tuba - the "other" bass instrument

chuck3 · #1 08-24-2009, 10:43 PM

I'm fully prepared for scorn and derision. But I read this on wikipedia (I'm prepared for scorn and derision about that too) and it kinda got me thinking:

"The tuba has been used in jazz since the genre's inception. In the earliest years, bands often used a tuba for outdoor playing and a double bass for indoor performances. In this context, the tuba was sometimes called "brass bass", as opposed to the double bass, which was called "string bass"; it was not uncommon for players to double on both instruments."

Anyone here ever played one of these things? Just examining them, they look like awesome bass instruments. A Bb tuba is actually like 18 feet of tube, just curled up so that you can actually hold the damn thing.

So, I'm talking bass, just the brass variety.

Bass Barrister · #2 08-24-2009, 11:12 PM

Yep . . . got four of them myself, 3 Bbs and an old Conn Eb from the 1930s. Tubas come in 4 flavors: BBb, CC, Eb, and F. BBb (or Bb) are most common in school and general use. Most orchestral players, in the US at least, play C tubas. Eb and F tubas are used as "bass" tubas for specialty work, although some folks use large Fs as their primary axe. Eb (or EEb) are often found in British brass bands. Then, of course, there are the sousaphones and helicons.

In the early days of audio recording, tubas were often substituted for DBs because the early mikes could not pick up the low freqs of the DB. It became common to use tubas with forward facing bells, known as "recording" bells. Some tubas, like the old KIngs and Conn Monsters, were sold with removable upright AND recording bells. Some of these, like the ofd COnn 20J, can weigh 30 or more pounds and carry a bore size of .850" It takes a LOT of air to power one of these.

chuck3 · #3 08-24-2009, 11:41 PM

wow ... that's excellent. Great thing about TB, I thought maybe I'd connect with someone on this topic.

I think there's a legit connection between upright bass and tuba in the early days of jazz, dixieland and bluegrass. So I'm thinking of getting a beginner tuba to check it out. It's a Yamaha YBB-201, I think it's a 3-valve 4/4 although I am in the process of confirming that before I go ahead. What do you think of that deal in the $850 range? The retail prices on Musicians Friend are multiples of that.

BTW I'm a barrister in my day job. So I'm used to moving major air.

Marcus Johnson · #4 08-25-2009, 12:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chuck3

I'm fully prepared for scorn and derision.

Not from me... I love the big ol' thangs. Talk about moving some air! I played them a bit as a trumpet major.... I remember being truly humbled.

I really dug that band that Arthur Blythe had years ago, with tuba replacing the bass. I think there was a cellist as well... that was some wild ****.

Bruce Lindfield · #5 08-25-2009, 05:14 AM

Never been interested myself, but at the Jazz Summerschool I go to regularly I have always been amazed by the playing of Oren Marshall - who has taught on the Summerschool and who plays top-level Jazz gigs in Europe as well as other music.

He plays a custom-made Tuba, where the bell points forward and his sound is unique - I've heard him play beautiful solos, totally weird noises and even things like funky bass lines to Stevie Wonder tunes that sound almost like synth bass!

I recently bought an album called Big Air on which he features as bassist for the ensemble - well worth checking out!!

CD Description
A transatlantic supergroup! Big Air is a collaboration between UK jazz artists and some of the leading US players - Chris Batchelor & Steve Buckley (Loose Tubes) , Myra Melford, Jim Black & Oren Marshall. Winners of the BBC Jazz Award for New Work plus BBC Jazz on 3 best album for 2008.

"The music is hard to define concisely - perhaps a stripped-down version of Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band for a rhythm section, with Cecil Taylor appearing as featured soloist might get somewhere near it."--Guardian

"A sublime blend of the highly structured and mecurially improvised."--Metro

Mixmasta J · #6 08-25-2009, 06:21 AM

Yep, I play tuba and bass. I also play trombone and euphonium. It is kind of a nice double because if your jazz combo wants to change things up and play a little New Orleans jazz/dixie land.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like if the tuba had stayed as the favored instrument of jazz groups throughout the years instead of the bass....

Mike Goodbar · #7 08-25-2009, 08:06 AM

There used to be a PBS show on New Orleans cooking (Great Chefs of New Orleans, maybe?) that I used to watch just to hear the tuba player in the background music (plus, I admit, the food looked delicious). Can't remember the full instrumentation, but they played all styles, not just Dixieland-style (seem to remember classical guitar ala Charlie Byrd).

Anyway, what impressed me about the tuba player was his walking bass lines. Not only the was his note choice superb, but he simulated the attack, decay...even dead-string noises...of a double bass perfectly. Nice stuff

Matthijs · #8 08-25-2009, 08:34 AM

I took up Tuba a year ago. I was inspired by a small brass band playing old school funk. Wow: sex machine on a horn! It's not a easy instrument to master though.

WalterBush · #9 08-25-2009, 09:07 AM

I played tuba and sousaphone all through high school. I loved it, and learned quite a bit about constructing bass lines--good or bad--from orchestral tuba parts.

They're murderously expensive compared to a good bass guitar, so I never ended up buying one, and of course my band director wouldn't let me leave with mine.

Bruce Lindfield · #10 08-25-2009, 09:10 AM

It seems like this is the big difference between the US and UK - so it sounds like a lot of schools in the US have marching bands where a Tuba is part of the set-up - this is much much rarer in the UK and Tuba is really an exclusively orchestral instrument?

davidAaronCarte · #11 08-25-2009, 11:51 AM

I've given some thought to picking it up
I jammed with a guy who doubles a few weeks ago, I wish I caught his name

Bass Barrister · #12 08-25-2009, 12:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bruce Lindfield

It seems like this is the big difference between the US and UK - so it sounds like a lot of schools in the US have marching bands where a Tuba is part of the set-up - this is much much rarer in the UK and Tuba is really an exclusively orchestral instrument?

Tubas are an essential part of the British brass bands that seem to be found in just about every town in the UK, large and small. But, they don't call them tubas, they are Basses. The standard brass band complement has 4: 2 BBb basses and 2 Eb basses. Even here in the US, older band music often has parts for Bass in Bb and Bass in Eb. Up to the early 1950s, it was standard to start kids on Eb tubas, because they are generally smaller in size and bore, and because the Eb fingerings are the same as those for trumpet. This practice died during the 1960s but, within the last few years, there has been renewed interest in the Eb tubas. This is partially a result of renewed interest in the American brass band, an adaptation of British-style brass bands.

Here's one of our local groups:
http://www.chicagobrassband.org/

Marcus Johnson · #13 08-25-2009, 01:04 PM

I used to really dig playing in small brass groups in high school and college.... quintets, brass choirs, etc. I still get a rush from hearing that sound.

One of the great guys in the biz was Rich Matteson, who did a lot of the college circuits back then. He played the hell outta tuba, euphonium, just about any low brass actually. Good jazz player as well, and a great educator and all around good guy.

Bruce Lindfield · #14 08-26-2009, 02:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bass Barrister

Tubas are an essential part of the British brass bands that seem to be found in just about every town in the UK, large and small. But, they don't call them tubas, they are Basses. The standard brass band complement has 4: 2 BBb basses and 2 Eb basses. Even here in the US, older band music often has parts for Bass in Bb and Bass in Eb. Up to the early 1950s, it was standard to start kids on Eb tubas, because they are generally smaller in size and bore, and because the Eb fingerings are the same as those for trumpet. This practice died during the 1960s ...

I think you are talking about Northern British towns - I have lived in the South all my life and have never seen a brass band - over here they were mostly associated with collieries - i.e. Coal Mining - where pits had their own brass bands.

But as you mention - these died out in the 1960s with the closure of most of the pits and the death of British manufacturing industry - I was growing up as a child in the 60s and by then "Brass Bands" were seen as archaic - a thing of the past and associated with a Northern Britain of "Flat Caps and Whippets " - part of jokes I heard about "Them Up North" - basically a way to deride those living outside "Swinging London" where the culture was changing to modern music!!

WalterBush · #15 08-26-2009, 02:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bruce Lindfield

It seems like this is the big difference between the US and UK - so it sounds like a lot of schools in the US have marching bands where a Tuba is part of the set-up - this is much much rarer in the UK and Tuba is really an exclusively orchestral instrument?

I didn't play a tuba in marching band...I played a Sousaphone! Before that, I played bass guitar on the sidelines of any field we played, with a battery-powered Peavey on a cart. When marching, our band aid would push the thing next to me.

My band director's life was incomplete before he had enough people to put together a tuba section, and he had to draft me and a bass clarinetist (who didn't read bass clef in the beginning) into it. I can't imagine a large-sized American high school without at least a couple of Sousaphone bells sticking up somewhere.

The Sousaphone is still Bb, I believe...do you guys not have them in the UK much, or are they called something else?

Bruce Lindfield · #16 08-26-2009, 02:56 AM

When I was at school - most were lucky to have any kind of music dept. - a marching band was beyond the wildest dreams of a single music teacher with no more resources than an out of-tune piano and some hand percussion..

Gornick · #17 08-26-2009, 03:05 AM

For tubas in a modern jazz setting check out Henry Threadgill. One of my favorites. He loves his tubas!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iMgVw8U0Vc

Jesse Rosenburg · #18 08-27-2009, 08:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bruce Lindfield

I think you are talking about Northern British towns - I have lived in the South all my life and have never seen a brass band - over here they were mostly associated with collieries - i.e. Coal Mining - where pits had their own brass bands.

"Brassed Off" is a great flick about those bands! The film sports Ewan McGregor and Pete Postlethwaite.

I was "contra bassoon" in one wind ensemble and used to stand next to the tuba section in our high school band. I'm not sure anyone could hear my sawing on my DB

Love tuba, especially in in klezmer like Yid Vicious.

Fogducker · #19 08-29-2009, 11:23 AM

I watch BIG JOE'S POLKA PARTY on RFD-TV just to catch the tuba guys. Some of those guys are real creative others are well, root and the 5th. Lots of key changes on some of those old songs.

Fog

Marcus Johnson · #20 08-29-2009, 01:01 PM

That's a great show! Some of those bands are burnin'.

When I was in college in Wisconsin, most of the music majors there were doing the usual thing for gigs; jazz or funk projects that saw limited financial success. But there was one group of wise students who formed an ass-kicking polka band, and they worked all over southern Wisconsin, gigged constantly. They cleaned up! And they had a blast doing it.