6/4 glut

[Mary Ann]

Back to the comparison with horns -- I like my sound up close (my ears) with a deeper cup, but I do not think the sound carries as well as a more shallow one that may sound "too bright" up close. And with my tiny lung capacity I just have to agree with the smaller throat size -- too bad we cannot order custom throat sizes to match our air capacity. You big guys would probably suffer "air backup" with a throat size that works for me, OR -- heh, find out you can play longer phrases without having to breathe!

[donn]

Speaking as an tuba bulletin board engineer (*), I'd like to see some slightly more rigorous connection between mouthpiece throat size and the volume of air that may pass while playing. I mean, sure, we know that a smaller aperture will restrict air flow, but it seems to me we're talking a couple of millimeters, and after that the simple aperture:throughput difference will drop off pretty fast. And accordingly, if you pick up a mouthpiece and blow some air in it, you can exhaust your lung capacity in a jiffy no matter what the mouthpiece.

I'm not going to say mouthpieces don't differ in this respect, but then I'm not sure they do - if you allow the performer to do whatever it takes to play the mouthpiece efficiently. Another way to put that: one player may find a mouthpiece takes a lot of air, another might not. The differences that are involved in this effect, could very well include smaller throats, so we might end up finding that smaller throats do take less air, for some people. Even though there's no obvious physical reason for it.

(My job title, long ago when I had one, did indeed include the word "Engineer", but it was a case like "Sanitary Engineer" that made a mockery of the traditional modern engineering profession with respect to credentials of various sorts. I acquired no certifications of any kind, and in fact had practically no formal education in the discipline. But on the internet, what the hell, who cares?)

[MiBrassFS]

.

[bloke]

listening:

This might not make very good sense or I might not be expressing it very clearly, but - when I'm working in an orchestra - I listen up close when I'm playing chords with the trombones, and/yet listen to how I sound out in the hall when I'm playing bass lines underneath the entire orchestra.
...yeah... I also listen up close when I'm playing stuff with the basses... it's rude as hell to drown them out or to not match their style or certainly to not match their tuning.

The lady who's currently playing principal bass in one of the orchestras I work with is someone with whom I chat from time to time, and ask her if I'm stepping on any of their stuff. She knows that I don't want her patronizing me, and she continues to tell me that I'm not stepping on their lines. She does admit that - when things get really loud - she/they interpret where the beat is from where I putt it, and I guess that makes sense.

[gocsick]

Just saw a posting about the Winner of the Met Opera spot: Hiroshi Nakatchi on a Nirschl York.

Just another datapoint for the discussion.

[MiBrassFS]

.

[MiBrassFS]

.

[bloke]

I’m 100% sure you can’t.

perfect response (to a transparent troll).

[MiBrassFS]

.

[bloke]

Hey...I don't think all that much of you, but I don't consider you a "nobody", and - see? - you just admitted that you can.

[MiBrassFS]

.

[MiBrassFS]

.

[MikeS]

Since we seem to be arguing about reverberation in big spaces rather than talking about 6/4 tubas, perhaps we can all listen to this together, calm down and smile. This is one guy with one trombone and a tape recorder back in 1976. Headphones are recommended. You are allowed to speculate on how much better this might have been if Stuart Dempster had done it on a CC York-o-Phone.

[bloke]

My comments - which seemed to have triggered all the others - weren't referring to reverberation at all. They were referring to listening to how I sound with the entire orchestra in the entire performance space vs. listening to how I'm lining with the trombone section and/or the basses (timing/style/tuning/phrasing) right there in my little corner of the performance space.

sidebar - reverberation: (not my topic)
Most American venues don't feature very much of it at all. I'm fairly grateful that this is the case, and occasionally find it a bit difficult to sort things out when there's a tremendous amount of it (in regards to duration). When I encounter a tremendous amount of it, I find myself backing off of the quantity of sound production - simply so that my own reverberating sound dies away sooner to a low level, and doesn't hang over as badly into subsequent musical events.

On the front end of this subtopic, I admitted that I might not have expressed my thoughts very clearly, but/and past history hints towards intentional misinterpretation for the purpose of being argumentative.

trolling:
When I sense that a small group of people log on to here just to see if they can find ways to start arguments, that's when I begin to shift into trolling mode. If something's going to be stupid, it might as well also be funny, yes?

[Mary Ann]

Since we seem to be arguing about reverberation in big spaces rather than talking about 6/4 tubas, perhaps we can all listen to this together, calm down and smile. This is one guy with one trombone and a tape recorder back in 1976. Headphones are recommended. You are allowed to speculate on how much better this might have been if Stuart Dempster had done it on a CC York-o-Phone.

Totally off topic, but back when I played electric violin with a rock band, I had an Echoplex. Every night at some point during the gig, the rest of the band would leave the stage and I would do a several minutes solo "playing along with myself" with that. There isn't much natural reverb in most bars.

[Mary Ann]

Not recent days -- that was in the later 1970s. Talking Heads, that era. The guy who started the group had visions of making it big, and the band was good, but his originals were all about his abusive childhood and it wasn't going to go anywhere. When he started giving about 90% of the proceeds to the sound guy who was "indispensable" I left for more pecuniarily rewarding pastures. I also was not fond of working from 10PM to 3 AM and getting home as it was getting light out.

[LCTuba89]

Owned a 6/4 BBb. The sound was dark and full under the bell. But once you’re in a section of tubas in a large room, any tuba will sound huge. I now play EEb 4-valve compensator and it’s all the tuba I need. I’ve supported an entire 50 piece band by myself with it just fine. Let the room do the work.