TubeNet

More cowbell.

Don't change anything, TV people gotta show up in person to get the goods.

Tuba with recording bell. Obliterate everyone in front of you.

Stryk wrote:Our church service is televised every week. I recorded it this morning and couldn't hear any tuba. Am I just blending in or do I need to buy a Loud LM 12 mouthpiece to make sure I am heard?

There's nothing wrong with blending. That is, when it's appropriate. If you are simply not heard at all, then the sound guys need to adjust and/or you need to adjust.

Ace

My guess is that the microphones are optimized for speech, and not bass notes.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, your TV speakers are probably not the best for music, unless you have a sound system set up.

Play your Alex, if you're not already.

It's been my experience that 'sound guys' don't pay much attention to the tuba. When I know the 'sound guy' is making some initial adjustments... I'll deliberately back off quite a bit.

Bring your own P.A. Nothing adjusts balance like a few thousand watts.

My personal experience??

The meek inherit nothing.

Z-Tuba Dude wrote:My guess is that the microphones are optimized for speech, and not bass notes.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, your TV speakers are probably not the best for music, unless you have a sound system set up.

I agree with this. If you're not listening to the recording on decent speakers (or headphones) you may not hear the Tuba at all because of the equipment in play at both ends. Vocal mics + cheap TV speakers (not cheap TV, just cheap speakers in the TV) isn't going to work well for reproducing tuba sounds.

This opinion does partially assume that your sound guys are using standard vocal mics for the recording. The sound guys at my church use the overhead choir mics to record the organ and brass when we play. Here's our most recent service with brass (first piece is only ~45s in and lasts about 2-1/2 minutes) - https://vimeo.com/139864065.

Comparing to a previous worship service where our ensemble placement was further from the choir mics, https://vimeo.com/106748545, the tuba sound is not as strong in the recording.

Do you have a weblink to your most recent worship service that you can post here?

Most broadcast television audio is both compressed and the low end rolled off to conserve bandwidth. This comes from the day when most television speakers were only about three inches in diameter and couldn't reproduce the low end anyway.

In most church gigs, you're contending with the Booming Electric Piano Lady. Even bass players, with fairly infinite volume, find she walks all over them. Usually she only knows how to play one way, and only likes one booming piano tone and one even boomier organ tone.

If it's not a fun or sufficiently paying gig, just quit. If it is still fun, just stick it out. Like the tuba player on The Roots/whatever latenite that nobody has ever heard a note out of, he keeps showing up and having a good time. A lot of times the appeal of the tuba is mostly visual.