How to get better

Unlocking the Potential of the Sousaphone

There are so many different ways that you can use the special aspects of the sousaphone for your own benefit.

And just like I said in the beginning, nobody taught me to do this stuff. I didn't invent a lot of these techniques; I just experimented with them and came up with new ways to spin them and change things around so that they are useful within the context of my band.

But you're never going to get hired by a band because you can do this. This is all just stuff that you can have fun with, ways that you can get more out of playing the sousaphone than just playing boring bass lines all the time, which does get extremely tedious.

So go out and experiment!

Important Insights

One of the most important things that I can tell you is this:

I didn't come up with all this stuff by listening to a bunch of tuba players. I came up with this by listening to everything that wasn't tuba players and figuring out:

• What about their sounds I liked
• What gestures they made on their instruments that I could really use

Influential Artists

Here are some artists that inspired me:

• Frank Zappa
• Rage Against the Machine: Tom Morello has some great sounds.
• Various Scratch DJs: DJ Babu was awesome.
• Bobby McFerrin: He could come up with some amazing ways to use his voice as a solo instrument and accompany himself on bass line stuff while singing melodies.

So listen to stuff that you would never have thought to take influence from on the sousaphone. Eventually, you're going to come up with some great things, because this is an instrument of huge untapped potential, and it's just out there waiting for you to tap it.

So go ahead, tap it.

The end.