Learning and Adjusting to C Tuba

[DeltaHalo]

About a month ago now I purchased an Eastman EBC632 as my first personal horn and obviously, based on the title of this thread, it is in C.
I have been working on adjusting and I am wondering if anyone has any kind of advice on how to speed up the process. Some days I can read decent, other days I revert back to playing off of Bb fingerings. I write all my fingerings in to the music so that I can play it in ensembles here at Berry College, but sight reading is rough. If anyone has any kind of tips about this please feel free to let me know. I have been made aware that it is a slow process since it is the first time that I have played a tuba that was not Bb in 10 years, but it is still frustrating because I feel like I have reverted back to square one of playing all over again.

-DeltaHalo

[Sousaswag]

Just keep playing. A lot. It will come to you. I don't own a C (yet) but I play with a section mate who has a C and can get around on it fairly well. That just came from curiosity. Once you mess with it for a while you'll get it!

[swillafew]

I bought my first horn in C 11 months ago. It made it's debut in a quintet 4 months ago. I was playing a lot of F in between times.

I started out with the easier parts of the Arban book, and played the arpeggio pages that have 12 key signatures. The page titled Chord of the Dominant Seventh is worth the time invested.

[fenne1ca]

Avoid familiar music as much as possible - at least for a bit. Things you even partially memorized on BBb will be the best candidates to trip you up. I strongly recommend working your way through an elementary-level book. This will go quickly, but will give you lots of reputation *reading* the "meaty" register. After that, graduate to your preferred fundamentals exercises (I like the Hrass Gym), but continue to *read* it, no matter your familiarity with the exercises. Along with that, start in on medium-easy (in a technical sense) etude books - Bordogni, Tyrell, etc. Then just keep the curve going into solo work and harder etudes like Blazhevich and Kopprasch.

Essentially, you *are* at square one again, but your progression will be much, MUCH faster, since you are already a trained musician. Good luck!

[Ken Crawford]

Stop writing in fingerings. It's a crutch that is slowing you down.