Posted by Tim Cary on February 07, 2002 at 13:03:36:
In Reply to: When are you a tuba player???? posted by A Tubist on February 07, 2002 at 00:15:17:
A general rule of thumb I follow: all wind instruments are easily to learn to play; but all wind instruments are difficult to master. In the band that I am in, our first chair flute (who is a sort of a "Flute Diva" according to our French Horn section) has something of an outspoken opinion about Tubas and low brass in general. It seems that in her high school, there was a shortage of tuba players for marching band, so she played sousaphone her senior year (this was the late '60's). She basically went on to boast how easy it was to play tuba. Granted, it does take the same amount of wind and breath control to play a flute as a tuba, but blatting out tuba parts for most marching band music isn't all that hard. Her attitude about tubas is about the same as this young man on sax. However, according to the sax players in our band (who are all very good - a rarity in community goups), sax is one of the easiest horns to learn. Example: look at the number of clarinetists pick up sax as a secondary instrument, as opposed to the other way around.