The world's first A/Bb Tuba
Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 8:45 pm
Today I played an interesting instrument. It was a tuba that could play in both the key of A and Bb without any modifications. No special valves are pressed or slides moved. This feat of musical engineering was a 4-piston valve Yamaha upright tuba belonging to a local high school.
As you may have already guessed, this tuba has probably seen better days (or maybe not considering that it is a Yamaha). From what I can tell it probably has not been cleaned recently, the silver plate looks like it had been at the bottom of the Caribbean in a Spanish ship for 400 years and something started growing on it, has huge dents, mainly in the bow but also in the bell and leadpipe, half of the slides are stuck, the guides on the valves are worn down so the valves don't move properly, and many other problems. When playing the tuba, any note at or above an space below the staff F plays with the fingerings for a BB tuba. Below an F, the fingerings would make it an A tuba because an Eb is 2nd valve, D is 1, Db is 12, C is 23, B is 13, Bb is 123, and A is open. An E natural simply doesn't exist on this tuba as far as I can tell. Any body have any idea of what would cause this? I'm guessing it could be any one of the large dents on the tuba.
As you may have already guessed, this tuba has probably seen better days (or maybe not considering that it is a Yamaha). From what I can tell it probably has not been cleaned recently, the silver plate looks like it had been at the bottom of the Caribbean in a Spanish ship for 400 years and something started growing on it, has huge dents, mainly in the bow but also in the bell and leadpipe, half of the slides are stuck, the guides on the valves are worn down so the valves don't move properly, and many other problems. When playing the tuba, any note at or above an space below the staff F plays with the fingerings for a BB tuba. Below an F, the fingerings would make it an A tuba because an Eb is 2nd valve, D is 1, Db is 12, C is 23, B is 13, Bb is 123, and A is open. An E natural simply doesn't exist on this tuba as far as I can tell. Any body have any idea of what would cause this? I'm guessing it could be any one of the large dents on the tuba.