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I was thinking as I drove home from brass band practice tonight that the required playing style for playing in the band is quite different from in the orchestra.

Playing in a brass band, I try to balance and blend with the ensemble and if anything exagerate dynamics, while when playing in the symphony orchestra the emphasis is more to project over all those strings into the hall with a far more soloistic sound, while in a concert band a big bass foundation sound is required to balance all those high woodwind.

I do not remember this ever discussed on TubeNet. How do you adjust your playing for different ensembles?

Laying out the foundation in a brass band and in a concert band basically is the same. Provide solid roots with a perfectly in tune overtone pattern, which invites everybody else just to lock in for the common sake of ensemble intonation. I am terribly well aware, that this only is possible in quite simple harmonic progressions, but the attitude should be the same in more complicated music also.

I have not played tuba in an orchestra, but I have been there on 1st and bass bones plus on 1st, 2nd, and 4th horns. If I had been there on tuba, I would have established a tight collaboration, with the bassbone, the cellos, the double basses, and the kettle drummer.

If one wants to make oneself heard in some more soloist passages there is a horrible, but terribly effective trick: play a shade on the sharp side, but not so much that they can pinpoint you being out of tune.

I have been a sinner on that point myself. Lee Konitz 50 years ago was the sole alto sax in the mastodontic Kenton set-up. He used the same trick to cut through.

Having a few instruments in the bass as well as in the contrabass ranges, my parameters for choosing the right axe would not be the type of ensemble, but the range of the part and the size of the ensemble. I would sound basically the same on any of my low conicals, but the output level would depend somewhat on the instrument size.

Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre

imperialbari wrote:If one wants to make oneself heard in some more soloist passages there is a horrible, but terribly effective trick: play a shade on the sharp side, but not so much that they can pinpoint you being out of tune

Pretty much every section/player does that now. Which is why the orchestral pitch always spirals out of sight...

Great topic.

Personally, I think that the tuba can fit into ANY style of music. We tend to focus too much on the instrument and not enough on the player (as the tuba is just our chosen voice..)

How to fit? You just do it. Let the music dictate.

Neptune wrote:I was thinking as I drove home from brass band practice tonight that the required playing style for playing in the band is quite different from in the orchestra.

Playing in a brass band, I try to balance and blend with the ensemble and if anything exagerate dynamics, while when playing in the symphony orchestra the emphasis is more to project over all those strings into the hall with a far more soloistic sound, while in a concert band a big bass foundation sound is required to balance all those high woodwind.

I do not remember this ever discussed on TubeNet. How do you adjust your playing for different ensembles?

imperialbari wrote:Laying out the foundation in a brass band and in a concert band basically is the same.

I know the function in brass band and concert band are of the face of it the same. However, I find them different in which to play. With four tubas in a brass band of around 25 players, the ratio of bass is far higher than concert band, so great weight of sound is not such an issue in brass bands (at least in my experience).

I would also say the brass band has a different tone concept to concert band. For brass band, the emphasis is to blend to make an organ like sound, while with concert band, tonal contrast is more encouraged. That is why my rotary Melton 2040/5 Eb works well for concert band, but I find just does not fit in with the brass band sound.