bloke was asked to join a band.

[bloke]

In Memphis, the head band director at the University (who has garnered quite a positive reputation, both on the human side and on the musical side) has formed a wind band of studio teachers from the University, studio teachers from nearby universities and junior colleges, band directors who double as professional performers, probably some graduate students, probably some freelancers, et al.

As with a typical community band, it's not funded enough to pay anyone, but - having audited clips on facebook - it sounds like a (so-called) professional band. They just sent me an email and asked me if I would consider joining. According to the roster sent to me (along with music PDFs), I would be the third tuba player, though I have no idea whether one or both of the others listed are continuing or whatever... None of that matters, and - if someone is designated principal - I would be delighted for it to never end up being me.

At least this upcoming concert and rehearsals all dovetail nicely - scheduling wise - with other engagements that I already have in my book.

Their upcoming concert involves four rehearsals and a concert. The literature all looks to be listenable yet somewhat challenging music...ie. not one single "grade six band piece" ("band pieces" being a group of pieces which mostly seem to demonstrate technical prowess - ie. "contest" music - without doing much entertaining of the patrons), and this (in my view) expression of the music director's musical tastes is also something that I find encouraging. To barely elaborate, I don't mind a challenge, but I also prefer to play pieces that people (me being a "people" too) enjoy hearing.

From what I've read over the years, some others of you have bands of this caliber in your towns, but I think that's the first for the Memphis area. I'm going to give it a shot, since they're giving me a shot.

[the elephant]

We had a great couple of ringer bands, and I loved playing in them. One recently folded due to the director's retirement. It is supposed to start back up in a few months with a new guy swinging the stick. Looking forward to it, too.

[arpthark]

Chatting recently with a pro who plays in several orchestras, he mentioned something about how "tuba players never meet any other tuba players." Here's your chance! As long as you can play nice with others (as well as the tuba).

I am very fortunate that I played in a "professional" wind band, funded by a local regional newspaper, making about $50-75 a gig with several gigs every year (holidays, summer festival, a few engagements in between). Not bad change for a young guy. Well, the group has survived some turbulent times, but you know how newspapers are faring these days, so there is now just enough money to pay me to play tuba on a mule-drawn cart in a parade every summer. By far my favorite "professional" engagement.

It was a really good group, and the summer personnel were always sort of eye-poppingly amazing, with brass personnel from the Chicago Symphony and the NY Phil sitting in. I was always too shy to say anything to them, but should've.

[bloke]

I've been playing through the music (having printed out PDFs), and have been working on playing at "2-or-3-tubas" dynamic levels (in contrast to 1 tuba in a symphony orchestra - mostly entering when mountains are supposed to be bowled over, etc...)

and who knows?
Maybe - If they eventually decide to keep me around for a really long time - perhaps I can coax them into calling it a "band".

[MiBrassFS]

Cool. I hope you have fun, bloke.

There was a summer park civic band that paid near me I played with for a number of years. After many decades the city council canned the budget line item. It still technically exists, but is very much different.

There is also an unpaid band director, professor, etc. band that my wife and I were invited to play in, but it’s a bit of a drive. It would be a time commitment that would be difficult to manage with family, etc. Maybe some day.

Years ago, I played a number of times with an actual professional band directed by an honest to goodness cornet soloist with links back to the Sousa era. He also directed a band near Cleveland. It was a great experience.

[bloke]

In the folder are three John Williams (not "arrangements") movie music transcriptions, a Gershwin (I'd guess, without using a search engine) piano-to-wind-band bandistration, what appear (??) to be four movements from a Sousa operetta (again: I'm ignorant, and have not researched), some transcription of some Schindler's list stuff (ie. more movie music, but - again - nothing "watered down")...There are probably two more things in there, but I'm too lazy to get up and go remind myself...

in summary: "good stuff, good players, good music director, and LOTS of black dots"

[ronr]

There are a couple high-quality “professional” level bands in the Minneapolis area. The one I play with puts on two performances a year. We hold five rehearsals and a concert. It allows us to get some really good players in the group, and at least one hack tuba player…

[Schlitzz]

Hopefully he got a haircut, with a good starched shirt, BEFORE that 1st rehearsal. Strong handshake preferred.

[1 Ton Tommy]

This sounds like a nice opportunity, Bloke.

I find playing "arrangements" often frustrating. Sometimes they're the conductor's own arrangements and he changes them from week to week if something doesn't work. Our community orchestra is a sort of reverse-pro wherein we pay the conductor/music director via the non-profit org. We rehearse or experiment with various pieces until the conductor thinks some pieces jell into a concert, maybe 8-10 meetings per concert. The director gets nervous when there isn't a full compliment of musicians and we're six weeks out. But few of us need even that much rehearsal (famous last words). So for many of us its a social event too with beer at the pub afterwards.

I enjoy it most of the time but this session is frustrating because of the "arrangements." Last week the conductor stopped the orchestra and looking at me asked, "What are you playing?" (Its the bassoon part of Hall of the Mountain King, rewritten for tuba). I tell him my entry is the second measure after the fermata. He looks at his score. "I don't see that anywhere." I read him the part designation off my chart. "That's a non-existent part. Ovac (neighboring orchestra) rewrote that when they didn't have a string bass."

So now what? It was in the folder from the librarian that he handed me at my first rehearsal and I've already played it several times in rehearsal; then the issue was noisy valves which I fixed. So now we're four weeks out and I have to come up with something that amplifies the string basses as necessary and fills the bassoon voice. In my folder are two 3rd trombone parts, a Bassoon part and two string-bass parts that I have to transpose down an octave, except when it goes below the range of my Eb tuba, while staying behind the string basses piano dynamic. The BBb tuba won't handle the trombone parts.

There's a lot to be said for playing stuff in the original that can be downloaded from IMSLP.

[bloke]

Hopefully he got a haircut, with a good starched shirt, BEFORE that 1st rehearsal. Strong handshake preferred.

Just in case they don't really need any tubas, I'm going to bring an alto sax. You know: the viola of the band.

[Schlitzz]

Hopefully he got a haircut, with a good starched shirt, BEFORE that 1st rehearsal. Strong handshake preferred.

Just in case they don't really need any tubas, I'm going to bring an alto sax. You know: the viola of the band.

Actually had that happen last night in my band. The instrument repair tech had an alto sax, AND an alto clarinet in his car. Some people, and we read the Hunsberger Star Wars trilogy.

Let’s try replacing words in Star Wars dialogue. Get rid of rebels, and replace it with, violas.

[bloke]

Hopefully he got a haircut, with a good starched shirt, BEFORE that 1st rehearsal. Strong handshake preferred.

Just in case they don't really need any tubas, I'm going to bring an alto sax. You know: the viola of the band.

Actually had that happen last night in my band. The instrument repair tech had an alto sax, AND an alto clarinet in his car. Some people, and we read the Hunsberger Star Wars trilogy.

Let’s try replacing words in Star Wars dialogue. Get rid of rebels, and replace it with, violas.

...but let's just make sure they're Star Wars violas...

[dsfinley]

In the folder are three John Williams (not "arrangements") movie music transcriptions, a Gershwin (I'd guess, without using a search engine) piano-to-wind-band bandistration, what appear (??) to be four movements from a Sousa operetta (again: I'm ignorant, and have not researched), some transcription of some Schindler's list stuff (ie. more movie music, but - again - nothing "watered down")...There are probably two more things in there, but I'm too lazy to get up and go remind myself...

in summary: "good stuff, good players, good music director, and LOTS of black dots"

Are the Sousa pieces from Last Days of Pompeii? We did Nydia the Blind Girl from that when I was in college and I think that piece trumps all of his marches. And I REALLY like his marches.

[bloke]

It's "People Who Live in Glass Houses". It's not an operetta or anything; it's just a little suite he wrote before the world tour... Each movement based on portraying a different type of liquor.

Based on the fact that these were edited in the modern era by a high profile band director and published by a high profile publisher, I'm sure this set of pieces is widely known to band scholars. It's just that I'm not any sort of band music scholar and I didn't know what they were until I looked up what they were, due to my ignorance. I actually took a class about band literature a long time ago one summer when I really wasn't even enrolled in a degree program, but a class like that can't possibly cover everything, and it was so long ago that Bourgeois may have not even edited and published the set of four pieces by that time..
I have only done surface investigation, but the set of pieces tells me that Sousa had a sense of humor, and - when not being commissioned to write some march - he still tended to lean towards march composition, but with more of a sense of humor.

[Pauvog1]

Will Fat Bastard be the tool of choice for this setting?

[bloke]

Will Fat Bastard be the tool of choice for this setting?

duh

[bloke]

There's a suite of selections from the Bernstein Opera, "Candide" included in the music programmed for this concert. When I was attending school decades ago, this operetta was actually performed, but I didn't get to participate because the actual pit orchestration only includes two trumpets and four horns. Playing through the several pieces in this suite (orchestrated for wind band), I now understand how the overture (which most of us have played both in wind bands and symphony orchestras) was "sewn" together..

[bloke]

The players in this "musicians" band (I don't know what to call it..??) which features quite a few band directors, studio teachers, freelancers, and such (along with a couple of Memphis Symphony musicians) are very good.

I was semi-timid during the first half of the first rehearsal for this concert series (since I'm the new guy), but in the second half I started playing a little bit more like I do in a symphony orchestra - and with no funny looks nor criticism. After both of the rehearsals I received some semi-gushing music director compliments. I suspect that when we truly play out and truly play with a full dynamic range (from extremely soft to extremely loud - all completely under control...along with even perhaps startling crescendos and diminuendos when indicated) and follow all the written and implied musical directions on the page as well as those shown by a conductor's hands, we are noticed more (in a good way). After this second rehearsal and second set of compliments about the "great sound", etc., I let the director know that if anything is ever too much to immediately let me know. He indicated that nothing was too much, that it's a big band, and he's loving it. (This is also sort of good, because I'm already doing quite a bit of business with this director at his university, each year.)

I have some observations though about how band music performance practices differs from how it was performed a half century ago when I was first performing it, and - even though I'm the new guy - I spoke to the music director about them quietly after the second rehearsal for this concert, and I was a bit surprised that he was 100% in my camp, regarding my observations.

I'm really not sure if I should express those opinions here... though I guess I've expressed enough past opinions to trigger about 10,000 people over the past who-knows-how-many years.

I was surprised that one of the trumpet players actually knew of my brand new model of mouthpiece, and was sending a tuba student from his school out here to blokeplace to test it out. (I sort of always assumed that local people view me as just "that guy out in the country who repairs instruments and wears dirty clothes", and prefer to buy their mouthpieces from places with fancy websites and far off locations... obviously a bunch of '50s and '88's sold, etc ...

[dp]

The players in this "musicians" band (I don't know what to call it..??) which features quite a few band directors, studio teachers, freelancers, and such (along with a couple of Memphis Symphony musicians) are very good.

Ringer band. Enjoy it while it lasts

[bloke]

k

I believe I've mustered the courage to post my comments.

These are all OVER-generalizations (thus my hesitance to post), so no need to post "...but not in MY band"...(etc.)

bands - marching/precision/ONLY "this"/nothing more nor less/military-attitude

read the instructions on the page, and follow them, but don't add anything that's not there - UNLESS the director asks for it and - even then - (perhaps?) be somewhat conservative, if not skeptical about adding it.

Most who study/studied in universities (and even with unaffiliated studio teachers) have been mentored by either orchestral or wannabe orchestral musicians...no vibrato (other than flutes/oboe-EH), and play it "just this way".

again: I'm hearing remarkably fine precision, intonation, etc., but not very much individual-and-corporate musical phrasing. I was (and continue to be emphasized-to - if-not-ranted) by orchestral music directors (particularly the best of them) that stagnant sounds are "dead" sounds. If something is marked "moderately soft", "soft", "moderately loud", or what-have-you and - if it is sustained, the volume level WITHIN the volume level should rise and fall to SUPPORT the melody/counter-melody, etc. instruments, or - at least - to add SOME sort of level of musical interest - beyond a sustained frequency with a particular instrumental tonal color. I'm actually hearing "straight tone" flute playing, as well as double reeds, and (ok...horns/clarinets...I get it - even though there are even exceptions with those) even the saxes and all the other brass - when playing solo passages - mostly all no vibrato and no (beyond dynamic markings) personalized musical phrasing.

...This is a CHANGE, from what I remember - as far as accomplished-players or professional and military bands from several decades ago (yeah: "when I was a boy"). It's almost as if - when it's time to play solo or soli passages - players are afraid of being mocked or chided (by other players...?? by the director...??) if they add anything at all to personalize what the stuff on the page indicates.

I wonder if some of this is due to the way that (something that hardly existed when I was growing up) all of the "educational/graded band pieces" that have been written (since I left school) which (yes?) often rely on (simply) adding more instruments to achieve dramatic/musical effects - rather than individual players/sections seizing their phrases and contouring them into (well) music.

This director is remarkably talented, and/but (also) remarkably nice. Again...It's ALL there, and it's ALL quite good...
Maybe (and you're reading more "old guy" rantings, per typical of bloke ) these players need to be given permission to experiment, take chances, make their solo/soli phrases "their own", and - spend time (in home practice) working on this (since they can all ALREADY play all the notes - in time, in tune, and at the indicate volume levels). This band is "right there"...almost "sparkling". I'm glad (lucky/fortunate) that I was asked to participate...and/but (being the ol' bloke) I notice stuff...and say stuff (only in whispers - to the kind/generous/uber-talented director)...when (probably) I should just take care of my OWN business and smile.

To be clear:
My intention is to stay as long as I'm allowed. I'm enjoying this VERY much. It's a lot like "pops" concerts playing (way more playing than "masterworks" concerts) except even MORE playing than pops concerts - as well as more challenging. I dunno what Grade 1 is vs. Grade 6 (as - again - educational band music is "graded"), but I did need to have a LOOK at this stuff, prior to rehearsing it...and nothing this band is playing seems to have been written for "educational" purposes...Gershwin, Sousa (operetta episodes), Williams, etc...

bloke "Hey...I found a door - SUPER-close to the rehearsal hall - that's usually unlocked (loading dock) with adjacent parking under a shade tree...so - with this huge tuba and its hard case - what could be better than that?"