What did you play today?

[GC]

I've been off the horn since July and finally was able to get back to community band Tuesday. Took a few minutes to get flexibility back, but otherwise did pretty well. Doing a concert in three weeks with a lot of heavy classical music transcriptions. Fun.

After surgery and months of PT, arm hurt a lot at the end of the rehearsal.

Probably won't be back to brass band because they have plenty of tubas, almost too many.

[the elephant]

I put in an hour each on the Yamaha and Mirafone. On the menu were long tones and vocalises with drone and strobe reference. I took a break for an hour and then put in another two hours on the Kurath, working on Broughton, Vaughan Williams, Gallay, Barat, and Bordogni.

Then I drank a bottle of water and slathered on some DCT.

[prairieboy1]

Today was Community Concert Band music practice at home. Warmup and then "Fiddler On The Roof", "Baba Yetu", "Blue Tango", "Elton John Favorites","Gabriel's Oboe","The Lion King","Tijuana Brass In Concert" and "Semper Fidelis". I then took a break and read the Elephant's post in this same thread and decided several Brass Band pieces needed attending to as well.They were "Second Sinfonietta for Band", "A Gallimaufry Suite", "Serenata", and "Eternity".
I pulled out the King recording bell tuba for today and was quickly reminded of how good a tuba it is. It wouldn't pass the visual test for Brass Band, too bad I say. A productive late morning and early afternoon practice today.

[anadmai]

Probably won't be back to brass band because they have plenty of tubas, almost too many.

Glad to hear you’re on the mend.

What brass band did you play in?

[tubatodd]

With my new job, practicing is going to be more sparse than I'd like. Today I practices etudes on my Rudi Meinl 4/4 CC. The more I play it the more I really enjoy it. Next weekend is the monthly rehearsal of the group I play in. It will be the first time using the Rudi in rehearsal with that group. I did bring it to a gig back in November in a tiny low ceiling room at a retirement village. That didn't count. :)

[the elephant]

Took yesterday off.

Today I have played my Kurath for about two hours, working with yet another mouthpiece, even in search of one that I like with this tuba. I keep gravitating toward my old Doug Elliott R cup with a 132-4N rim and an R5M shank, but then Joe's OG Ultimate steps in and takes it back. They are very different, but both possess some notable qualities.

Tough choice, only to be finally made after probably hundreds of hours of playing in all keys and ranges until I have the tuba itself sorted, and it becomes easier to decide on the mouthpiece.

ugh…

Next, I need to dedicate about two hours to the Yamaha, focusing on my two folders for the MSO's upcoming programs. One is a kiddie show where I might opt to use the cut Miraphone. The other is music from all nine (ten?) Star Wars films. That program will definitely be played on the Yamaha. There are a few tuba solos (or soli with woodwinds) and one challenging (for me) movement where Luke and Han fight off the tie fighters in the Falcon, called "Here They Come!" that I love to play. But I always have to expend extra effort to work that one up

Tomorrow I will not practice as I have the two brass quintet performances in the morning, with the evening rehearsal being for the kiddie show, again, maybe on the Mirafone.

Starting Tuesday, I'm off all week, so I can start taking the Miraphone apart to begin my big rebuild project. I have to take the bell and bottom bow off, then I have to do some gutting to the valve section to pull some of the rotor cases from the slides. Usually, this involves taking the slides off the inner branches, which I hate doing. I am hoping that I don't have to fully disassemble this tuba again.

Remember that this tuba was sort of slapped together to see if, after having been cut to CC, it would be worth this much work. I think that it is.

So here we go…

[humBell]

I tried to play the game thread of dientify the tuba, but apparently once the original poster's mystery was solved everyone else lost interest. Oh well.

I am in a pit orchestra, and it is prod week, so i have somewhere i need to be every night. Meaning no travelling until show closes. Alas, i did not practice as much as i should have, but bass parts are usually kind with regards to that. I did feel really silly when i turned two pages at once, didn't figure it out until the number was done.

[tubatodd]

With my new job, practicing is going to be more sparse than I'd like. Today I practices etudes on my Rudi Meinl 4/4 CC. The more I play it the more I really enjoy it. Next weekend is the monthly rehearsal of the group I play in. It will be the first time using the Rudi in rehearsal with that group. I did bring it to a gig back in November in a tiny low ceiling room at a retirement village. That didn't count. :)

I did bring a mouthpiece with me to keep in my office. No one has asked me what the strange blue object is.

IMG_20260202_110805993.jpg (119.53 KiB) Viewed 2011 times

[Dopey]

I had a much longer break than planned. After the music charity events came the whole house came down with the flu (18 month old first kid, so not that surprising). I ended up missing both Christmas concerts.

For charity ended up raising around 750 USD this year. Here is a clip from the first day;

After the flu was visiting family, holidays, etc then a bit more random colds from the now almost 2 year old returning to school.. and it was basically February when I made it back to a brass band rehearsal, therefore playing.

Have some brass band pieces on the stand, James cook Circumnavigator and Meditation - the new convenant by James Curnow.

I also have ordered the Philip Sparke Tuba Concerto with brass band. So I have a printed page of a demo sheet from the retailer until it arrives -- first 35 or so measures before the watermark interfere. I'm fortunate that the brass band I play in would be up for performing it if I ever felt ready, this will push me to work on it. I am focusing on the first movement. I cannot play it currently, and my thought process is if I do work up the piece it'll mean i've improved some areas of my playing i'd like to focus on.

[the elephant]

I have not touched any of my horns since my Monday morning quintet performances. I have been sick and mostly sleeping very late or sitting on my posterior end,

I may practice some today, but probably not. I have stuff to get done in the shop. So it is a bit of a toss-up as to which direction I'll apply my efforts today.

[Mary Ann]

Still on the cello path and enjoying it. Now doing half the the 12 three octave scales as a warmup; instead of going through the keys based on adding sharps and flats, going up the fingerboard starting on low C, a half step at a time. Just now will be ready for the G string. Yeah i'm nuts, but I'm also starting to be able to play up on the A string without major floundering. The WW5tet is liking the cello on the horn part (did I say yet that yeah I'm nuts?)
My shoulders do not like lifting the 186, so sort of in limbo with that now. May get out the Hagen and see if it creates the same problem. Meh.
How do I make an "emoji" that has forward repeat sign followed by Meh followed by backward repeat sign? i should make a haiku consisting of mehs.

Meh meh meh meh meh
meh meh meh meh meh meh meh
meh meh meh meh meh

[the elephant]

Sorry, not an emoji, I made it using Finale. But at least it says what you are thinking…

Alternatively, I could make it with a lower-case "m" and perhaps no clef sign. I could also make it tiny.

[the elephant]

Maybe this? You would need to convert it to an SVG file, I think, so that it could be scaled down small enough.

[bloke]

I haven't played the tuba since forever except for the 3-hour job I played on Mardi Gras night with the E flat compensating recording bass.

That tuba is really easy to play, so I guess it's sort of a cheater tuba. It's easy to play 4/4 bass lines without sucking all the wind out of me, and it's easy to play pretty good solos (again) without having practiced at all,

but tonight I picked up fat bastard and started playing some stuff two octave lower than written. I have a lot of catch-up work to do, if I'm going to continue to be a tuba player.

[eeflattuba]

Instead of playing the Blazhevich that we all know I pulled out his Textbook for Tuba that I bought from Encore Music way back in 1990. It is a spiral bound book of etudes that has been talked about on this forum recently. Really challenging stuff on my bb flat Yamaha Neo.

[Mary Ann]

Maybe this? You would need to convert it to an SVG file, I think, so that it could be scaled down small enough.

I think what I'll do is take a screen shot and then smaller-ize it until I can fit it in a normal text space.
As in,

meh repeat.png (2 KiB) Viewed 1521 times

Well, that's a start. Mebbe just a bit bigger.

[humBell]

I got my original tuba out and played it with my ultimate mouthpiece.

I thought they sounded pretty good together, so maybe i have learned something in the past decade and a half?

[Colby Fahrenbacher]

I played some enjoyable educational orchestra concerts tonight. Fun Road trip story superimposed on enjoyable music that the kids seemed to get a kick out of. At one point the road-trippers stop at a gas station for snacks and poll the kids on what to get. Kit-kats and takis were the resounding favorite. I would have gone with the snickers, I'm a sucker for anything with caramel in it.

Played Jennifer Higdon's "Machine" for the second time today, and the tuba writing still baffles me. Some 40 measures of ascending up-beats culminating in a high F# followed by over an octave an a half leap down. Piece ends with a quintuplet run, two octave downward leap to a 16th note ascending scale. Not impossible to play, just strange (but fun) writing.

[Mary Ann]

We did a second-half-of-upcoming-concert's next-to-last rehearsal. Including Sound of Music, when I'm 64, parts of Hymn to the Highlands, which we are doing ALL the movements of, and that Dragons and Oboe modern piece that I actually like. If I can manage it, I may take my Zoom H4 and set it behind me during next week's dress, to hopefully get some tuba-heavy snippets to share on the brag page. But only if it is reasonably braggable.

[prairieboy1]

Our third Bridge City Brass Band performance of the season is coming up very shortly. Sunday, March 8th. Yesterday's rehearsal was spent just working on the spots that need attention. I finally know enough to not waste time playing the stuff I can already play and just focus on the trouble spots. An interesting program featuring works by Philip Harper and Jean Balissat among them.