{"id":11857,"date":"2020-08-26T11:50:17","date_gmt":"2020-08-26T16:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/?p=11591"},"modified":"2021-06-10T08:53:20","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T13:53:20","slug":"rock-tuba-playing-heavy-metal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/2020\/08\/rock-tuba-playing-heavy-metal\/","title":{"rendered":"Rock Tuba: Playing Heavy Metal"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>A tuba sounding like an electric guitar? Seems farfetched, but it\u2019s actually quite possible with Travis Netzer playing.<\/h3>\n<div id=\"attachment_11593\" style=\"width: 235px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11593\" class=\"wp-image-11593 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" title=\"\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2-113x150.jpg 113w, https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2-300x400.jpg 300w, https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2-600x800.jpg 600w, https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2.jpg 1210w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 225px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 225\/300;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11593\" class=\"wp-image-11593 size-medium\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2-113x150.jpg 113w, https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2-300x400.jpg 300w, https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2-600x800.jpg 600w, https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Netzer-Rock-Tuba-2.jpg 1210w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-11593\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Travis sits in the studio ready to jam. Photo courtesy Travis Netzer.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Travis, like most musicians, loves to create music, and when he walked into the Guitar Center in Tempe, Arizona, and declared \u201cI want to make my tuba sound like an electric guitar,\u201d the employee laughed at him. It wasn\u2019t until after the employee realized Travis was being completely serious that Rock Tuba was about to be born.<\/p>\n<p>Travis, who is an adjunct professor of music at Northern State University, says \u201cRock Tuba came about as my contribution to what many other classical musicians are trying to accomplish today \u2013 showing folks that the world of pop music and classical music can co-exist.\u201d It\u2019s a feat many musicians undertake, and because of it, we have hybrid artists like Two Cellos or Simply Three, who take unconventional approaches to music and produce incredible sounds.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>How exactly does one make a tuba sound like an electric guitar? Well for starters, you need a tuba. People tend to think Travis uses a specialized tuba for his music, but it\u2019s just a regular tuba hooked up with a microphone in the bell of the brass instrument, and an amp. Travis also uses several guitar pedals to distort the tone of his tuba to sound like an old, fuzzed-out guitar. Another important component to Rock Tuba\u2019s sound is the loop station, which records a portion of music Travis plays and repeats it. Sometimes Travis will beatbox into his tuba to produce the drumbeat, and other times he will have drummer and NSU student Roger Frank help. After layering all the instrumentals together, Travis will then sing or play an additional solo as the final element to the piece.<\/p>\n<p>Growing up on a farm in Ipswich, South Dakota, music has always been a part of Travis\u2019 life: \u201cLike most kids, I\u2019d hear the music on the radio and imagine myself being the guitar player or lead singer in whatever band I was listening to.\u201d Band starts in the fifth grade at Ipswich, and when it came time for Travis to select his very first instrument, there was really only one option that made sense to him: tuba. Inspired to play the tuba from watching old VHS tapes of Tubby the Tuba, a Puppetoon by George Pal featuring a tuba going on an adventure to find his own song, Travis believes his fifth-grade band teacher was ecstatic to learn he was interested in the instrument. \u201cI think she probably did a backflip because she actually had a kid excited to play the tuba.\u201d<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Playing music and playing tuba both became passions of Travis\u2019 to the point he went off to school to study them and make them his career. He received his bachelor\u2019s in Music Education from Northern State and went on to get his masters from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. While completing his doctorate degree in Tuba Performance at Arizona State University, Travis began experimenting with Rock Tuba. It was when he came back to Northern to teach Euphonium and Tuba that he found out about the developing artist grant from the South Dakota Council of Arts. \u201cRock Tuba was really in its infancy at that point,\u201d says Travis. \u201cI had messed around with it while finishing my doctorate and managed to make a YouTube video. I applied for the grant with the hopes of assistance in getting the necessary equipment to help my idea grow and get another YouTube video up.\u201d Travis filmed one of the two videos on his Youtube channel at Makoche Studios in Bismarck, North Dakota. With the money he received from the grant, Travis was able to purchase more equipment to improve the quality and sound of Rock Tuba productions. \u201cThe equipment I was able to purchase completely opened the door on doing what I\u2019m doing now. My sincerest gratitude goes out to the wonderful folks at SDAC and at Makoche Studios.\u201d <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">\/\/<\/span><em><strong> \u2013Karlie Spiry<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><b>Want to see Rock Tuba live? Travis is available for booking at <\/b><a href=\"mailto:travis.netzer@gmail.com\"><b>travis.netzer@gmail.com<\/b><\/a><b>. Are you interested in hearing more from Rock Tuba? Check out Travis\u2019s Instagram <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/rocktuba07\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><b>@rocktuba07<\/b><\/a><b> for musical snippets or go to his Youtube page by searching for Travis Netzer to see his videos.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A tuba sounding like an electric guitar? Seems farfetched, but it\u2019s actually quite possible with Travis Netzer playing. Travis, like<a class=\"excerpt-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/2020\/08\/rock-tuba-playing-heavy-metal\/\" title=\"ReadRock Tuba: Playing Heavy Metal\">&#8230; Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11592,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"magazine_issue":[118],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11857"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11857"},{"taxonomy":"magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine_issue?post=11857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}