Posted by jhr on January 11, 2000 at 07:42:23:
In Reply to: Why not start new players on CC or F ? posted by Tom Brekhus on January 10, 2000 at 23:00:13:
I have no expertise or insight as to why B flat tubas are the standard in middle and high school.
However, I offer the following observation: Since very few middle or high school tuba players are going to be tuba performance majors in college, anyway, it does not seem that there is going to be any kind of groundswell to introduce CC as the new standard.
I am not the musician in the family. My son is a high school junior. He started on tuba in 6th grade; he played mediocre quality, school-owned B Flats through 9th grade. He has "known" since 8th grade that he wants to study music/tuba in college. I was never satisfied with the school tubas, and in 9th grade when he auditioned for and did not make all-state, I felt that he was at a competitive disadvantage with the mediocre quality school tuba. So, I did the research, talked to the "experts," and ultimately determined that if I was going to purchase a personal tuba that he would be able to use for the remainder of high school, college and beyond, it made total sense to switch to CC.
I bought him his own tuba the summer before 10th grade. His band director, himself a tuba player and former tuba college major, was opposed to the switch to CC, for reasons I have never fully understood. The "switch" (learning new fingerings) went very quickly, and the tuba has worked out better than I had even dreamed. My son made the All State band in the 10th grade, and he observed that approximately half of the other kids who made it also played CC tubas, most of them school-owned tubas from the wealthier school districts in northern Virginia.