Posted by Jeff Baker on November 12, 1999 at 14:23:20:
Bear with me for a second on this one. I'm a converted performance major and have been in the marching band for 2 years now along with the 4 in high school. Now I know you all have your reasons for not liking marching band, it's not really music, it hurts your embochure, it takes up time that you should be using to practice, but what about all the things it does for you? The Pride of Oklahoma is THE reason I wanted to play tuba to begin with. I've made so many friends and had so many wonderful experiences in marching band. For those of you who have been in marching band then you understand the comradarity that goes along with it, the tuba brotherhood I guess you could call it. Now my tuba prof. adamently does not want me to do marching band, I think because he dislikes marching band to begin with but also because of the time constraints that the band requires. So, my question to you is this. If you can still get in the practice time, how bad can marching band really be, even if it's just for one more year? I've read through so many of these postings that tell us to do what we feel is best for us, what we like. If you want to really be a good player, it doesn't matter what kind of mouthpiece you own or what color laqour your horn is, you'll just try and try and try and try some more. My point is that if playing the tuba for the rest of my life is what I really want to do then it shouldn't matter if I'm marching band or not. But on the flipside, if tuba playing is really what I want to do then there are sacrifices which have to be made. Obviously I have to do what my prof says, but he posed the idea of getting the concensus opinion of the tubenet readers, so here I am. Okay that's all.