Posted by Rick Denney on June 05, 2001 at 13:43:54:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: breathing posted by well... on June 04, 2001 at 22:45:10:
I feel compelled to stick up for Dominic here. He made his statement with a lot of diplomacy and discretion. I have known many band directors, and they range in competence as do the practitioners in any profession. And, as with the rest of humanity, their competence and their qualities as a friend are not always correlated, so it is not a statement as to their character.
That said, a teacher who is not at the brightest bulb in the batch still is the teacher, and it is the duty of the student to treat them with respect. The Teenager Disease, at it's root, seems to be that the victim has lost sight of the respect deserved by all older people, regardless of their skills, merely for having endured on this dangerous planet for longer. I suspect that there is no cure for this disease except time, though the symptoms can be treated. So, Dominic, your statements were interpreted by your elders as showing a lack of respect for those older than you and in whose shoes you have not walked; hence their reaction. Consider the goodness in that advice.
As to the original poster, all you have to do is ask the director for instruction on how to achieve what he desires. Demonstrate on your tuba what he asks you to do, and work with him to come up with a solution. And then consider this: He would not have known that you and your buddy were stagger-breathing unless he heard you do it. The point of stagger-breathing is to not be heard doing it.
Rick "who would indeed be staggering if he held a low G at any dynamic for eight bars" Denney