Names, words, and a funny story


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Posted by Doug on February 22, 2002 at 22:15:58:

First a gripe/solution, then an anecdote.

Seeing the posts below from tubadad and buying his kid a horn brought me back to when i got my first personal horn. And the though again hit me, there has got to be a better way to inform kids in junior high and high school about what's out there. In junior high, the kid is MAYBE exposed to the music store that services the school, which is where most kids buy their horns from. As we see, though, most of these stores don't market tubas, or charge the net worth of Chicago for the beginner horn they have hanging on a shelf.
Kids and their parents, searching for a place that sells tubas, but having no clue where to begin, are left with two options. 1) go to other stores within driving distance or 2)look on the iternet.

1) Most local stores are dumbe when it comes to low brass. Sometimes they sound like they know what they are talking about, but then you see that their "seleciton" of tubas is a 25-year-old beat up bell front 3 valve king in the front window.

2)the internet provides a way into most specialized places, but the trick naturally is finding those places. Using a search engine (this was true 3 years ago at least) for tuba yields the tope 20 or so sites as being from a certain store, in fact the only store i know of that has "tuba" actually in its name. As we know, this unnamed store houses an unnamed guy who is a businessman first and a human being second, and who will say anything to get you to buy from him. the kid, not knowing much at the time, and his parents, neither of whom ever studied music, assume from the literature this guy sends that he must be running a good show, and the words choices of "unique clearinghouse" and "durable finish" and "finest instruments" all catch the unsuspecting victim in the guy's claws. Assuming this is the only pace out there, as "tuba" yeilds no other matches, parents and kid buy through this guy and while the horn is not bad, it is not what it could be.
Perhaps what we need is a way to get info to parents of starting students in junior high about palces like dillons, baltimore brass, brasswind, lowbrasswerks, and other places that actually care if you get helped. Somehow tubadad found tubenet, but even there, its TUBEnet, not TUBAnet and thus doesn't show up in several search engines.
Maybe instead of telling parents, "you can use the school's tuba for $25 a year and be ok" BD's should say "take what you would be paying each month on a trumpet and put it in an interest-bearing account and by the time junior is in high school, a good high quality horn will be mostly paid for." If i had gotten that information in 6th grade, things might be different for me.

Now for the funny story, which i guess could be an informal survey:
For my high school graduation wrting test, we ahd to write an essay of a preselected topic. The topic was "You have been chosen as a member of an expedition to a newly discovered planet. You may bring one item. Chose what you would bring and then write an essay defending your schoice."
I chose to take a tuba.

Made a perfect score on the test, too.

Doug "i wonder what a martian Patrick Sheridan would look like" G



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