Painful memory from my youth

[DonO.]

Since returning to playing tuba after a very long hiatus, I have been thinking a lot about my “formative years”, things I did, things that happened to me, things I would have done differently had I known better, etc. Here is one and I am curious about what others here think about the situation: it was way back when I was a senior in high school, already having decided to be a music major, trying to decide which college to attend. One of the universities on my short list was a medium sized state school but with a reputation for a kick-butt music department. This university also had a specialized tuba instructor. I will NOT name the university or the instructor out of respect. But this instructor was a gentleman with a very good reputation as a teacher and a musician, nationally known and respected. And so I scheduled an audition. Now, in high school, I had quite the inflated ego. I know now that I wasn’t even 1/100 as good as I THOUGHT I was, but to be fair I had pretty good tone and musicianship. Sight reading was one of my strong suits then, as it still is today. No brag, just fact. I could play all major scales (one octave for some, two for others) and had a solo prepared - Air and Bouree, Bach/Bell. I was told there would be sight reading at the audition, but I wasn’t too worried. So I show up at the audition with my school owned 3 valve Meinl Weston model 10. The tuba teacher was in the audition room with a second colleague, not sure what his instrument was. The second guy just listened, the tuba guy did all the talking. He asked me a couple of scales, I think I did 2 octave for an easier one and one octave for the other, but all correct pitches. I played some of my solo. I thought I was doing a fairly competent job, but he cut me off after only a short portion. Then he put some sight reading in front of me. I looked at it and I was stunned! It was extremely high, with many notes on ledger lines above the staff. I commented about how high it was, and the instructor said “oh, that’s trombone music. Just read it down an octave.” Reading trombone music down an octave was something I did not know how to do, had never done, and was never required to do. I explained all of this to him (them) and he said thank you for coming, you can go. I got my rejection letter in the mail a few days later.

This has stuck in my craw all these years. I mean, we’re talking almost 50 years later and it still bothers me! My experience made me wonder, was this instructor’s reputation for successful students due to the fact that he was selecting students who were already good? I mean, maybe I had things I didn’t know how to do, but isn’t that why one goes to a university? To be taught what you don’t know? I think I demonstrated enough potential as a prospective student in that audition that he should have been able to see that I would have been successful but it would have required a little work, not just on my part but on his part also. What do you all think? Should I have not expected to be given TUBA music to read in a tuba audition?

[Tim Jackson]

50 years ago there was not an adjunct standing on every corner waiting to take the overflow. Maybe his studio was already full. It would have been nice if he gave you some words of encouragement and guided you toward another school. A teacher's success in music does not always reflex in their people skills. just sayin'

blows to one's ego at that age are not easily forgotten. Most folks get their ego vaporized a little later in life... over and over and over! til we can't even remember who did it last and it no longer matters. Hopefully each time you pick yourself up and get back to work you get a little better. Once the ego is completely dismantled one might have a chance at becoming a player.


tj

[DonO.]

Thank you. I totally get the ego thing, and I probably needed a little dose of reality at that particular time. However, by telling the entire story, I probably obscured what I thought was the main point. Should it be a realistic expectation to think that a high school level tuba player should be able to sight read trombone music while simultaneously reading it down an octave? I mean, I wasn’t able to do the sight reading portion at all. I wanted to be able to show him that I had some sight reading skills, but I was unable to do so. Was it too much for me to expect that I would be given tuba music for the sight reading portion?

[Three Valves]

My experience made me wonder, was this instructor’s reputation for successful students due to the fact that he was selecting students who were already good?

Yes. At that stage in his life he earned it. You hadn't.

[sdloveless]

I had kind of an opposite experience. We had an extracurricular pep/jazz band. I was "the" bassist for a couple years in that group and about half the music was written for string bass. Playing the tuba, I had to learn to read that down an octave. That's also what prompted me to start playing electric bass.

[Worth]

I think that was a creative way to separate the men from the boys so to speak, although not completely fair IMO for kids at that age. Back in the day that would have blown me away as well. It's interesting when you take someone out of their comfort zone and watch the reaction, it may have been an exercise in that too. We tuba players can read multiple ledger lines below the staff without issue, which blows away most everyone else, but reading above G above the staff still is a problem for me. Transposing octaves is something we take for granted also, it's just the actual reading above the staff, I get it. Taking Bordogni, or whatever, down an octave to work out the basement is common for us. I've seen trumpet players who have difficulty taking limited passages "down an octave" when their tender chops are beat lol. We all have those moments we can maybe unload, but never forget. It's what helps form our character and makes us who we are. I have one from post grad where a professor asked me a question and I remarked, "well, to tell you the truth..." He looked at me sternly and said, "then shall I assume you have been lying to me before?" I've never again used that phrase and will never forget that encounter.

[DonO.]

[quote=DonO. post_id=40556 time=<a href="tel:1648513982">1648513982</a> user_id=720]
My experience made me wonder, was this instructor’s reputation for successful students due to the fact that he was selecting students who were already good?

Yes. At that stage in his life he earned it. You hadn't.
[/quote]

I would have to respectfully disagree with this point of view. There is no point at which anyone in any paid position “earns” the right to not have to work. If a university level instructor loads up his studio with players who are already accomplished, he doesn’t have to do very much work, does he? And I still contend that it was an unfair test. I had no opportunity to show that I could sight read tuba music music, which I could. How much trouble would it have been for him to say “ok, so you can’t transpose yet. I can teach you that. Let’s see how you do with some music written in actual tuba pitch.”? My inability at that time to transpose on sight should NOT have been an automatic disqualified. It’s like all of the things I COULD do didn’t count for anything at all.

[Three Valves]

And I still contend that it was an unfair test.

Had he asked only you to play that passage it would not have been "fair."

Provided he asked everyone to play the same thing, it was fair.

And don't you ever make me defend the actions of a tuba professor and "artiste" again!!

[DonO.]

I think that was a creative way to separate the men from the boys so to speak, although not completely fair IMO for kids at that age. Back in the day that would have blown me away as well. It's interesting when you take someone out of their comfort zone and watch the reaction, it may have been an exercise in that too.

I never thought of it in quite that way. Thank you for your insight. Maybe he did think of it as a quick and convenient way of cutting down the field. He may have thought, a student who already has this skill in high school has a better chance of success than one who doesn’t. I know there are college level instructors who hang out here. I would be curious to hear their take on this particular audition technique.

[DonO.]

[/quote]

Had he asked only you to play that passage it would not have been "fair."

Provided he asked everyone to play the same thing, it was fair.

And don't you ever make me defend the actions of a tuba professor and "artiste" again!!


[/quote]

True, if everyone had to do the same thing it was fair. Fair was not the correct word to use. In fact I can’t come up with the correct word. If possessing this one single skill was important enough to him that a lack of it was the deciding factor between accepting a student or not, to the exclusion of everything else, what should I call that?

Three Valves, I do not expect you to defend this person. You have given me your opinion and that’s fine. Using such a standard to select your students just doesn’t seem right to me. I’m probably lucky that I ended up not studying with this person. I instead went to a college where the instructor actually helped me address my shortcomings and enabled my success.

[sweaty]

DonO,

There are MANY players with abilities far beyond what you described who get rejected by less-than-prestigious places. High school is a very small world and your memory is from a high-schooler's perspective. The performing arts, like athletics, are brutally competitive. The best pro players I know have been rejected at many auditions. Personally, I have been rejected by colleges, dates, auditions, and jobs. If you haven't, you're not trying hard enough. Not fun, but we push through and do good things.

Low brass playing is fun. I suggest you get back on that horse and play in a no-pressure community group. To help ensure success, first play as much as you can. Then, contact a local school band director and ask for a good teacher who can work with you. Get the sheet music from your band and prepare it. Then, you will enter the group, contribute successfully, and have a great time.

I enjoyed participating in the following thread on "Perspective".
https://tubaforum.net/viewtopic.php?t=3895

[bone-a-phone]

I had a similar situation. I auditioned at Eastman for Doc Marcellus (trombone). I played the hell out of my solo, and stuff like scales and overall range, but blew the sight reading.

There are a lot of aspects of reading. Reading different clefs and switching octaves was just something I did all the time. Sight reading rhythms gave me problems, and that's the thing that cost me the audition. I didn't get offered a spot, but made the waiting list.

I wound up at Ithaca college, and again auditioned for Eastman. My teacher at Ithaca said they were crazy if they didn't take me. But Marcellus didn't take me again. So I went to New England.

It's not the place of the top schools to take anyone but the top players. Everyone has something to learn. I've had to work on a lot of things. I might be able to pass that Eastman audition now, but 40 years later, it doesn't matter any more.

Sometimes I'm surprised at some of the skills that great pros I know lack. Like trombone players who can't read tenor clef, or don't double tongue, or can't improvise at all, or odd stuff like flutter tongue, lip trill, etc. But then there are other more basic tasks such as internal time, intonation, articulation, dynamics that sometimes high school kids fail to give enough importance to. I would love to go back and give my 17 year old self a lesson. My biggest lack was that I didn't know what I didn't know.

In the end, I became an engineer. Dodged a bullet. Music is a great avocation, but a terrible way to make a living.

[DonO.]

bone-a-phone: Great story! And indeed similar to mine. Only I didn’t keep trying at that school, decided to bloom where I was planted instead. It was a very small school but with a music department with a reputation way out of proportion to their size. It was a good fit for me. Agree that music PERFORMANCE is a lousy way to make a living, but music EDUCATION, with a little bit of gigging on the side, was pretty good to me.

[hrender]

People choosing whom to take on as a student/employee/partner/etc. do not always have either the best judgement or the best intentions. All such choices are subjective, and the best one can do is to take them with a grain of salt and try to learn from them.

Old quote: "Take your work seriously but never take yourself seriously; and do not take what happens either to yourself or your work seriously."

[Rick Denney]

Two stories:

1. Architecture school professor who led me on for a whole semester of a design lab, praising my work throughout, only to give me a C, with the explanation, "I loved it at first but then when we got to the end, I just couldn't relate to it, maaaan." The response from guys in the dorm, "Welcome to college. Want a beer?"

My response to this first case was to leave the architecture school and shift to engineering. Despite the 50 hours I threw away doing that, it was the best possible outcome. I've gone much further with engineering than I would have done with architecture, but it took that level of ambiguity and arbitrariness to make me realize it.

2. In grad school, I spent a whole semester researching a particular topic I had chosen and finding that I could not meet the professor's oft-stated requirement of doing something that went beyond what had been done. Called a buddy (a lifelong friend even now) and told him I thought the professor was an obnoxious and heartless old man--he had not prepared us to push that far into the unknown and the expectation was just unreasonable. His response, "It's not his job to point the way--if he could do that it wouldn't be research. If you can't hang with it, that's your fault and not his, but that's what it means to be in a doctoral course." I think my response resembled "bite me in the gas".

But after that bit of sobering advice, and despite my reaction, I stopped feeling sorry for myself, threw away what I'd done, and went back to the literature for a fresh look with a different attitude. Only then was I open to seeing what had been done well enough that the next step became obvious, and for the two days left in that semester, all I could do was identify what the next step should be--no time to take it. That professor was one of the greatest theoreticians to have ever pursued my professional topic. He forced me to actually do something new, and wouldn't accept anything less, but for him, shining the light into the unknown was enough--time enough after that to actually go there. I thought he was heartless at first, but it changed my life, and any less brutal of an approach wouldn't have done.

So, 50 years hence, welcome to college. Have a beer!

Rick "look for the positive outcome" Denney

[DonO.]

Really good discussion so far! Thanks to all who participated. We are getting a bit philosophical though,!and I wanted to kind of get back to the nitty gritty, so to speak. Did anyone else here ever have to sight read and transpose simultaneously in a university entrance audition? If so, did you have fair warning that you would be doing that, or was it s surprise? College level private instructors, do you think that’s a legitimate skill to expect from a high school student?

[hrender]

One thing I got out of grad school was my earlier hard-learned lesson, plus a number of stories indicating my contrary reactions. Buddy of mine once said to me, "Hal, I think you seek out horrible situations and make terrible choices so that you can get new humorous stories to tell." To which I replied, "It's usually not the goal, but it's often the only useful result."

[Three Valves]

Did anyone else here ever have to sight read and transpose simultaneously in a university entrance audition?

No.

I was also never asked to play what kids are asked to play to get into a regional, or State band in TX these days either.

[Rick Denney]

My sight-reading wasn't that good then and it's still not great. But I had learned how to play string-bass music in high school and could read music down the octave routinely. This was for two musicals undertaken by the drama department, where I was asked to reinforce our one string-bass player in the school orchestra, and a semester playing bass trombone in junior high school. What did that say about me? I don't know, beyond that by then I had played in enough different situations to have needed the skill.

And, yes, I played Air and Bourree at solo contest while in high school and also could play the range of scales, some in two octaves.

But there is no way in the world I had what it took to major in music in college even in those days, and that was never really in question for me.

Rick "have a beer!" Denney

[jtm]

Did anyone else here ever have to sight read and transpose simultaneously in a university entrance audition? If so, did you have fair warning that you would be doing that, or was it s surprise? College level private instructors, do you think that’s a legitimate skill to expect from a high school student?

My only university entrance audition was for the marching band. I was an engineering student (which didn't require an audition, at least not in the '80s), but decided to join the marching band after a year of not playing because I missed it. They lent me a tuba for a few days (since I hadn't been playing and wasn't still in high school).

They did not ask me to sight read in the marching band bass audition. They did ask me to play something by memory, though, since they expected most things played on the field to be memorized. I don't remember all I played, but I did play at least a little of Blue Bells of Scotland, the trombone piece, which I'd learned by reading the trombone part and taking it down an octave. Tuba was just my football season instrument, so I'd never bothered to learn any real tuba solos.

For a high school student wanting to study tuba in college, I would expect that they've probably heard "please take that section down an octave" for normal band music, which is the same as reading from a trombone part, except maybe for familiarity with notes on ledger lines above the staff. I barely count octave changes (either up or down) as transposition.

Beyond that, doing an audition/interview, I might consider familiarity with reading non-tuba parts as some indication of how much a student had cared about music beyond tuba in concert band. Did they play small ensembles where there was no tuba part, so they read something else? Do they also play euphonium (might expect reading Bb treble clef)? Did they sit in jazz band and cover a missing bari sax part (that's transposing, but it's the easy kind)? Maybe none of that is a deal breaker, but if you're filling just a few spots in a studio, you'd like to know what you can about the applicants.