Rick Denney wrote:Peach wrote:Suppose hypothetically two players got two new tubas at the same time; the same model. At the time of buying they both thought each tuba played as well as the other. Let's say though that player A is a big-time Symphony pro and player B is a below average amateur. After a couple of years they have reason to meet up and try each others tubas again. Can they still not decide between the tubas or has something happened, and if so, what?
I've had professionals praise some of my tubas, no matter who played them in the past. Certainly my Holton has never been regularly played by a high-end performer (though it was owned for a while as a future project instrument by a pro). Yet some who have played it thought it a very decent big tuba. My Yamaha F tuba was never played by a high-end performer (I bought it new), but it has been considered among the best of the breed by pros who have played it. That F tuba answers the question directly: It was declared decent, and the equivalent of the one he owned, by an orchestra pro with whom I was studying at the time. He had an occasion to play it again 16 or 18 years later, and he thought it as good as it had been when he tried it before I bought it. A couple of pros have bought that model of tuba on the strength of having played mine. They were certainly not making that decision on the way
I played it.
If an instrument "plays in" then there are two possibilities: 1.) It benefits from looser tolerances and increased crud (which is possible, though not a great recommendation for the instrument), or 2.) the player becomes accustomed to it enough to get the most from it (which, with pros at least, is typical).
Rick "thinking the traditional British practice of coating the tuba's innards with milk rather disgusting" Denney
Rick, thanks for your response.
Things we have learnt during the thread:
We can (almost) all agree that an
instrument doesn't 'play-in', rather a
player learns an instrument. I don't think this is necessarily attributable to Professional level players though.
What is also true though is that if one allows a tuba to become full of enough crud, its performance will suffer. When cleaned it will miraculously play far better (who knew!?).
By the way, I've
never heard of any Nationality of tuba player coating the internals with milk. Quite a few British tuba players are quite disgusting and they and their instruments smell bad enough without any help however.
I've heard stories about (British) Horn players and always wondered what on Earth that would smell like. Still, often a breed apart those Horn chaps...
Cheers,
MP
