A boy musician finds his perfect match in a tuba
I never really understood why my son wanted to play the tuba in
the first place.
There he was in fifth grade, taking band, and trying out a
number of different instruments. He experimented with French horn,
saxophone and trombone. But it was not until he tried the tuba that
he fell in love.
A boy musician finds his perfect match in a tuba
I never really understood why my son wanted to play the tuba in the first place.
There he was in fifth grade, taking band, and trying out a number of different instruments. He experimented with French horn, saxophone and trombone. But it was not until he tried the tuba that he fell in love.
Now I have nothing against tubas, really. They’re very impressive looking. But tubas are a large and awkward instrument, and needless to say, heavy.
However, Ross has been a committed tuba player ever since that day. He played all through middle school and into high school. And then, when he got to college, he took a break.
Part of the problem was that he had no tuba to play. He’d always played the school’s instruments so it was not a problem then.
But then, two years ago, someone offered us a tuba.
The tuba came to us through the son of a friend who played trumpet in the band at UC Berkeley. This young man lived in Berkeley’s Band House, a kind of frat house for band members, and happened to have a tuba in his room.
Well, sort of a tuba. It was a concert tuba that some unknown musician had abandoned in the Band House. It was dented and neglected, banged up and scratched, and needless to say, it was broken. The keys didn’t work. Still, it was a tuba, and we were told that it could be fixed.
I asked Ross if this is what he wanted. Did he really want a tuba, now that he was in college? More importantly, would he play it? He assured me he would.
So I told my friend, “We’ll take the tuba.”
And eventually we received the broken, dented, neglected tuba, and got it to one of the best brass instrument repair shops on the West Coast, which happens to be in Fresno. Now I’m condensing the timeline somewhat, but you have to understand this all took months and months to even get the thing there.
And then it took months and months to get the work done. The shop works on a lot of instruments, and our job was not high priority, so the tuba sat for a while before anyone actually looked at it.
At last, though, the repair people worked their magic on it. The dents had to be beaten out. The scratches were buffed. The keys were repaired. A new mouthpiece was obtained. The whole thing was newly coated in brass, and it looked like a brand-new instrument.
As you might expect, it was expensive. Plus I bought a case for it in order to protect my investment. But the instrument shop did give me a free mouthpiece, so that I appreciated.
And yet, believe it or not, it was only about half the cost of buying a new tuba.
So I brought the beautiful gleaming tuba home in its nice new case, and there it sat. For months.
I asked Ross, “Don’t you want the tuba?” Well, not right now, Mom.
However, I finally felt better about the whole thing a few weeks ago when he did, in fact, take the tuba. His roommate, also a musician, prevailed upon him to get it. And so the tuba went to where it was supposed to be all along.
Now he’s playing the tuba again. And I’m happy.
It wasn’t the instrument I would have chosen for him, but it’s the one that he wants.
