Roger Bannister and the Four Minute Mile

Dear Mr. Bobo,
If you get this, this is the tuba player from North Carolina named Kory Faison. I'm just writing to tell you that my journey is about to begin. I told my brother that I was going to be the best tuba player in the world, hands down, but he doesn't believe me. I'll be auditioning for 5 music schools my senior year in high school, but I'm going to take the time now until then to find and perfect my solos. Have you ever heard of ''Dream of a Witches' Sabbath''? Well, if you choose to read this, I've finally proven that I'm one of the best here in North Carolina, but now it's time to prove it to the world. If you're still around in about 10 years, I will be the best tuba in the world, hopefully and I hope that you'll be proud to see that a small town boy has achieved the highest level of success. So, I hope we will meet, eventually.
Thoughtfully,
Kory Faison

Thank you for your letter Kory,        

It's strange to have received your letter in my email inbox the very day I planned on starting this essay.
I sincerely hope that you will realize your tuba playing goals, that we will meet someday and that I will still be around. I remember very clearly a letter I wrote to William Bell a very long time ago, when I was in my early teens, which was much the same as your letter to me is today. But I wonder if you know who William Bell was? William Bell was the daddy, well, let's change that to granddaddy, or is it great granddaddy of all American tubists. You see, the generations of tubists are not the same as regular generations, by my observations through the 54 years of my tuba awareness; a tuba generation is about every ten years, and as each of these ten-year tuba generations passes into the next I am absolutely amazed at how the level of playing and musicianship improves.
About the same time that I wrote that letter to William Bell, it might have been 1950, I was quite interested in sports, particularly swimming as a competitor and track and field as a spectator; it was a great thrill for me to see world records fall and to see the track and swimming times getting faster and faster. One of my heroes in that period was the Australian mile runner Roger Bannister; he was the man whom the world thought would break the seemingly unachievable goal of the 'four-minute mile'. The world watched as Roger Bannister trained and prepared his strategy for his record breaking run; finely the news came that he had done it. It was a milestone (pun unintended) in track history. Today a four-minute mile is still a very good time but there are hundreds of college and even high school runners that can do it.

When I was a young man, the composer William Kraft, wrote a very fine and special piece for me called Encounters #2; it was considered extremely difficult at that time, and I had heard it said that I was the only person who could play it. If that was true it was only true for a short time; today you can frequently hear it played by high school and college players. I enjoy very much watching this happen.

But, Kory, I'm troubled by one thing; how far can it go? How fast will it be possible for a man to run a mile, will we ever see a limit? And in our tuba community will we continue to excel at the same unbelievable rate that we've seen so far? Of course, I want to believe we can but when we look at the evolution of more traditional instruments like the violin, for example, we don't see the continuing remarkable growth that is presently visible in the tuba. We see generation after generation of remarkable violinists, but we do not see the expansion of the technical capacities any more. Rather we see their ability to express their musicality, their musical soul, their musical personality. Today, when we listen to the international competitions for tuba we begin to hear the same thing, the same growing ability to project a musical atmosphere. Everybody in these competitions has an extraordinary technique; it's the music they make that makes them winners!

Your goal to become the world's greatest tubist is a noble one, but there are a few things you should know as you begin this quest. First, please keep in mind that there are other young men and women your age that have the same goal. It's very much like the Olympics, not every athlete can win a gold medal. However, the performance of these athletes is enhanced by the energy they receive from their competitors; don't forget that.

There are three pieces of advice I would like to offer as you set off on this tuba quest:
1. Become part of the extraordinary tuba community; read the magazines and books, join the associations, attend every masterclass and symposium that you can so that you will know what's happening in the tuba world, and listen; listen to every CD, recital and concert possible. Be aware of every aspect of this tuba world that you are entering.
2. Remember that this tuba community is only a small part of the much bigger and richer musical community; look beyond the tuba, look far beyond the tuba world.
3. And, be your own teacher. I'm sure you have a great teacher but he or she is your second most important teacher; you are number one! It is fun to think about the things you want in a teacher; let me start your list for you: Good musician, intelligence, kind, wise, patience, perseverance, and please don't forget a good sense of humor. Use the learning tools you have: metronome, tuner, and I hope you have and use a minidisk so you can play something and instantly hear it back. We hear things differently when we hear ourselves without the horn in our hands!
4.
Just one more thing; the experience you'll have in pursuing your quest for the next ten years will probably be more important in your life than achieving your goal of becoming the greatest tubist. Enjoy this time.
So Kory, I wish you luck in this journey, and I look forward to that meeting in ten years.
I'll be around,

Tokyo, Japan - June 30, 2004. 

Where the Sun Never Shines

Perhaps this is a small step over the threshold into the direction low life humor but this one is too good to let slip by.

My apartment in Tokyo is a very fine one; it has two bedrooms, one that has been transformed to a studio with the presence of a Yamaha grand piano. There is a very nice kitchen and a spacious livingroom / diningroom area, a comfortable Japanese style bath and shower and two toilets. Every room is computerized and in the living room there are no less than 5 computerized panels on the wall, all in a row, that control lighting (with a rheostat for each of the rooms lights) heat and air-conditioning controls, two other controls, which I have finally discovered are for the hot water in the apartment, although I have no idea why there are two, and another circular remote control device, which is beautifully designed, which I finally learned regulated the preferred heating of the tile floors. And, of course, there are the two completely computerized toilets.

On the wall of the two toilets are remote control devices that look very much like a TV remote control device. There are no less than 16 buttons to press on these devices; it only took me a day to determine that the top button was to flush; it was absolutely necessary to learn that, since there was no other visible way to do it! It also gives the advantage that if you forget to flush you can reach in the door, remove the remote and push the flush button from the living room!
The other buttons were a mystery, that is until two days ago. There are two buttons which I can only guess are to choose where you want to be washed off after use; one button has a picture of a girl and a spout of water centered on her most feminine area and there’s is a picture of a unisex being with the spout directed at the rear of the figure. It was, of course, a bidet, that omni present bathroom fixture found in Europe that one can refer to with children as a “bottom washer offer”. I personally never used a bidet through the years I lived in Europe, but I was quite aware of its purpose.

Two days ago while using the famous porcelain throne and while placing my Japanese phrase book on the floor I accidentally pushed one of the 16 buttons, which I’m very sure was the bidet. After the initial shock I was amazed by the accuracy and the just warmer than body temperature of the spout, I even questioned if there was some kind of radar in the bidet. The water pressure was quite impressive and within 30 seconds I was absolutely sure that I was totally spotless. Now came the high drama; how do I turn the thing off? It just didn’t stop and that reservoir of warm water, wherever it was, was coming to an end and I was beginning to feel the reality that the temperature in Tokyo dipped below freezing for the last two days.

I really wanted that thing turned off and as fast as possible, I looked at the 16 buttons, all in Japanese, fearful that random button pushing might open a Pandora’s box of unwelcome hygienic experiences. Finally, I choose the bottom button on the right and mercifully it was the right one. It was a very long bidet, I’m sure over a minute, had it lasted any longer I’m sure I would have frozen that proverbial place where the sun never shines. But alass, all is well that ends well.

Tokyo 2005

Tricks: Masks and Shortcuts

Tricks: Masks and Shortcuts

In 1973 at First International Brass Symposium in Montreux, Switzerland, I was invited to take part in a panel discussion among several orchestral low brass players from various orchestras throughout Europe and North America. I was clearly the junior in this group of players and I had enough sense to keep quiet, but I will never forget that discussion. I was amazed at all the tricks these players proudly exposed, it seemed they covered everything in every way other than just playing the parts correctly. The first topic was playing on time; some sections dealt with the problem of lateness by consciously playing everything a 16th note ahead! I wanted to say, “Why don’t you just listen?” but I was 25 years younger than any of these seasoned players.

Subsequently, I calculated just how long it took sound to travel from the back to the front of an orchestra. At the speed of sound, 3.4029 meters in 0.01 of a second, it would take a little less than 0.02 of a second; 0.018 to be exact, 0.018 of a second for sound to travel six meters from the back row to the conductor’s podium. It’s highly questionable if eighteen thousandths of a second is perceptible to our hearing and certainly it’s not enough to excuse the trombones and tuba for being late. The best way to play on time is to listen!

The same panel discussed how to play dotted rhythms, dotted 8ths and 16ths or the double dotted 8ths and 32nd notes as in this following passage from the finale of Buckner’s 7th Symphony.



Three solutions were offered; to play the 32nds on the beat, to play the 32nds as close to the long notes as possible and to accent the 32nds. No one offered the idea of playing the 32nds clearly, on time, and balanced with the long notes.

Less that a year ago a visiting tubist gave some masterclasses in Japan and offered the same solution of accenting the 32nds on the above Bruckner passage, not as a solution for lateness but as an adjustment to assure the balance between the long and short notes was equal. It can work --- sometimes; if it’s done well and in rhythm it can be a good solution to the phenomenon that short notes sound less loud than long notes even if they are exactly the same dynamic. The negative side of this practice is when students take the idea too an extreme, it results in hyper accented short notes. This was the case in Japan and as several students came for lessons in preparation for an orchestra audition. I had to correct the tendency many of them showed of grotesquely over accenting the short notes.

One more trick of our time: There is fad at the present time; the very dubious belief that low register legato sounds better if the fingers move the valves slowly. I don’t know where this fad came from but I personally find it one of the more un-thought-out tricks I have ever encountered, it stands in absolute opposition to the evolution of tuba technique becoming more and more refined. It probably came about as an unconscious masking and compensating for the fact that fingering in the low register is simply more complicated and frequently the fingers are unclear and uneven changing from note to note. Moving the fingers slowly masks that problem.

Articulation is the focus of rhythm and legato is an articulation. Clarity and precision are very important in the low register simply because our human hearing mechanism does not easily discriminate clearity in that register. Playing a rapid passage on the piano in the middle high register and playing the same passage in the piano’s lowest octave easily proves that. As I told my valued colleague who was teaching this trick, “It sounds like a sluggish bass section all by itself!” Rumors have it that some basstrombone and contrabassoon players are frustrated by this practice.

There are different ways to deal with instrumental problems and I strongly believe the best way is to approach them as honestly as possible and to correct them without resorting to masking or shortcuts, it’s not that much more difficult and it sounds enormously better.

- Tokyo, Japan