Brass Band Transposition. Help Please!

[tylerferris1213]

Hello everyone! I've been asked to fill in with a brass band this week. There are two rehearsals, a dress rehearsal, and the concert in less than a week. I will not get the music until the rehearsal tomorrow. The kicker is that I've never played in a brass band and I have never read Bb bass treble clef parts. I would like to have some idea of what I'm doing before I walk in tomorrow. Is there a transposition trick I can use? I know for Eb treble I can read the music like it's in bass clef with 3 added flats. Can I do something similar for Bb treble? Also, because I don't have a BBb horn with more than 3 valves, I'll be taking my CC. I know it isn't "proper," but I don't have time to go out, borrow someone else's BBb, and familiarize myself with it. I don't know if that changes any potential transposing tricks. Any help is appreciated!

[Bob Kolada]

Bring your F and read the treble clef Bb part like it's bass clef euphonium.

[tylerferris1213]

That sounds like an easy transposition, but my 3/4 F doesn't have the horsepower or timbre for a low tuba part in this band. haha.

[tylerferris1213]

I've never played trumpet.

[michael_glenn]

Read it like bass, add two flats, play CC and pretend it's F. You'll get the hang of it. I'll show you tomorrow!

Or... read like bass, add two flats, read up a fifth and down an octave, or just down a fourth. If you pretend CC is F, that will do the down a fourth for you.

[timothy42b]

A few choices:

Read tenor clef, add two flats to the key
.

Wouldn't that be alto clef? He's reading a Bb bass clef part, not a Bb treble clef.

I could do it in the staff but ledger lines would kill me. I might resort to writing in an occasional note name.

[iiipopes]

This is one case where the short cuts don't cut it. At the risk of infuriating the rest of the forum membership, all the above don't work. I've tried them. If the OP were playing an Eb tuba where he could pretend the transposed treble clef notation was concert pitch bass notation, add three flats to the key signature, and adjust accidentals accordingly, it might work. But all the nonsense about F tubas and alto/tenor clefs just don't cut it, in this application, especially with BBb tuba playing BBB style BBb tuba parts. All it does is make the matter more confusing.

I played trumpet in school band, tuba in high school/college/community band, and currently play euph, both TC and BC in one community band, trumpet in another, and tuba in another. Forty years ago, as a high school freshman, I did the same thing in reverse: went from Bb trumpet standard transposed treble clef notation to tuba/souzy concert bass clef notation. I just did it. I got a tuba Rubank book and sat down over the weekend after getting assigned the souzy and just learned it. And all in less than two weeks between getting the horn at the beginning of the school year and the first Friday marching football half-time show. And I learned the marching patterns at the same time.

Purchase an elementary trumpet/baritone TC method book with a good fingering chart, practice the exercises, and just learn it. it can be done in a dedicated weekend of woodshedding.

[aqualung]

All transpositions are nothing more than simple addition and subtraction of musical intervals. This is a concept everyone leans in early grade school. If you can mentally add or subtract numbers no larger than 12, you can transpose.
If you don't know musical intervals, it's really time to learn them.
Here's one helpful hint: if there is an some kind of an accidental on the original pitch, there will be some kind of accidental on the transposed pitch (assuming you are thinking in the proper key sig). Also - a sharp never becomes a flat, or vice versa.
The very term "accidental" is a misnomer. The symbol is put there on purpose, and is essential.

[tclements]

The way my guys do it on CC tuba: Make like you are reading bass clef, add 2 flats, use F tuba fingerings. Adjustments need to be made for accidentals.

[roweenie]

Purchase an elementary trumpet/baritone TC method book with a good fingering chart, practice the exercises, and just learn it. it can be done in a dedicated weekend of woodshedding.

Just do it!

This is really good advice. Even though the notes on the page are different, the fingerings patterns are (of course) identical.

It seems to me (and it might just be simply that this is the way my brain works ) that it is actually more work to figure out convoluted transpositions than it is to just learn a new set of fingerings. After all, this is what we do when we pick up a tuba in a different key, right?

(The only "fly in the ointment" is that a B flat trumpet/baritone fingering chart won't be of much use when using a CC tuba. If you take this route, it might be best to make up your own fingering chart to work from - photocopy the original, and amend the fingerings on the page - or just make "Mr. Three Valves" happy, and just bring your 3 valve BB flat tuba..... )

If there are any notes on the band music that might "throw you for a loop" (double sharps, etc.), there is no crime in writing in the correct fingering (or any of the other notes, for that matter).

As a nice side benefit, this knowledge will open up a whole new avenue of literature that was previously not available to you.

As a side note, many of the brass band arrangements published in the last 10 years or so oftentimes come with bass-clef-concert-pitch BB flat bass parts.....

[Biggs]

this

Purchase an elementary trumpet/baritone TC method book with a good fingering chart, practice the exercises, and just learn it. it can be done in a dedicated weekend of woodshedding.

and this

As a nice side benefit, this knowledge will open up a whole new avenue of literature that was previously not available to you.

are great pieces of under-repeated advice on TubeNet. I'm not saying that other methods of sight-transposition don't work (the math checks out) or are somehow 'gimmicky' (I've certainly done it with Eb treble parts) but most of them are so convoluted (i.e. "subtract three sharps and make like you're reading alto clef on a CC tuba, then read the music out of a mirror using only left-hand fingerings, but reverse the whole thing if you're in the southern hemisphere") that I fail to see how they're any easier than just reading it native, as if you were a cornet player. If this guy doesn't read Bb treble fluently (no disrespect, OP, I wasn't born doing it either), what makes you think he reads tenor clef fluently?

I got into brass band playing in a very similar situation to the OP, but taught myself to read Bb treble fluently by getting a trumpet-for-babies method book (<$10 at the local music store) and drilling it to the exclusion of other notation (sort of how you learn fingerings for a new key of tuba, perhaps?). Within a weekend, even a dummy like me could erase most of the fingerings I had penciled underneath in terror. I don't play in a brass band currently, but I do use my Bb treble reading ability, especially in the practice of sight reading, blowing through lead sheets, etc.

[tylerferris1213]

Thanks for all the suggestions! I'll let you all know how the rehearsal tonight goes.

[Donn]

I got into brass band playing in a very similar situation to the OP, but taught myself to read Bb treble fluently by getting a trumpet-for-babies method book (<$10 at the local music store) and drilling it to the exclusion of other notation (sort of how you learn fingerings for a new key of tuba, perhaps?).

That makes sense to me, not that I am any fount of knowledge on the matter, but my guess is that the pieces in that book were pretty close to play-by-ear, after once or twice through anyway. That's when drill starts to work, when you're not working out fingerings as you go along but just reading/playing, and your "ear" knows what note to play anyway.

[iiipopes]

Show your math as to how tenor clef doesn't work.

I was the top algebra student in my class in high school. Instead of wasting time, I woodshedded the lesson book instead. Now, forty years later, I can still play either with equal faculty, and I have concerts on each this fall. As posted above, a person can waste much time trying "fixes" and "shortcuts" instead of just doing it properly: purchase the lesson book and go woodshedding.

[timothy42b]

A few choices:

Read tenor clef, add two flats to the key
.

Wouldn't that be alto clef? He's reading a Bb bass clef part, not a Bb treble clef.

I could do it in the staff but ledger lines would kill me. I might resort to writing in an occasional note name.

Outside continental Europe, Bb bass clef basically doesn't exist. It certainly does not exist in a British Brass Band.
The parts are treble clef Bb, and tenor clef works.

Apologies, I didn't read carefully enough. Of course you are right. (although I have seen those "world part" Bb bass clef occasionally)

[timothy42b]

This is one case where the short cuts don't cut it. At the risk of infuriating the rest of the forum membership, all the above don't work.

I really think it depends on how our brains are wired.

For me the shortcuts or transposition tricks don't work very well, but seeing a different clef does.

I've met good players who were just the opposite.

[thevillagetuba]

Getzen CB-50? Hold down the fifth valve and pretend you are playing Bb trumpet.

I've never played trumpet.

If you engage the fifth and use regular C tuba fingerings, then you'll be "pretending to play Bb trumpet."

[Erik_Sweden]

My take on this is to get the music in advance and rewrite them in a computer, transpose and print it.
I don't read BC so when playing in a Concert band I rewrite all.
Works for me

[Donn]

I've done that!

In the situation that brought me to that, it wasn't really a key transposition, it was just crazy key signatures with three armloads of sharps or flats, switching back and forth several times on the page and half my notes accidentals anyway. I'm not fastidious enough about my music theory to care why, and I'm not that good of a reader, so it went into the musical notation editor and came out in one key with minimal accidentals, and a clearer print too.

[tylerferris1213]

Update! I looked at the music like it was in bass clef and played my CC tuba with F tuba fingerings. It finally clicked about halfway through rehearsal.