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Hi fellow bass people,
for a short term musical project, we (that is: 5 tubists) need to form a solid section in a large (70+) amateur wind band situation. It will be a matter of a few weeks of preparation, then a few weeks of practise in band, a few concerts and that´ll be it for the year.
We´ll have to team up quickly as musicians and there are only so many opportunities to rehearse.
Obviously we´ll have to find ways to sound as one musical unit, so we better work on intonation, timing, and communication, so each of us has a chance of realising and responding to what everybody else is doing.
There are some thoughts of chord and / or rhythmical drills and breathing practise on my mind, but I´d appreciate any input on strategies along that line.

Thank you for your hints.
Yours

Hans

If limited rehersal opportunities are a problem,get everybody thier music
soonest.Each member should arrive at rehersal with his part "down".
Then all you have to do is work out timing,intonation etc....

I have always been taught with my sections to match not only timing, articulation, and pitch, but also to match tone. just a thought for when you guys are playing on things because I bet you probably already do the other stuff.

Ben Dennis

Well, uuh...
the thing is, at this time we have done most our homework, so up to a point there are just certain spots to smoothe out individually.
My point was: do any of you have experience and maybe a set of tools to turn 5 individual tubists happening to sit in the same row into one section performing in one common group effort ? I know there are no quick fixes, but still...
I think me and my quintet mates many years ago managed to do that, to start making music together I mean, but it took us 1 1/2 years of weekly practise til that kind of feeling was established.

Bigboom wrote:

I have always been taught with my sections to match not only timing, articulation, and pitch, but also to match tone.

I'd like to hear peoples comments on tone. Should we also try to match tone? I'd never thought about it until recently. I use a G&W Bayamo mouthpiece and I get a huge rich tone. For our next concert we're going to play the Overture to Oberon by von Weber with lots of high (divisi) stuff so to make things a little easier I've been using my G&W Bora (smaller - brighter) for that piece. The Bora sounds good - different than the Bayamo of course, but still has a nice sound - I wouldn't use it though if the music were mostly below the staff.

Well, with the Bora, my tone better matches up with my one of my section mates (in the unison sections). I'm the strongest player in a section of 3, (I'm not going to match the 3rd) so should I use the Bora more often as long as the pieces don't call for lots of low stuff? The others in the section are set with their equipment and are not going to change to match my tone.

I almost always play the bottom parts as I have the most power down low. With the Overture to Oberon we've switched as the upper part stays higher than the others are used to.

Would it be less important when playing divisi parts versus unison? Of course no piece is going to be divisi the whole time.

Philip "wondering how people deal with section mates with different sound concepts" Jensen