Tuba puzzle

Not my tuba at all but this is just a convenient place to put a photo for a puzzle I am posing on Tubenet.

Symphony Orchestra

Well the practice has paid off somewhat. This week I got to sit in on a local Community Symphony Orchestra rehearsal. They were a pretty good orchestra!! We practiced Smetana's "Moldau" (or "Vltava" in Czech - from "Ma Vlast") and Tchaikovsky's "Capriccio Italien" for their upcoming concert. Great tuba parts in those two pieces and, although I say it myself, I thought I played pretty well and the new tuba sounded awesome - just filling the hall with beautiful sound when needed, and blending well with the rest of the brass in the quieter sections. This was my first time playing in a symphony orchestra for 30 years - I miss it. My old B&H EEb wouldn't have been anywhere near so good with this crowd - I just couldn't get anywhere near the same tone from it. Hopefully I might get to play with them again although they do have a university student who has helped them out on an "on call" basis so rightly they feel they need to ask if she is willing to be a regular member of the orchestra first. I shall just have to wait and see.

First concert - glad I have been practicing

Well today was the first concert playing the new Tuba in the Concert Band - I thought it went pretty well although I messed up the exposed high bit near the beginning of Fall Fair even though I had practiced it like mad - still more work to do to get that stuff cast iron.

I have been taking some lessons so as to do the new beast justice and they have certainly paid off. From only ever having had a couple of lessons about 30+ years ago so essentially being self taught I had a bunch of bad habits to unlearn and some new tricks and techniques to learn for the first time. Plus it has given me an incentive to

PRACTICE!!!

What a novel concept!!

I am now enjoying trying to fit in daily practice and get to know my instrument better and develop some techniques that I had basically ignored before because I could get away without using them. Things like ascending slurs (always soft toungued them in the past). They aren't as hard as I had thought.

Going to keep up this practice and lessons - makes it much more satisfying in the long run. But now I have to share the parctice time with my 12 year old son who is just starting to learn the trumpet. He's pretty keen - so much so that allowing him to practice is currently working as a reward for finishing his homework!!

Maintenance

Need to figure out how to properly maintain this thing. It didn't come with a manual!! Obviously they quite reasonably expect that anyone buying one of these things is reasonably knowledgeable already.

I found Jeff Funderburk's videos which seem pretty helpful. I wonder if there are other schools of thought though so I posted a query on Tubenet - we'll see what response that generates.

2nd valve trigger

Took a couple of photos of the second valve trigger to show its operation - click on the image for a scary, more than full sized, view of my hand!!

Normal position



Fully extended

Getting Lessons

Had a chance to blow on it a bit now. Man can this thing make sound. After 30+ years of being self taught I've decided that now is the time to take some lessons if I am to do this instrument anything close to justice so I found a local professional player and have set up an initial schedule with him. Need a couple of scales (2 octaves) and "something lyrical" for the first lesson (so I wrote out "The Ash Grove" in F - covers an octave and a third, has some sluring - should do as a start). I guess that will expose all the area I need to work on - I think I know some of them but some experienced insight will be invaluable.

Got to get out of the habit of those Eb fingerings, especially above Bb!!

Unfortunately I probably won't be able to have my first lesson until after Labour Day because of all the other stuff I have going on this month. Still - it gives me time to practice a bit.

I'll try and get some photos of the detailed bits - figuring out what to pull when is interesting - I think the 4th valve tuning slide might get some action with this fella.

Some details

Finally found some time to take some pics:

Back side


Front side:

On its side:


2nd valve trigger slide:



What was inside:

RM 0 and RM 0. (larger backbore than the RM 0) mouthpieces side by side:

Dwarfs the old B&H EEb - but I won't be completely putting that aside: