Tuba and Flute

[Todd S. Malicoate]

What would they do...play the melody together in octaves? How boring.

Czardas is a solo...what would be the point of arranging it into a duet?

Also, tuba and flute? That's going to be very difficult to pull off from a balance standpoint. VERY difficult. I vote no to the idea.

[Mike Finn]

I seem to recall hearing a euphonium duet version of this, where they traded phrases (and played some in unison). It worked pretty well. I have to agree with Todd, it would be difficult to pull this off from a balance standpoint. There are some clever flute-tuba duets out there already, if you've got a flute player that you'd like to work with and you're just looking for some material. "The Elephant and the Fly" comes to mind.

[circusboy]

There are also some very nice string bass/flute duets written by Bert Turetsky that might be worth a look for adaptation . . . .

[peter birch]

you could always try the bassoon/flute literature

[djwesp]

Tubabob(?) Had a great duo of flute and tuba going for a while.

They found quite a lot of good rep and transcriptions for the two instruments.

He'd be the person I'd contact about that kind of stuff. LORD that man can eat.

[DelVento]

I've played Hartley's tuba/flute stuff (on euphonium) and it's pretty fun.

It's hard posting on these forums with a bunch of overly-critical musicians shooting down any idea you have. I think it would be fine to do Czardas for tuba and flute...it's been done with 2 violins, 2 euphoniums, 4 trombones...so why not flute and euphonium.

You should do some of your own arranging and throw in some neat cadenzas and thematic effects somewhere.

-John

[Ken Herrick]

Let your imagination go and see if you can mentally "hear" such a duet. If I had a decent notation/midi program running, I reckon I could come up with a tuba - flute duet of Czardas which would not be too bad as a bit of a novelty piece. Think in the mold of somebody like Fletcher with a picollo trumpet player doing something in the Phillip Jones Brass style.

Now, I should think that a bright young university tuba player should be able to sit down and do this as an arranging exercise which might actually "impress" some prospective future teacher at one of the better schools when he sent his CD of his performance as a bit of audition material.

I often think, when I see people here asking for arrangements of this, that, or the next chart, why not do some good ear training - dictation - work and make your own arrangements? It could be a better way to spend time than some of the personal point scoring which often goes on here.

A serious student should be able to listen to a good performance of some work and write out a copy with all the articulations, dynamics and other small details. Doing this sort of exercise IS very good brain training and will actually help with sight reading as well as it helps form the mental connection between pitch and those little specks of fly s++t on paper.

There are probably more paying positions for good composers, arrangers, and copyists (with or without computerised notation) than there are for tuba players!

[Biggs]

It's hard posting on these forums with a bunch of overly-critical musicians shooting down any idea you have.

Must not be that hard, eh?