Suggestions please for tactical tuba playing.

[2ba4t]

In a different post, I mentioned the question of using tactics to gain the best effect - especially in a loud tutti passage.

Kpen asked for other suggestions. I thought IMHO this would be an excellent and useful post topic.

It will depend on the generosity of the professional players who may feel they do not wish to divulge secrets.

As the least qualified, I'll start with stuff everyone knows:

1) (As previously) Hold back in the loudest passages until everyone else is tired and then push out a huge tuba sound as the note ends. When the basses, bones and timps are playing ffff nobody can't hear you at all anyway. (Yes, I can hear the shrieking denials). But as they die off, then you pounce (in tune, without hooting). The final effect is of the timps still bashing and the chord ending with a firm tuba bass note.
2)Bribe the nearest bass/bone whatever player to poke you hard at the end of those interminable rests (esp Borodin Te Deum [tedium]). You can sleep, read, smartphone, learn Sanskrit, post on tubenet- do so much.
3) Study the whole score really carefully to see how you are meant to fit in and with whom. Yes, many composers simply stick us in as extra bass trombones and noise machines. But many also know what a tuba is. Photocopy bits of full scores.
4) Always, always, always play Bydlo on a euphonium. It sounds wrong and falsetto on a bigger instrument even when played brilliantly. (Yes, I can hear the shrieking denials). This is a young tenor lamenting the fate of the Polish peasantry - who were nicknamed 'oxen' - 'bydlo'. It was written for a tiny 'peck horn' French tuba in c. Go play a cello concerto on a string bass. Yes, it sounds great but wrong.
5) If possible consider triggers which spring back very fast on the 4th, 1st valve slides etc. You can use them almost as valves then.
6) Make sure your horn is built sharp, then pull it out to just ring in with that band's pitch.
7) Be certain you are always perfectly in time with exposed notes. The most minute anticipation is sometimes necessary in a sluggish hall, opera pit, hall with closed curtains, place where you are seated far out etc.
Recent cheat discovery - absolute heresy. If you have only an F or Eb and need to be rumbling away far below the bass clef, make a CC crook, and add it to your general tuning slide. Pull out your valve slides and, hi presto, you have a CC tuba!! I have done this on a 983 EEb and a tiny 100 year old Hawkes non-comp Eb. Saves $15000 and lugging tubas. You may need to extend your second valve slide. Yes, the high 7th and 8th harmonics may not ring out - but you are not going to need them that night, are you? And in 30 seconds you can go back to being an Eb.

Anyway those were some obvious ideas just to arouse the wrath of the real pros and spur them into action.

[Bnich93]

1)make sure to properly adjust your various lefreques to save yourself from cosmic variance waves.
2)adjust your mouthpeice receiver gap or nobody will hear your dynamic nuances in the opening of scheherazade.
3)Mahler 1 must be played on a 6 valve silver plated miraphone starlight cut to F or your reputation will be forever tarnished.
4)always use a cimbasso for Verdi even if its not what the conductor wants, they'll learn.
5)strategically dent your bell to bounce the sound forward into the hall.
6)rotary tubas have bad partials because they might as well be big french horns.

[MartyNeilan]

In a different post, I mentioned the question of using tactics to gain the best effect - especially in a loud tutti passage.

Kpen asked for other suggestions. I thought IMHO this would be an excellent and useful post topic.

It will depend on the generosity of the professional players who may feel they do not wish to divulge secrets.

As the least qualified, I'll start with stuff everyone knows:

1) (As previously) Hold back in the loudest passages until everyone else is tired and then push out a huge tuba sound as the note ends. When the basses, bones and timps are playing ffff nobody can't hear you at all anyway. (Yes, I can hear the shrieking denials). But as they die off, then you pounce (in tune, without hooting). The final effect is of the timps still bashing and the chord ending with a firm tuba bass note.

6) Make sure your horn is built sharp, then pull it out to just ring in with that band's pitch.

1 - Some medium sized orchestras treat held brass notes almost as a forte-piano - hit the note and back off so the rest of the orchestra that doesn't play marching band instruments can be heard. A trombone section and I got chewed out once for playing too "Chicago" and holding the notes full volume instead of backing off to let the others be heard. Not every orchestra puts 110 people on stage, and this is apparently a common tradition in some regions of the country.

6 - If you are familiar with the concept of "stretch tuning" the last thing you want to risk is consistently being on the sharp side of the bass note.

[Donn]

1 - Some medium sized orchestras treat held brass notes almost as a forte-piano - hit the note and back off so the rest of the orchestra that doesn't play marching band instruments can be heard.

To some degree this seems like kind of a good thing even with just marching band instruments.

[windshieldbug]

6 - If you are familiar with the concept of "stretch tuning" the last thing you want to risk is consistently being on the sharp side of the bass note.

[Ken Herrick]

Somehow this all reminds me of a trombone player at Interlochen way back in the last century. Not much of a player but he hid that by "reading" advanced maths dissertations while the rest of the low brass were counting rests.

All very conducive to good music making...……..