tuba quartet instruments

[bloke]

You guys aren't going to like this, and that's why I post most of the stuff I post.

Forget the two euphoniums, the bass tuba, and the contrabass tuba.

It's just too muddy-sounding.

Two English style baritones (or two rotary ones that feature bugles just as slim), a euphonium on 3rd, and a bass tuba on the fourth part.

With this combination, the chords usually work, the parts are distinguishable, the patrons can actually recognize the songs being played, and all that good stuff.

Also, whoever is playing third part on the euphonium should usually play "in the sound" (not stick out) unless they are given the melody or some prominent harmony part in the midst of an arrangement. Even if the typical muddy combination of two euphoniums, a bass tuba, and a contrabass tuba, the third part (aka 1st tuba) should be subdued, usually. When these quartets sound the worst, it's usually when the third of the four parts is being played out of balance (too loudly).

I'm not talking about weird "art music" that is played in university recitals. I'm talking about arrangements of tunes that make people smile - whereby there might be a chance of making a little bit of money playing them in a tap room / beer hall / etc.

If English style baritones are not available, the next best choice is American baritone horns on the first two parts (with nothing larger than a 6-1/2AL mouthpiece), but they are really too large.

An additional advantage to having the pair of baritones on the first two parts is that trombone quartets can also be played (which tend to feature higher tessitura... In other words an occasional B-flat, C, or D "way up there").

[Craig F]

Using instruments I own...

Mirafone 35w - Alto Euphonium in 6 ft F (4-valve model)
King 3 valve American Baritone
Mirafone 1258a Euphonium
Miraphone Firebird F Tuba 4x2

[bloke]

That seems good, as long as you can read and play the first parts with ease when using an F instrument.

I suspect patrons of tap rooms and beer halls enjoy seeing rotary instruments and lederhosen. Most people listen to music with their eyes, including probably a large percentage of musicians.

[Craig F]

That seems good, as long as you can read and play the first parts with ease when using an F instrument.

I know the F Tuba fingerings. They're just shifted up an octave. So, it works pretty well.

[bloke]

Of course !

[2nd tenor]

Is the Contra Bass Tuba really a muddy sounding instrument? It’s just my impression but BBb’s are beasts to drive and bump around in the basement, whilst a Euphonium can dance along and sing sweetly to the audience. Maybe the Trombone quartets’ get the pitch better with three Tenor Trombones plus one Bass Trombone.

[edfirth]

Nobody agrees with me on this but a sax quartet uses four different instruments. Soprano, alto, tenor, and bari, and if a quintet add the bass sax. Four distinctly different voices, like a barbershop quartet where the lead has a high speaking voice and the other three have different sounding lower voices. I played in the tuba quartet at the Rat and sang in the barbershop quartet at the Wesst Point Band . I think, and I know nobody will ever do it, A tuba quartet should be an alto (Eb),a euphonium(Bb), an Eb tuba, and a Bb tuba. The hard part of putting one together is getting a french horn player who is good at commecial music for the lead. I had one and he did some charts but then there wasn't a good enough Eb tuba player, lots of "I can play that on my small C" so I canned the idea having already given my alto horn to the french horn player. So that's my curmudgeonly rant. Best to all, Ed

[bloke]

Blending our posts, I go along absolutely with your analogy (saxophones), but also I think the E flat alto horn, the B flat baritone, the euphonium, and a sort of conservatively sized bass tuba (or a good sounding 3/4 contrabass, I suppose) is just a little more towards your logical recommendation.
I realize it cuts out more tuba players (with probably the collegiate invention of the tuba quartet having the specific purpose of involving tuba players in more chamber music), but one of the (sound) problems (at least, to my ears) with the tuba quartet thing is an actual tuba sitting on that third part playing up in the staff or on top of the staff, which often results in bad balance, due to that tuba range being so resonant.

John Mueller, I've mentioned, has put together a quartet for playing some little jobs around Memphis in tap rooms and beer halls. (LOL...Only one of the four of us is young enough to not be on Social Security and Medicare.) I suspect now that he's retired from both Pershing's Own and the University of Memphis, he's looking for some place to play. (bravo!)

During our first reading of some music (along with recording several German things to send out to tap rooms and beer halls in Memphis), I brought a small contrabass tuba, because that's what he had first thought he wanted me to do (was to play the bottom part)...but he changed his mind. I had to sort of whisper on that instrument to properly blend (3rd part) and not be too loud playing the least important of the four parts.

Yesterday (our second get together), I brought the F tuba and there was still a little bit of that same thing (me finding it necessary to sort of back way off and play in the sound - unless suddenly I had something other than harmony). I've mentioned it before that sometimes I use a Doug Elliott contrabass trombone mouthpiece in my larger of my two euphoniums. I can still make it up to a B-flat with that mouthpiece, but it gives me more access to pitches below the staff. I'm thinking that if we have some more rehearsals and reading sessions, I'll probably still bring the F tuba, but I think I'm also going to bring that euphonium with that mouthpiece.

I think there's a reason why Winston used Miraphone rotary euphoniums (as opposed to the English style compensating instruments that his students surely owned) at Tennessee Tech. There are more highs in the sound (Miraphone rotary) and it probably nudges the corporate sound more towards the type of sound that I am hinting at preferring.

I understand the importance of involving tuba players in chamber music in college, but I'm more speaking to moving the sound of this ensemble to something that's easier for casual patrons to interpret with their ears in regards to paying gigs (and no, I don't expect these gigs to pay much. )

Lederhosen:
Those that I had 45 years ago were long ago donated to Goodwill or something. I can imagine that ending up being some sort of semi-significant expense...

OH... I never addressed why I think the bottom/4th part should be played on a smaller size tuba:
It's because that part also ends up playing the melody sometimes, and it needs to sound clear, and not "foggy".

bar gigs:
Don't play too loud. People like to talk.
Put out a clear sound. People like to be able to interpret what they are hearing and recognize familiar tunes..

[Mary Ann]

Yr always assuming playing for an audience. Some of us play only for fun, not even slightly interested in playing for money, that career having been completed over in string-land. In my situation, I'll take any competent players I can find to read and have fun with TE quartets. I will say though, that many of the harder / higher bass tuba parts would be much much easier on a euph. For lower level quartets, when it is assumed no one has a high range, yup it sounds like a lot of mud going on.

[bloke]

I believe you're right.
At least 95% of the time, I'm playing for remuneration but also for fun. (The other 5%, I might be playing gigs for remuneration which are not fun, but actually one of the players in this tuba quartet of John's is the person who coined the expression, "A bad gig is better than a good job".)
If it wasn't fun, the remuneration wouldn't be worth it, because I can make more money staying home and fixing torn up instruments...
(In the past, I played a lot of tennis. These days my only "hobby" is playing music...for money.)
...but I don't believe there's any denying that it's more fun (money or no money) when it sounds better.
Even when only "playing for the love of it", it can't be very much fun (agreed?) when three of the players out of four are pretty darn good, and one of them is always getting lost or just can't execute the written figures... and the muddy tuba quartet resonance (even when an arranger has a sense to avoid putting thirds of chords down low) has always bothered my ears. (Again, I've identified the most egregious problem, which is the third part of most tuba quartet arrangements being played with too rich and too loud of a sound, as it's the least important part.). All of these opinions could be just me, but they are me.

This is another reason why all of my instruments are so very good. It's just not fun struggling. Fun is fun. Struggling is not fun.

[catgrowlB]

I did a tuba quartet thing about 15 years ago, and it lasted about a year. We had our moments, and at times it sounded good. We actually had 2 euphs for the top 2 parts, and 3 tubas for the bottom 2 parts (2 tubas doubling 2nd tuba, one on 1st tuba). I have a recording of it on cd, and we played a couple tunes ourselves, the other tunes were with the concert band. All members were also in the concert band at the time. It sounded good and wasn't muddy, even with 3 tubas on 2 parts.

It didn't last much more than a year because the euph guy in charge started just saying yes to every freebie gig without much regard to the others in the band, and the euphs did not polish their parts or get them down solid like they should have. The tubas in the group started becoming disinterested, and the group just fizzled out.

Fast forward up to about 3 years ago. I was asked to join another tuba-euph group, and I reluctantly agreed to do a couple rehearsals and a gig at a swanky retirement campus that actually has a recital/small concert hall.
We did the concert, and overall it went quite well. They did a couple rehearsals afterwards, but it fizzled out.

Then last year a guy (who was a member) tried to revive it again. But after over half a year of only a couple rehearsals, and excuses from someone every time we tried having rehearsal only to cancel, or not have everyone there, no conductor, no leadership or direction, I decided to bail. I could see the group wasn't going anywhere, let alone even do any concerts or gigs. The guy who organized it got upset with me for bowing out. But I explained everything, including how we all agreed at the start that we would take it seriously with gigs or concerts in mind, even if they didn't pay....

I'm not going to waste my time on some practice group with messy, unorganized, sparse rehearsals with parts missing that sounds like crap, and with no direction/vision.

It's hard to keep those type of groups going in my experience

[bloke]

If you count teaching as a gig, John Mueller - both when he was principal in Pershing's Own and later when he was teaching the trombone students as a professor at University of Memphis, was probably the busiest musician of the four of us. These days, the other three of us are really pretty busy musicians but I'm sort of thinking that John isn't working as much as in the past, is still a remarkably youthful person at retirement age as well as a superb player, and would still like to be using his talents more... and that what possibly prompted him to form this group.

[Jperry1466]

Our tuba-euphonium ensemble (now Low Brass ensemble) started at the outset of the Covid debacle. We couldn't have a community band for a while, but we wanted to play. Most of us are retired, and our gigs are at churches, retirement centers, and civic clubs, so money is rarely involved. After a while, we found it too hard to find two dependable euphonium players who would actually show up but had some trombone friends who wanted to join us. Turned out they were much better players than our earlier euphs had been. I do a lot of arranging for the group, and an instrumentation of 4 contrabass (no bass) tubas, 1 euphonium, and 2 trombones gives me a lot of flexibility in part writing. I am agreeing with @bloke about the usual arrangements sounding "muddy" but found that raising the key 1 or 2 steps higher went a long way in cleaning up the ensemble sound. My little 184 with a Wick 3SL mouthpiece makes for a pretty effortless upper register, so I can now do some 5-part writing that works. I find that the English baritones get a valve trombone-like sound anyway, so the blend of conical and cylindrical bores is surprisingly nice, and our trombones are very careful to not overpower the group. All that said, we just have a lot of fun.

[bloke]

I played an orchestra's low brass section's recital several years ago which was probably an hour long plus a little intermission. Believe it or not, people actually ponied up $45 a piece to be there. (originally, it was supposed to be a brass quintet recital, but we were running into rehearsal logistical problems getting the five of us together for a quintet recital - due to being spread all the way from Clarksville, Tennessee to Jonesboro, Arkansas, so the trombone player and I had the idea of asking the other two trombonists in the section if they would like to do the recital and collect the allotted funds, and it worked out.)
Four sizes of trombones. I played the cimbasso...the 4th size.
I wasn't looking to be the star of the show at all, but the other fellows saddled me with that Tomasi "To be or not to be" piece, as well as that Slide Hampton arrangement of "Round Midnight", whereby the fourth trombone part is prominent. (I played the cimbasso on both of those.)
We played all sorts of stuff, including an arrangement that I scribbled out of "Colour My World" whereby the trombones pinging out the arpeggios sounded surprisingly like a piano keyboard. I passed out the words to the patrons while introducing the piece simply stating that was "a transcription of a popular Chicago piece". I stood up and sang it (second chorus, just like the record) - doing my best to sound like Peter Kath, and everyone at the recital sang along as if singing a church hymn - as most of them were my age or older... The music director was in attendance, and he sang as well.
As a surprise, I talked the orchestra's principal flute player into quietly sitting in the back with the patrons and standing up for the third chorus and playing Walter Parazaider's famous flute solo - note for note - including the major 7th trill at the end. (I wrote the part out for him off the record, but found out that he didn't need it.) I think that was the highlight of the recital, and it ended the first half. I played tuba on some of the pieces, including that one, because I could make the tuba sound more like a 1960s bass guitar than I could the cimbasso.

I believe I like playing tuba with three trombones more than I do with another tuba and two euphoniums...but maybe that's because I'm just so accustomed to working with three trombones in orchestras.

[LeMark]

Using instruments I own...

Mirafone 35w - Alto Euphonium in 6 ft F (4-valve model)
King 3 valve American Baritone
Mirafone 1258a Euphonium
Miraphone Firebird F Tuba 4x2

I have a 35w as well. I wish it was a 4 valve model. Intonation ain't so good. Is yours the left handed model? I think miraphone called them a contra alto. Sounds like a bass flugelhorn

Another alternative is a traditional alto horn like a besson

[bloke]

A friend of mine - who teaches that a university in Mississippi - picked up one of those Mirsphone E-flat instruments with four valves for a low price. I think it's left hand orientation, and maybe I heard that they built them both left and right hand. I think his has slides for f and E flat and I believe he told me that it plays better in tune in one of those keys. I might be not actually remembering some things and might be (so-called) "remembering" stuff that's not right... But maybe most of it is right. He likes the instrument..

He's actually somewhat of a Miraphile, and you can see it shown in his Facebook page wallpaper (or whatever they call it) picture.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... 3051611073

[Craig F]

Intonation ain't so good. Is yours the left handed model? I think miraphone called them a contra alto.

Correct on all points.

The slotting is very wide and takes a lot of practice to control well. It's worse if you're using the Eb slide as the valve slides can't be compensated. There just isn't much travel there. So, you end up lipping more.

I've never seen a right-handed model in the US. Although, someone mentioned long ago on a now defunct forum, they had one. I saw one on Ebay Germany not too long ago. It was an 3-valve Eb model as opposed to the F model in the US. You could see the valve slides were longer.

Miraphone was most certainly targeting it as a doubler instrument for French Horn players in the US: Left-handed, in F, came with a FH mouthpiece adapter, a FH sized mouthpiece slot in the case.

[LeMark]

Replying to Bloke:

I bet it's better in Eb. Unfortunately, I don't have the Eb crook. I bet I could have one built, but my wife likes it better in F, and she really only uses it for tuba Christmas. I assume that bejng left handed and pitched in F, these things are really made for French horn players

[bloke]

Yeah, I'm thinking that he did say his plays better in E-flat. As far as these instruments not playing well enough in tune to be "art music" instruments, the E flat setup might be a whole lot better. I think if you go to my friend's page he even did a demo on it in E-flat that sounded pretty good. Maybe he played "Edelweiss", if I'm remembering correctly....??

I sort of suspect that they're for playing in beer halls and for marching in central/western Europe, so they probably never put much R&D into them.

You always reply too fast and never give me a chance to fix my spelling and stuff... Until this time.

[Craig F]

From a 1974 Catalog...

M 35w price list.jpg (54.69 KiB) Viewed 4798 times

M 35w catalog.jpg (46.02 KiB) Viewed 4798 times