Lots of Tubas

[Ace]

I count at least NINE tubas in this band. Too many, I think.

http://www.tirol-kaiserjaegermusik.at/f ... 07_JPG.htm

[Ames0325]

TRAITOR You can never have too many tubas!!!
JK

But honestly as long as they are in balance with the band that didn't seem like an overwheming amount of tubas to me.
Amy

[Charlie Goodman]

And for that matter, if you look, there's rather a lot of everything.

[fpoon]

You say too many tubas, I say pretty freaking cool...

This band isn't a good example (cause its not massive), but the BEST bands are the huge ones. I know this is gonna piss folks off, but I wish the Wind Ensemble movement had never gotten started. The big bands are the most fun to play in and the most fun to listen to.

[Kevin Hendrick]

... as long as they are in balance with the band that didn't seem like an overwheming amount of tubas to me.
Amy

And for that matter, if you look, there's rather a lot of everything.

That's what makes it work! We have 9 tubas in our band (out of 110+ players), and we're far from being the largest section (18 trumpets, 18 clarinets, 14 flutes, etc.). When the conductor wants us to (not often!), we can shake the stage, but most of the time we concentrate on providing a solid (but not overbearing) foundation for the band. It's actually less physical work with a larger section ... we have to listen to each other, but we do that anyway, so it's no problem (and a lot of fun!).

[poomshanka]

For some reason, I'm thinking of beer...

[Tubainsauga]

I still beleive percy graingers idea of a balanced band. 6 tubas for every 2 flutes.

[Ricko]

That looks like another good reason for another trip to Austria - I hope they all play as good as they look.

I just wonder why, with an ensemble that large, they need that butt ugly speaker cluster hanging down in the middle of the room...

[windshieldbug]

More tubas than trombones... maybe they just heard the calling...

[GC]

Did you notice the number of oval baritones on the row in front of the tubas? Ten.

I have to disagree with the idea that bigger is better in bands. A good big band can be awesome, but it's harder to maintain clarity of tone color, intonation, and tight ensemble with a big group. A mediocre or bad large band becomes noise after a while. Even with a lot of good groups, tones tend to wash out and become homogenized; this is not a bad thing for some kinds of music, especially corps-oriented marching music, but it can be a killer for music that's written for smaller ensembles, like Holst or Vaughan-Williams.

[manatee]

On days where I am the only tuba vs. a 70+ piece Community Band, I long for the company of other tubas.

[Kevin Hendrick]

A good big band can be awesome, but it's harder to maintain clarity of tone color, intonation, and tight ensemble with a big group.

Agreed -- you have to stay on top of it all the time -- but it can be done.

[Arkietuba]

In the 2004 Arkansas All-State Symphonic band we had about 120 members 8 of which played tuba. I now go to a Div. II college (we're trying to become a Div. I-AA school this coming year). We had 17 sousaphones this past year. This coming year we're expecting 20+ sousaphones in a 200 piece marching band. So this isn't as uncommon as you might think.

[Alex F]

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]

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]

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

[Kevin Hendrick]

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]

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]

the uconn marching band has about 20 sousaphones in it

[sinfonian]

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).