Elephant's Conservatory

[the elephant]

<sigh>

I had to sit through some auditions again. Year 33 of listening to people try to show me what a genius they are, despite having utterly failed at mastering fundamental playing…

<sigh>

Here is a complete "Artiste Diploma®" worth of education distilled into a short list of stuff you need to take very seriously, adapted for tuba players attending orchestral auditions, based on the scores of auditions I have either judged or observed in my own ensemble, as well as several others. These observations also largely apply to things like MTNA and other contests, but not really to military band auditions, as the committee for these can vary greatly. (Yes, I have judged dozens of military band auditions, too, and they ARE a little different, and are not covered here.)
_______________________

THE ELEPHANT'S TUBA CONSERVATORY

1. Sing and buzz what you can't execute perfectly, because if you put garbage into your mouthpiece, garbage will come out of your bell.

2. Phrases are like musical sentences; your breath is like punctuation.

3. Slow, deliberate practice will net you better results in less time.

4. Use a tuner all the time, but as a reference, not as a crutch. PITCH IS RELATIVE.

5. Use a metronome as often as you can. Learn to apply rubato AFTER you can execute a phrase flawlessly, not before. Nothing sounds worse than a musician doing "musical things" to a phrase he cannot actually play correctly. SUBDIVIDE EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME.

6. When preparing for an audition, figure out what each excerpt demonstrates. Almost all tuba players are eliminated in the first round via "Meistersinger" because they are so BAD at keeping SOLID time on simple quarter and eighth notes. (See point 5 above.)

7. Every mark on the page is there for a reason. If you cannot clearly define a term to someone verbally, then you need to LOOK IT UP IN HARVARD (not on Reddit) and then apply that definition to the music. If you do not know exactly what "rf" means, look up "rf" and learn. If you do not own a hard copy of Harvard at this point, you're probably a failure waiting to happen. Take this stuff seriously.

8. No one G.A.S. about your World Class Sound®. No one. Unless you sound like a dying cow, stop worrying about it.

9. In most cases, tuba auditions are held in huge rooms, and in most cases, huge tubas lack any sort of clarity. Clarity and accuracy win jobs, not a massive sound. Concentrate on producing an absolutely clear technique with the ability to adjust note lengths and attacks to the room you are in.

10. An audition is not a "contest" to be won. They do not always pick the best player. It is a JOB INTERVIEW process. They pick the best player who they hope will fit into their group for decades. Ensemble playing is largely a cooperative interplay of personalities, so when the curtain comes down in Finals and some of the committee take a moment to randomly chat with you, this is VERY IMPORTANT. Being smug, arrogant, or anything other than "nice" can cost you the job. This field is competitive enough that THEY DON'T NEED your godlike playing if you will be a PITA for the next 30 years. And they are looking for a colleague who may be there for a very long time, so you had better come off as someone they will want to sit next to for decades.

BONUS: People advance to the next round when they execute their excerpts so well that each listener (who generally are NOT tuba players) hears their own part in their head as you play. Do not use obscure recordings that YOU like to try and justify your weird interpretations. You want audition-winning reference material: Eugene Ormandy, George Szell, or other VERY NEUTRAL and commonly heard interpretations are the safest bet. Better yet, study using a FULL SCORE as you listen to MANY recordings of a piece, as that will allow you to form a very neutral example of tempo, style, etc. If you play an excerpt outside of the norm, you WILL be discussed by the committee as "that candidate who played the Mahler so weirdly," which is NOT a good thing. Don't play everything as loudly as possible to show off your manliness. NO COMMITTEE MEMBER THINKS IT'S FUN TO BE MUSICALLY SCREAMED AT ALL DAY WHILE THEY SIT BEHIND THE SCREEN.
_______________________

Now, pass me $100,000, and I will award you your diploma.

[tubanh84]

Will add one thing to this: Once you feel like you have "mastered" the excerpts, record yourself doing all of them straight through. Force yourself to listen to the entire thing. We go deaf to our own idiosyncrasies when we play, and we don't hear ourselves honestly behind the bell. But once you hear all of the warts of your playing on a recording, you can't not hear them when you sit back down to practice more. Work those warts out for a week or two. Then record yourself again. Rinse and repeat.

This is not an end-of-the-process step. It is early-mid-process.

I used to do this with everything when I was performing more. The one instance that sticks out most is when I worked up the Mozart Oboe Concerto. I was ready to go. Could have played the concert tomorrow. Then I recorded myself, and I was astounded. I wasn't making music. There was no drive. My articulations were vanilla. It was awful. Once I heard it, it took all of two days to turn it around, and I was able to focus my practice until the concert on that issue. Performance went great. But there was no way I would have heard that issue on my own without the recording. I knew I was trying to make it musical, so I subjectively heard it that way. The recording made me hear it objectively.

[russiantuba]

I want to throw something out to the musical definition one—I also look (and have my students look them up) on a translator app to see what they roughly translate to in the native language to reinforce what the definitions are trying to get across.

For example: “allegro” really means happy or cheerful. How can I make this section sound like this and convey this meaning rather than more of a tempo.

[MikeS]

This is a very systematic approach to working up excerpts that touches on many of the things Wade mentioned. At some point Hiram says that the student was now playing the except like someone he would be happy to be sitting next to in a section. He also mentions that all the improvement made during the process was made without him giving any specific technical advice. It was all from careful listening and attention to pitch and phrasing. I know it’s a bit long but I think it’s worth a listen.

[arpthark]

I want to throw something out to the musical definition one—I also look (and have my students look them up) on a translator app to see what they roughly translate to in the native language to reinforce what the definitions are trying to get across.

For example: “allegro” really means happy or cheerful. How can I make this section sound like this and convey this meaning rather than more of a tempo.

Do you think composers are necessarily channeling the “happy/cheerful” aspect of Allegro when they write that in as a tempo marking?

[russiantuba]

[quote=russiantuba post_id=114763 time=<a href="tel:1755713578">1755713578</a> user_id=53]
I want to throw something out to the musical definition one—I also look (and have my students look them up) on a translator app to see what they roughly translate to in the native language to reinforce what the definitions are trying to get across.

For example: “allegro” really means happy or cheerful. How can I make this section sound like this and convey this meaning rather than more of a tempo.

Do you think composers are necessarily channeling the “happy/cheerful” aspect of Allegro when they write that in as a tempo marking?
[/quote]

I’ve called them style indicators since starting my DMA. Why not write just a tempo marking? More modern composers will write things like “decidedly jocular” or “whimsically”. Even back to the Telemann Sonata in F, the “Triste” represents a mood of sad.

Some don’t. But some orchestras have sightreading and if you don’t know the piece or is a newer work, capturing that could set you apart.

[russiantuba]

Something @the elephant told me nearly 2 decades ago:

Know every single note in every single piece. Just because it says Tchaikovsky Symphony #6, just don’t practice the end.

I took an audition now over 10 years ago, and Tchaikovsky 6 was on the first round, but an excerpt from the first movement. When this was announced, kiddos were scrambling on YouTube to find recordings, and playing meh ones out on speaker.

I’m sitting there, having played it the year before, knowing the tempos can fluctuate based on the recording and conductor on how much broader it gets. I had practiced this and a bit of the dance movement too for this audition, which, ironically, is much harder than it looks.

Another one I’ve heard is Prokofiev Symphony No. 5 and people complain when they pull parts from the 4th movement instead of the opening.

Know the entire piece like you are going to be playing it the next day in the orchestra.

[prodigal]

Thank you!

My prof. Had a saying:

If you put stored high in transit (paraphrase by me) into the mouthpiece, you'll get stored high in transit out of the horn.

If it ain't in your head, it ain't comin' outta the bell!

Every note matters!

[humBell]

What does a dying cow sound like?

[the elephant]

Like me, before I do my Chichowicz.

[bloke]

What does a dying cow sound like?

...not all that different from a dying industry.

[MiBrassFS]

.

[the elephant]

Isn’t there a shorter, online version of “Elephant’s Conservatory?” This all seems like a lot like “work.”

Probably on Reddit, in one of the porno or alien abduction subs…

[tubamarc8891]

I like a lot of what you wrote here. I do want to emphasize #9 for anyone interested in auditioning for professional bands or orchestras. Being able to articulate clearly will set you apart from the vast majority of the field in tuba auditions. Tone, groove and clarity is the holy trinity of audition success.

[the elephant]

I absolutely agree with you, Marc.

As I said, military band auditions are much different. The committee frequently will contain the entire section, so tone is paramount, or it was when I sat on committees. You have to make a great sound, but you also have to fit into the section sound, so locating recordings or taking in a live performance is very helpful to help guide your ears. You have to sound like you, but your concept needs to be in line with theirs. Again, tone, time, and rhythm (as well as pure sightreading chops) are paramount.

In an orchestral audition for tuba, the player being replaced is usually not present, so there are usually zero tubists present. You have excerpts that are musically RIDICULOUSLY EASY. Our music, technically, for violinists and oboists, is middle school level. They do not have any sort of concept of what is musically or even physically difficult on the tuba, and frankly, they do not care. Let me say that again: No one on the committee cares at all about how well you executed that lick based on tuba player expectations. They just care about how you execute what is on the page. It is very easy music for them, so they will destroy you in their comments on all the things most tuba players overlook or excuse due to the physical difficulties of playing the tuba. They don't care. They don't.

This is why, when preparing for an audition, you should pay (or feed) trusted musical colleagues WHO DO NOT PLAY THE TUBA to listen to your excerpts and be brutally honest with you about how easy they are and how they *also* DON'T CARE about how hard that is on a tuba. They will tell you that your time is wobbly, your dotted figures sound like triplets, and your intonation is F-ed up.

YOU: Well, that slide pull is really inconvenient, so I just left it out because the note is so short.

THEM: Every one of those Gs was flat. Every one of those Fs was sharp.

That is who will be judging you, so you have to play in a way that makes them happy. [In a band audition, you have to please tuba players, and you cannot BS them. Very similar goals and standards, but with much more emphasis on sound.]

This is how you win auditions. Brutal, clear-eyed honesty coming from the perspective of non-tuba players who can play circles around you, technically, who phrase better than you, and who think your excerpts are stupidly easy. Not one of them will be able to discern a substantial difference between your 6/4 CC and your 4/4 CC, and they will wonder why you even have an F tuba with you. If it sounds like what they imagine a tuba sounds like, that is as far as it goes with them.

In 32 years of serving on audition committees, I have only heard comments about tone once, and it was a trombone audition, and the comments came from the two trombonists in the section. That is it.

Start worrying about your mediocre rhythmic execution, your wandering time, and your audibly wonky intonation. Remember always that no one cares about your problems as a tuba player. In the real world, these are just excuses for poorly played music.

Good luck.

[bloke]

I'm glad to see somebody posting that being concerned about the quality/qualities of one sound - as long as it's "good" - is WAY DOWN THE FREAKING LIST, as far as what most others notice about tuba playing. (To most everyone else, a tuba sounds like a tuba... but a tuba can certainly sound like a tuba that's out of tune, or playing in bad time, or doesn't understand phrasing.)

It's something I get complimented on by colleagues (and surprisingly sometimes by non brass players... and it's hard to accept compliments like that, because I just "sound like the way I sound" ) but music directors NEVER ask me if I can "change my sound" to play a certain exposed passage, though they do that ALL THE TIME with the strings.

... and the crack that I threw in about the dying industry: People don't like me saying stuff about the (other) elephant in the room, but "symphony orchestras in the United States" is a dying industry.
All of them are trying to (so-called) "reimagine" themselves with fewer rehearsals, more and more garbage music (playing along with movies, for pity's sake ), making every single concert - including masterworks - into dinner concerts, and all that type of thing. Additionally, dollars are suddenly worth half, people aren't earning any more dollars than they were five years ago, and everyone's looking to cut expenditures on things that aren't necessities. Certainly - as people are cutting their cable, they're absolutely going to cut their symphoniy subscriptions and annual donations.

To those of you who are looking to spend anywhere between a hundred thousand bucks and a quarter of a million dollars to learn how to play Mahler, you ain't going to be playing much Mahler (if any), unless part of one movement being played behind some break dancers - or something like that.

Something that some of you younger people may find useful is that the recent very controversial huge piece of federal legislation that was passed changed the law whereby Pell grants can be now applied to tuition for trade schools.

[prodigal]

To piggyback on bloke:

We are in a dying industry, not just professionally, but in schools as well. Every year, we get fewer and fewer students entering our music programs in ninth grade, even though there are relatively large middle school programs, it all dies coming into high school. I guess that band, orchestra, and chorus isn't cool in high school, or they are too busy with their sports, because every kid is the next Michael Jordan or Patrick Mahomes. Their travel teams take up all of their free time, even though the kids don't train or exercise and get hurt, then go on pain meds. Oh wait, that's a contributing factor to the opioid epidemic...

Or they music classes to take higher level science classes, but these students aren't really the highest level math and science students, because they find a way to stay in music, while doing college level classes while still in high school, and they know what major they want to pursue in college, and I yell at them to examine careers in a field of their choice, and is it worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in stinkin' college to get that degree that pays a lower middle class salary at best.

Most kids don't have much skin in the game. I'm lucky if their parent actually bought the overpriced Eastman strings violin at inflated prices from the local Musical Walmart (M&A). This instrument will be it for them, unless their parent thinks they need a new one, despite my suggestion that private lessons would be a better investment.

The cellists, tubists, bassists, euph/baritone players borrow instruments, and these young scholars keep bloke busy, which is good, but too much of their destruction is unacceptable. Our 186 BBb is called the trashcan, partly in jest, but partly because young scholar tubists around here take care of nothing, and she has the battle scars, most of which are unacceptable to me. (When I was in high school, I saw the bill of sale for the 184BBb that I was loaned. I was a rather trustworthy lad with equipment, so at that time I had use of various high grades of fishing tackle, and oh the horror!, firearms. I took good care of it and learned about rotary valves, adding bumpers, etc. Also, I was still in the dying days of small town America, and everyone knew everyone in the community. Most of my teachers knew my entire extended family, so there was no hiding, and we didn't want to shame ourselves, as we'd never hear the end of it. Times have changed.)

My sons are interested in becoming a mechanic and an electrician. I'm all for it, they'll make more in their first year than I will in my 30th year as a teacher, without undergrad. and graduate school debt.

Sorry for the rant, I needed to vent. Warning: I'll probably go off on young scholars once I re-engage with them in September.

[tubanh84]

I'm glad to see somebody posting that being concerned about the quality/qualities of one sound - as long as it's "good" - is WAY DOWN THE FREAKING LIST, as far as what most others notice about tuba playing. (To most everyone else, a tuba sounds like a tuba... but a tuba can certainly sound like a tuba that's out of tune, or playing in bad time, or doesn't understand phrasing.)

It's something I get complimented on by colleagues (and surprisingly sometimes by non brass players... and it's hard to accept compliments like that, because I just "sound like the way I sound" ) but music directors NEVER ask me if I can "change my sound" to play a certain exposed passage, though they do that ALL THE TIME with the strings.

... and the crack that I threw in about the dying industry: People don't like me saying stuff about the (other) elephant in the room, but "symphony orchestras in the United States" is a dying industry.
All of them are trying to (so-called) "reimagine" themselves with fewer rehearsals, more and more garbage music (playing along with movies, for pity's sake ), making every single concert - including masterworks - into dinner concerts, and all that type of thing. Additionally, dollars are suddenly worth half, people aren't earning any more dollars than they were five years ago, and everyone's looking to cut expenditures on things that aren't necessities. Certainly - as people are cutting their cable, they're absolutely going to cut their symphoniy subscriptions and annual donations.

To those of you who are looking to spend anywhere between a hundred thousand bucks and a quarter of a million dollars to learn how to play Mahler, you ain't going to be playing much Mahler (if any), unless part of one movement being played behind some break dancers - or something like that.

Something that some of you younger people may find useful is that the recent very controversial huge piece of federal legislation that was passed changed the law whereby Pell grants can be now applied to tuition for trade schools.

Opening caveat: I understand that your premise is that a "good" sound is necessary, so this is sort of going off on a tangent. But I think it's an important tangent.

I personally, and I've had success with students with this philosophy, put tone production above almost everything else because a great tone means that you're doing things well enough that your intonation is probably good, your precision and flexibility is probably good, and your articulation is probably good. So it's not that a big, resonant, sound is itself the end goal (although...I mean, if people can't feel like they're being enveloped by our sound, what's the fun?), it's that it's a way to make sure you are playing 'properly' and the other elements of good playing will follow.

It certainly isn't the end-all-and-be-all. But if you have a great sound and one note is out of tune - probably pull a slide. If you sound terrible and notes are out of tune - well that's a more fundamental problem. If your articulations are fuzzy, by the time you make them more precise, you'll probably be playing with a fuller sound as well.

[bloke]

yeah...but so many tubas today (as well as mouthpieces) are designed to CLOAK MEDIOCRE TONE PRODUCTION...

...so...

...I stand by my statement that - to others - "tubas sound like tubas".

[russiantuba]

I'm glad to see somebody posting that being concerned about the quality/qualities of one sound - as long as it's "good" - is WAY DOWN THE FREAKING LIST, as far as what most others notice about tuba playing. (To most everyone else, a tuba sounds like a tuba... but a tuba can certainly sound like a tuba that's out of tune, or playing in bad time, or doesn't understand phrasing.)

Going to hit a hot button topic with this, but I am willing to bet the majority of audition panels will NOT know if you are playing a BBb or a CC tuba. Your professor might have told you that they can hear the difference, but thats an urban legend.

There was an ethnomusicology faculty member at my M.M. institution (Miami University) who was a tubist. He was quite accomplished as a tubist, a B.M. from Northwestern and studied with Jacobs, then went to Juilliard as a tubist and studied with Don Harry, later found he could gig on guitar and make a lot of money in NYC doing such, and researched the music of his native Brazil and fell in love with ethnomusicology. He was not my teacher, but he gave great advice.

He said he took the Pittsburgh Symphony audition when Sumner Erickson won. He mentioned there was an applicant from Germany who flew over with just an F tuba and advanced to at least the semi-finals. He recommend that I learn the low excerpts on F tuba, mentioned how he knows 100% sure Ride of the Valkyries was on the first round of that audition (he didn't remember the rest), and he said that the German fellow doing it on F tuba did not keep him from advancing.