Lots of Tubas

Alex F · Post by **Alex F** » Fri May 06, 2005 2:08 pm

This is a nice sounding group, judging from the short clips on their main web page. They have CDs available. I don't read German - Is this also a band of the Austrian armed forces?

OldBandsman · Post by **OldBandsman** » Fri May 06, 2005 7:21 pm

Helicons! Oh Yeah!

Look how far out the first guy in the picture has his first valve slide. Correction for a sharp Ab.

That's gonna be me come the Memorial Day parade here... my first parade in 30 years ... I'm gonna take my Cerveny helicon.. pull the slide... fill the road with big sound!

Benjamin · Post by **Benjamin** » Fri May 06, 2005 7:31 pm

I seen a band with 17 Tuba one time. Of course there were like 600 people in it.

Kevin Hendrick · Post by **Kevin Hendrick** » Fri May 06, 2005 10:03 pm

Brian Bowman is God wrote:The sound is pretty washed out in that ensemble though....it sounds good on songs that require a loud Tuba section, but on most stuff it all sounds very bottom heavy.

The whole deal with the Tuba section dominating the entire band is kind of awesome (And quite funny) to be perfectly honest with you....even though it sounds pretty bad .

This is where the whole "restraint" thing comes in. With a large tuba section in a small ensemble, how soft you can play is frequently more important than how loud you can play. Sometimes you can "scale" the dynamics from what an optimum-sized section would be playing to the actual section size ... for instance, if a good section size would be 6 tubas (a.k.a. a "six-pack"

) for a 100-piece ensemble, scaling that to 55 would give you 3.3 tubas (roughly, between 3 and 4), so if each player plays about half as loud as the dynamics indicate, you'll have a good starting point (it's not perfect -- nothing is -- but it'll get you in the ballpark).

fpoon · Post by **fpoon** » Fri May 06, 2005 11:01 pm

Regarding big *** marching bands, FSU is indeed big, but I think Texas A&M is bigger. I wanna say 450? And they march 40ish tubas. Any Aggies on here have the actual numbers?

FSU maybe like 400?

I know I march in a group of 330 here at Virginia Tech, and you can hardly hear our 20 tubas at times. And we play LOUD.

Again, goes to show that you can NEVER have enough tubas.

punk_tuba · Post by **punk_tuba** » Fri May 06, 2005 11:06 pm

the uconn marching band has about 20 sousaphones in it

sinfonian · Post by **sinfonian** » Sat May 07, 2005 11:23 am

The rule of thumb that always comes to my mind (I think I heard it back in HS) is 1 tuba for every 12 players in the band. What maes me think this is about right is that if you look at the large sympony orchestra they usually have about 110 players with 9 to 10 string basses (or about 1 to 12).

windshieldbug · Post by **windshieldbug** » Sat May 07, 2005 11:29 am

sinfonian wrote:if you look at the large sympony orchestra they usually have about 110 players with 9 to 10 string basses

... and they only need ONE tuba...

Jeffrey Hicks · Post by **Jeffrey Hicks** » Sun May 08, 2005 10:18 am

In the grand old days of the All Ohio State Fair Band we marched with 24 Sousaphones in about a three hundred piece group. The band has since shrunk due to budget cuts and lack of interest unfortunately. It was a lot of fun. Them basses was always a great time. If I can get my pictures scanned in I will post them.

ufoneum · Post by **ufoneum** » Sun May 08, 2005 10:42 am

Who cares about the tubas, check out the euphoniums in front of them!

windshieldbug · Post by **windshieldbug** » Sun May 08, 2005 11:46 am

ufoneum wrote:Who cares about the tubas, check out the euphoniums in front of them!

You mean the baritones