odds are against you. But if 10 out of 100 people end up with tuba jobs, those 10 people have to come from somewhere. It sounds cliche, but it is true -- don't major in music because you want to, do it because you can't possibly live with doing anything else. I could live without being a music major, so I wasn't.

I think it's kind of ridiculous to assume that what you decide to pursue at 18 years old is what you will end up doing as a career for life. If you've got to do it, then major in music, pursue it for a good 10 years, have a backup plan, and be flexible enough to reinvent yourself if you need to. You only get one life, don't let people tell you that you can't do something you want to do.

[CA Transplant]

It's really the same for all instrumentalists. Majoring in music with a performance choice is a crap shoot, no matter what you play. As a talented high school oboist, I considered it. After playing in a few honor bands, including an all-state band in California, though, I abandoned the idea. Oboe is a lot like tuba as an instrument of choice. There aren't so many players. That made winning auditions for high school honor bands was easier than it would have been had I played clarinet or sax, for example.

How did I win a seat in the all-state band? Well, there were only a dozen people auditioning all selected from other regional honor bands, and there were three chairs available. I got the third chair. I could play. But, I got to know the principal and second oboist. They were miles better than I was. Miles. They'd been with top teachers for years. They could outplay me any time of the day. That's when I decided to choose some other major.

I ended up playing semi-professionally for a number of years. I played in per-performance regional orchestras, and in a wind quintet that actually got a lot of wedding reception gigs over the years. I made a little money doing that. I got better as a player and as a musician, but you know what? Those two high school kids in the first and second chair in the all-state honor band still would have been better than I was. If they continued and were oboe performance majors somewhere, they'd be worlds better than I ever was. And odds are that neither of them won an audition for a seat in any orchestra that paid a salary a person could live on.

In some ways, it's even worse for other instrumental musicians. There are more jobs, of course, but tons more people auditioning for them. It's a crap shoot, and if you're not at the very top level in performance, you're not going to make a living at playing pretty much any instrument. There are always folks out there who play better than you do. Always.

Play music because you love to play music. Make your living doing something else, because you'll have your heart broken over and over again if you try to do it playing an instrument. That's my advice, coming from an old fart who recognized that there would always be someone who played better than me in every audition. But who cares? I've played music all my life. I've played with excellent other players and sometimes with not so excellent players. It's been a blast.

So, now, I'm teaching myself to play the euphonium in my dotage. I'm having a blast. Soon, I'll join some no-audition community band and get to play with other folks again. Yay!

[Polkahero]

I make way more playing piano/organ and bass guitar. Very few paying opportunities around here on tuba other than one paying community band and the occasional brass quintet gig. Other than the one position found in most orchestras, what else is there?

[Three Valves]

Play music because you love to play music. Make your living doing something else, because you'll have your heart broken over and over again if you try to do it playing an instrument. That's my advice, coming from an old fart who recognized that there would always be someone who played better than me in every audition.

In the DC area there are some very good community and off-off Broadway theater productions. These people are remarkably talented, but here they are.

Way off Broadway.

Some of them make a living, but I suspect more sleep with patrons!!

[ghmerrill]

A question for tuba-euphonium 'studio' students:

Before your enrolled in their program, did your tuba-euphonium studio proprietor provide you with an honest assessment of the tuba-euphonium employment market?

If so, what exactly did they tell you?

This isn't a problem just with the tuba job market. I think it's a problem with any job market in which the job is not associated with a "product" that itself has a wide maket or a "service" that has a broad need (like small engine repair). As to why school administrators and faculties (who are in the business of attracting students to their departments so that their own jobs don't become jeopardized) aren't abundantly candid with students and prospective students, there are several answers I won't detail here. Anyone who has ever been involved with a university should be well familiar with them

As a comparison, take a look at this letter that is sent out to EVERY student applying for entrance into an advanced degree program in philosophy in the United States: http://philosophy.arizona.edu/node/645" ... et="_blank. The American Philosophical Association has REQUIRED degree-granting departments to send this letter out since the EARLY 1970s, and while it makes no attempt to discourage people from pursuing "their dream", it is pretty realistic about what you may expect in the way of reward from getting an advanced degree in the subject. Note also that some of things in it are out of date and laughably false -- like the prediction that at the "turn of the century" (2000) the job market would lossen up and there would be an undersupply of applicants for positions. Not only did this fail to happen (who would have guessed ?) but things actually got noticeably worse.

While this letter from the APA remains self-serving in at least certain ways (and it shouldn't be expected to be totally discouraging to students who want to pursue a particular career -- given that they understand the possibilities and risks -- it does tackle the prospects of gainful employment head-on. Could the letter be better, stronger, and more direct? Yes. But in fact it points to places where the precise statistics regarding successful job-seekers can be found. Any student who forges ahead after getting this letter -- without investigating those statistics and thinking hard about what his or her long-term job strategy and education plans should be -- has only himself or herself to blame for the results.

Do other disciplines do this sort of thing? Do they make an effort to inform their students DIRECTLY of the relation of their studies to the possibility of a career in the area being studied? I don't know. I hope so. It's not hard to do. And anyone who is 18+ years old has some significant responsibility to think of such things (including how loans might be paid back if "the dream" isn't realized).

Bort says

I wasn't a music major, but was similarly disappointed by any "career preparation" or even career mention while I was in school. Looking back, I was naive, and as a young adult, it really was my responsibility, not theirs.

Yes, it was your responsibility. But it wasn't ONLY your responsibility. People selling you the preparation bear some responsibility as well -- at least to make you reasonably well-informed about the choice you're facing and in which they're involved.

[bighonkintuba]

100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School:
http://100rsns.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank

Also applies to the natural sciences. I'm not qualified to determine if it applies to the performing arts.

[soyezu]

As a comparison, take a look at this letter that is sent out to EVERY student applying for entrance into an advanced degree program in philosophy in the United States: http://philosophy.arizona.edu/node/645" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank"%20%20target="_blank"%20%20target="_blank. The American Philosophical Association has REQUIRED degree-granting departments to send this letter out since the EARLY 1970s, and while it makes no attempt to discourage people from pursuing "their dream", it is pretty realistic about what you may expect in the way of reward from getting an advanced degree in the subject.

If I recall correctly, ethics is one of the primary courses taught by the philosophy department at just about institution of higher education. It's nice to see that the ethics being taught by philosophers is also being used by them, as well.

Regarding music school, I never received the conversation regarding the likelihood of a successful performance career and I don't know of any one else at my college that did. This was in the early 2000s. Luckily, some of us did the math and we had variations of this conversation among our friends on a regular basis. The best flute player I've ever met already had plans to be a dog groomer after getting her music degree. It's worked out for her.

[Donn]

As a comparison, take a look at this letter that is sent out to EVERY student applying for entrance into an advanced degree program in philosophy in the United States: http://philosophy.arizona.edu/node/645" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank"%20%20target="_blank"%20%20target="_blank.

While we've sure been through the job situation before - seems like this topic gets a re-run every couple months? - I don't know that I very often see anyone take an opportunity like this to discuss how to put a web URL into a Tubenet post.

If your post text includes an untagged item that looks like a URL, Tubenet will automatically make a web link for it. But as illustrated here, it fouls up, and - who knows why, a bug to be sure - every time someone quotes it, you get this " target="_blank garbage after it.

But that won't happen, if you take moment while writing your post, to highlight the URL and select the URL button above the edit area. Or you can put the tags in by hand.

Back to the ostensible subject ... maybe we should have a "sticky" with an "Abandon all hope of gainful employment, ye who enter here" type of message, and then another one with pictures of homeless tuba player encampments in various cities in the US and pleas for help. "Joe lost his mouthpiece when he was rousted by the cops and now he uses a homemade mouthpiece made of discarded chewing gum, newspaper and a drinking straw. Your small donation could help get Joe off the street and learning to play electric bass in a lounge act."

[ghmerrill]

If your post text includes an untagged item that looks like a URL, Tubenet will automatically make a web link for it. But as illustrated here, it fouls up, and - who knows why, a bug to be sure - every time someone quotes it, you get this " target="_blank garbage after it.

But that won't happen, if you take moment while writing your post, to highlight the URL and select the URL button above the edit area. Or you can put the tags in by hand.

True enough, and I'm fully aware of how to do it correctly . But I have a huge tendency to forget to do so. Primarily this is because a lot of forum software interfaces don't require explicitly inserting the URL context, and I post primarily on Dave Werden's forum where the system happily parses URL's from UI correctly and does the formatting for you. As a result, my use of the required technique here is kind of hit and miss.

It's even more embarrassing because I actually ran a phpBB board for about a year -- though it seems to me that mine automatically handled URLs correctly. But I could be wrong about that. In bulletin board forums and software you generally get what you pay for.

I will continue to strive to remember to manually insert the URL tags. But my memory isn't getting any better.

[Donn]

though it seems to me that mine automatically handled URLs correctly.

My guess would be that it did - phpBB is widely used, and this is a real weird error. I would also guess that no matter how long ago that was, you were running a more recent version than we're running here, but that's just a guess, I don't see anything about it in the page source. Do you know how to tell what version we have?

[Three Valves]

100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School:
http://100rsns.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank" target="_blank

Also applies to the natural sciences. I'm not qualified to determine if it applies to the performing arts.

The comments are frequently better than the article itself!!

Competence matters when the work being done is important. Our work could hardly matter less. That's why having the right connections is so important.

[Three Valves]

... maybe we should have a "sticky" with an "Abandon all hope of gainful employment, ye who enter here" type of message, and then another one with pictures of homeless tuba player encampments in various cities in the US and pleas for help. "Joe lost his mouthpiece when he was rousted by the cops and now he uses a homemade mouthpiece made of discarded chewing gum, newspaper and a drinking straw. Your small donation could help get Joe off the street and learning to play electric bass in a lounge act."

Tubists for Change??

I like that!!

[ghmerrill]

My guess would be that it did - phpBB is widely used, and this is a real weird error. I would also guess that no matter how long ago that was, you were running a more recent version than we're running here, but that's just a guess, I don't see anything about it in the page source. Do you know how to tell what version we have?

That was my guess as well. I don't think there's any way to tell what version it's running just from what we can see. However, I do notice that in the page source there's a comment about it's being edited on April 28, 2008. If that's an indication of the version that's being run (it may not be), then it's an earlier version.

Not surprising. Updates are something of a pain -- especially if you're using any of the generally available mods or, particularly, if you're using any local mods (like maybe to support sponsors, etc.). In the year I ran mine (for a community band), I avoided any modes except for some simple header graphics. Alas, while I liked phpBB a lot (and a number of the band members did), the forum technology was just too much for the particular organization to which it was being offered. I have retreated to a Mailman listserv. It works.

By the way -- since/if I have people's attention: Anyone know what's happened to Dave Werden's tuba/euph site? It seems to have totally disappeared for several days now. Looks like some sort of catastrophic failure may have occurred. I'm missing it.

[Dylan King]

In college at UCLA I had my mind set on being an orchestral tubist. I was going to get the BIG job, or die trying. I showed a lot of promise in high school, and even in college I had plenty of encouragement from my elders in the professional world. Teachers, directors, and the like all told me that I could do it.

Probably the best teacher of any subject up until then was Tommy Johnson. He also encouraged me, and sincerely believed that I had a good shot at becoming an orchestral tubist, despite the huge amount of competition. But he also worked with me every week on my other talents, and now over twenty years later, I can say that his advise paid off.

Tommy encouraged me to branch out and not just focus on "classical" or "legit" playing. He also encouraged me to keep up my interest in other brass instruments, rock instruments, and the like. I started to gig more and more in LA, and even record--but much of the time the work was in jazz bands, experimental rock bands, and then on other instruments that I excelled at. He encouraged me to continue my pursuit of film scoring, which eventually landed a career in...

Well, I took those skills and applied them to film-making, as a producer, director, editor, and composer. I ended up switching careers, but staying creative. I took my favorite "hobby" of film-making and made a career of that, while my profession of tubist slowly fizzled out when real success came from the "hobby". I still make money making music, but rarely from playing the tuba, other than my YouTube revenue. That's another story...

I enjoy making music much more now than I did back when I was struggling to be somebody in the tuba world. There is too much pressure, and the article is right, way too much competition to seriously devote oneself to winning a life-sustaining tuba spot in an orchestra. There are alternative ways to make a living with music, and one can still enjoy a huge piece of brass on their lap without playing the audition game--if there is an audition available. Tuba players these days have to think outside the box and look for others ways to express themselves musically and make a living. It's getting more and more difficult to get paid to play anyway. People are staying home and streaming their entertainment these days.

I have a friend in LA who plays trumpet as well as anyone. He has played on soundtracks and subbed with the LA Phil on trumpet, but makes his living playing viola. His parents knew that he would have a much better shot at success if he took up viola while learning trumpet, and as it turns out, he is an amazing violist too. There are many more opportunities for a good violist in LA than a good trumpeter. That's just the way it goes. He saw that opportunity and grabbed it. It paid off--despite having to read alto clef every day.