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does playing high on a BB flat tuba with a resemblance of tone quailty require any speical talent? air pressure and a proper embrochure and apachure (forgive me if i misspell) are all that is truly needed right? correct me someone[/img]

a lot of practice

Depends what you mean by high. Every instrument has a limit to its "useable" range. By this, I mean a musically useful sound. There comes a point where the instrument is not going to give you a full resonant sound. My limit on a BBflat is around Eflat or F above the Bass Clef Staff. I can play higher than that (sometimes another octave in fact) but the sound is not something I would want to listen to for any length of time. Individual instruments as well as mouthpiece selection also have a bid influence on your useable range. Some horns just do not play well in the extreme registers - high or low. Hope this was somewhat helpful.

Proper practice will get you there, but practice with the wrong technique will not. Find a teacher locally and he/she can help you achieve your playing goals. You're not going to do it by reading posts on any internet site, no matter how insightful.

Any player hoping to be a professional should be able to comfortably play up to the Bb an octave above the bass clef staff with a good solid sound. As a rank amateur I can play up to the F above the staff with a good sound, while everything above that loses any decent tone quality. I expect that if I were to put a couple of hours a day of practice in, using the appropriate technique as I was taught (if I can remember from the last time I took lessons) the tone quality of those notes would be acceptable.

This may help but a good teacher will supplement this.

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so wait a second....a tuba player that plans to be pro should at least be cable to play a B flat above the bass cleff staff!?? thats super high! is there a point where a highschooler should be...i mean...that's really high..i am in the same boat with Mr Lewin the case i can play up to an E flat or an F above the staff with some control(prolly not as clean as him tho of course), but i mean..if i try ne higher than that ...

OK, now I'm confused.

On my bass clef staff, the Bb above the staff (sitting on top of the staff) is lower than the F above the staff. . . .

i'm talking about the b flat above that high F pimpin

circusboy wrote:OK, now I'm confused.

On my bass clef staff, the Bb above the staff (sitting on top of the staff) is lower than the F above the staff. . . .

Lew's original qoute was

Lew wrote:Any player hoping to be a professional should be able to comfortably play up to the Bb an octave above the bass clef staff with a good solid sound.

Consider me scolded and ashamed.

circus "who's generally pleased with himself to be playing above the bass clef scale at all" boy

What hasn't been mentioned is the tie-in of high range playing to low range playing. For some odd reason, they seem to be linked.

There's a saying (I don't know who said it) "To play high, learn to play low" or something like that. I submit that the converse is true--that learning to play high with a good tonal quality will also extend the low range technique.

Maybe the clinicians on the BBS can confirm this, but I think it has to do with muscular development of the embouchure. Playing very high at limit of your range is the heavy lifting--the overtones are closer together, so accuracy counts and the adjustments made from note to note in the embouchure are increasingly fine.

It's not difficult to learn to play a scale up to a high Bb, but to me the test is can one nail a high Bb (or A or Ab...) cold? This is really where the ear-embouchure coordination comes in. There's simply no way to play mechanically in the high register.

thanks chuck, i'll look into that

I would be more than satisfied with an incoming freshman that sounded good on a Bb or C right above the Bass clef staff. In fact, if you can make a great sound, I could care less how high you can play. Range is easy to teach after a great tonal concept is established.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve your hi rage, but just be careful make sure you don’t loss your low and mid rage. I have a tuba player in my band that can really hit those notes up in the hi rage, but that’s all he can do before he was a really good player with nice tone and now his tone has been destroyed because he plays to much hi stuff and not a lot of low stuff.