GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

with an iron resolve shrouded in a velvet voice and although he never loses his

cool, if a situation requires a strong and robust intervention, he will always

respond in a respectful yet decisive manner.

When I was preparing this address I was looking for information about tuba

players, whether it be about the instrument, about the role of the tuba player

within the orchestra, and one of the things I came across was an old joke and

being rather old myself I thought I will put it in anyway. I will take any

opportunity to shoe horn a good old joke into an address. It is one that is

wellknown to most musicians and it is about the tuba player. A father enrols

his son for music lessons. After a brief period of discussion and assessment

the teacher assigns his son the tuba. The father goes home while the first

lesson takes place. When the son comes home his father asks, “What did you

do today?” The young boy says, “I learnt how to play the C note”. The next

day when he comes home his father says, “What did you do today?” He says,

“I learnt to play the G note”. The following day when his dad says, “What did

you do today?” he says, “I joined an orchestra”. That obviously went above all

of those apart from myself and John who are skilled and knowledgeable

musicians! But behind that joke it says something kind of interesting. As I say,

it is not about the quantity of content, it is the quality. Just a little addition to

that. What made me laugh about that joke was not so much the joke, it was on

an online forum, but it was the serious musicians who posted following the

comment: “As a tuba player, I am outraged. It would never be C and G. It

would B flat and F” and I thought, “There is a serious side to these guys”!

I have often wondered whether musicians choose their instruments or whether

the instrument chooses them. If so, what are the traits which marry tuba

players to their instrument? Here are a few interesting views and comments

which I came across during my, I have to say, not too in depth research into the

subject. Of the tuba itself: “The tuba is the most important instrument in the

band. It is the largest of wind instruments, and it produces the fundamental

sound upon which all others are built”. Then I looked up about the tuba player,

are there any particular traits? What I came across was that the tuba player’s

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