training for Mussorgsky

[prodigal]

I just flipped to it in my impromptu book of excerpts and thought I would try it on the Piglet. Definitely a kamikaze movement on this horn. I'd give it a wail on bloke's Symphonie, but like I said, I wouldn't plan on surviving. Euphonium is definitely the sensible choice, but it sure is fun trying it on an F.

My eyes say: Wow those are some high, wonky sharp notes, and you bought this tuba to play high wonky notes.

My brain says: you idiot, get a Euphonium.

My eyes respond: This is a tiny tuba, not much bigger than a Euphonium, man up (well maybe not the best reference, here) and hit them notes.

My chops say: @!#!$@#! @#$#@$#@)!!!!!!

[bloke]

G-sharp above middle C is not the most wonderful pitch on the best of F tubas, and often requires either an alternate or a valve slide (such as 5th) set at an my unusual position.

It seems to me that people who play it on F-tuba are mostly doing so because they're not a euphonium player. I practiced it for years and years on F tuba myself. Years ago, another young man and I were the two finalists for a Canadian orchestra job. I decided to demonstrate my machismo and play that excerpt in the finals on F tuba instead of euphonium, even though I brought a euphonium with me. I played it just fine. The other finalist played it on euphonium and got the job; the music director was a euphonium player from England.

I'm no euphonium artist, but I'm a euphonium doubler and I have two instruments - one of which is about the largest one ever made and one is which is about the smallest ever made. I think I'm being sensible in picking the small one (yet altered - this week - with a large shank receiver). Yesterday, I moved to yet another mouthpiece which is just a plain old Wick 4-something (not any sort of signature model) with a large shank. If a mouthpiece makes it easier for me and it sounds no worse and maybe better, I'm going to switch at the last minute.

Again, I'm no euphonium artiste, but I think I can play this little tune
I might be able to play "at" some of their century old "fantasie brilliante" types of pieces (and playing through the trombone Rochut books is easier than tuba, because euphonium requires so much less air), but that doesn't interest me, and I certainly wouldn't play them in public.

One thing to remember about playing the euphonium - other than backing way off on the air stream - is to back off on the tonguing. Euphonium doesn't require nearly as much articulation definition as does tuba (with tuba-sized articulation efforts actually increasing the chances of cracking pitches)... and smaller tongue movements being required is one of the reasons why it's much easier for the euphonium to play "fantasie brilliante" types of pieces.

[prodigal]

I'm also noticing with the Piglet that I have to back off the airstream a little vs. my past B&S horns, it feels closer to my son's baritone than my 186.

[Mary Ann]

About the ox cart lumbering around (and this will cause Wade to drool) -- that Alex baritontuba is a World Class Ox Cart. Especially for the lumbering down low -- it does not sound like a euph; it sounds like a baritonTUBA.

[bloke]

About the ox cart lumbering around (and this will cause Wade to drool) -- that Alex baritontuba is a World Class Ox Cart. Especially for the lumbering down low -- it does not sound like a euph; it sounds like a baritonTUBA.

I had a kaiser bariton made by Melton (Anton Meinl... Meinl-Weston... whatever).
Rich Matteson used to sell those, and he played one until he played Yamaha euphoniums.
I added a fifth valve to it and changed some other things.
It was considerably larger than an Alexander.
I sold it to partially finance the purchase of Fat Bastard.

Again, the instrument that Ravel knew was smaller, pitched in C, and loaded up with a bunch of pistons.

[Mary Ann]

Last I heard, Ravel did not write anything about an ox cart.

[bloke]

That's just ignunt.
I can't think of a response to that troll, so I'll just have to leave it at that.

[Matt Good]

I always played Bydlo as my warm-up starting a week out from the first rehearsal. I can still play the tuba!

[russiantuba]

I always played Bydlo as my warm-up starting a week out from the first rehearsal. I can still play the tuba!

When I auditioned for Gary Ofenloch at Utah, he mentioned that when he won Utah, the very first excerpt of the round (not sure if finals or prelims) he had to play was Bydlo, and he wasn’t allowed any tester notes (I asked if I could play some notes in the room to acclimate and he said this story and how he thinks his control of that excerpt set him apart). Keep in mind, the tubist before him there was a guy named Gene Pokorny…

I’ve had the opportunity to do it twice on tuba. One of those times was a last minute call where I teach.

[bloke]

I was one of fifteen invited to that audition and was one of the three (so-called) "finalists"... before they added in the person who had been subbing for the previous year. (That was a hell of a drive out there and back... I have a funny story about driving back if anyone's interested.)
To be selected to audition, I think I had to send in a cassette of the Vaughan Williams and maybe something else... I don't remember. I had that reject/dog Miraphone "anniversary model" 188 that I've mentioned in the past and a borrowed B&S Symphonie model F with five valves (left hand fifth valve). I know I didn't have my Yamaha euphonium with me, and I feel certain that I would have brought it had the Mussorgsky been on the list...and I just don't recall Mr Silverstein asking us to "sight-read" any Mussorgsky. (I'm absolutely certain that the only time I've been asked to play Bydlo in a final round was up at a Canadian audition - one that I recently mentioned on this platform.)
Utah: There was a difficult Berlioz excerpt... not Symphonie Fantastique...King Lear...??) whatever... it was high and fast. I could look through my Berlioz excerpts and remind myself which one.
Also, I remember nothing about "Don't do this or that before playing the excerpts". I remember no instructions from any proctor and nothing from behind the screen, other than - after playing through everything - an enthusiastic-sounding "Thank you VERY much!" (in an indistinct northern accent) which made me think that I might possibly be offered the job, but no. ...which was fine.

[MiBrassFS]

.

[bloke]

I’d rather hear about the drive back than the “audition.”

A friend of mine had just bought a brand new Camaro with a big engine, and was chomping at the bit for a road trip so he took me all the way out there in his car.
He drove all the way up there and started on the way back but he pooped out (we actually made a slight detour to Montana on the way up to visit a friend )

I had my old-school radar detector which detected everything they were using at that time which were only X and K bands.

I drove all night on the way home through Wyoming and Nebraska. It was Sunday at 8:00 in the morning and suddenly the radar detector went off and I hit the brakes. The front of the car just about dragged the pavement on Interstate 80.

My friend woke up and - hearing the radar detector - proclaimed,"valiant effort, Berger"

It was a pudgy little young female cop the who had just started her 8:00 a.m. Sunday shift coming down the exit ramp, she turned her radar thing on, and picked me up going the very top speed of that Camaro, because I had been driving with the pedal all the way to the floor. The speedometer only went to 80 because of the 55 mph national speed limit things in place, and after that it hit on the odometer reset button, and couldn't go any farther, so I have no idea how fast I was going...(130...140...??) By the time she got me locked in, I was down to 75, so that's what the ticket was for.

She asked me, "Doesn't that hurt your car?" To which I replied and gestured to my friend "It's not my car".

She made me put cash in an envelope and mail it to the courthouse with her watching. There was a mailbox just outside a diner by that exit ramp where she first came down.
I was chewing gum and stuck that on the back of the envelope and pasted the envelope to the inside of the mailbox door. After she went her way and I went mine, I came back to the diner and retrieved the check out the mailbox.

There's probably been a warrant out for my arrest in Nebraska for the last 40+ years.

[prodigal]

I’d rather hear about the drive back than the “audition.”

A friend of mine had just bought a brand new Camaro with a big engine, and was chomping at the bit for a road trip so he took me all the way out there in his car.
He drove all the way up there and started on the way back but he pooped out (we actually made a slight detour to Montana on the way up to visit a friend )

I had my old-school radar detector which detected everything they were using at that time which were only X and K bands.

I drove all night on the way home through Wyoming and Nebraska. It was Sunday at 8:00 in the morning and suddenly the radar detector went off and I hit the brakes. The front of the car just about dragged the pavement on Interstate 80.

My friend woke up and - hearing the radar detector - proclaimed,"valiant effort, Berger"

It was a pudgy little young female cop the who had just started her 8:00 a.m. Sunday shift coming down the exit ramp, she turned her radar thing on, and picked me up going the very top speed of that Camaro, because I had been driving with the pedal all the way to the floor. The speedometer only went to 80 because of the 55 mph national speed limit things in place, and after that it hit on the odometer reset button, and couldn't go any farther, so I have no idea how fast I was going...(130...140...??) By the time she got me locked in, I was down to 75, so that's what the ticket was for.

She asked me, "Doesn't that hurt your car?" To which I replied and gestured to my friend "It's not my car".

She made me put cash in an envelope and mail it to the courthouse with her watching. There was a mailbox just outside a diner by that exit ramp where she first came down.
I was chewing gum and stuck that on the back of the envelope and pasted the envelope to the inside of the mailbox door. After she went her way and I went mine, I came back to the diner and retrieved the check out the mailbox.

There's probably been a warrant out for my arrest in Nebraska for the last 40+ years.

Smokey and the Bloke, a Tuba Odyssey!

[the elephant]

Don't laugh at me, now, but I just dropped the Shallowberger for the Kurath on Fantastique. It is hard for me to play up there on it. In fact, in searching for a mouthpiece that makes that register more accessible while playing like a tuba mouthpiece, I ended up back on that one-piece, first batch Sellmansberger Solo, the original blokepiece. It just works with my teeth, I guess. It is *not* the same as the three-piece Solo I bought from you a number of years ago. The cup and throat are a little different. I find myself coming back to it all the time.

[bloke]

whatever works...Bach...Conn...anything

[bloke]

The rehearsals went well.
The first valve barely hung one time (only enough to sort of give a subtle half valve effect on one note... and Ravel loved jazz, so that was perfectly okay ) on the reading rehearsal.
I then took a look inside and everything was nasty and gooey.
I had totally forgotten that I had loaned this instrument (my $100 50-year-old Yamaha 321 euphonium) to a nice guy over in a Memphis suburb for about a year, and I'm pretty sure that's where the schmutz came from. (You can tell how worried I was about this... not even taking a look at the valves for the week or two that I was tooting around at home at the solo passage )
LOL... I even swapped out mouthpiece receivers on it without checking to see if it needed to be cleaned.
It's the old "the cobbler's own shoes" thing. I got up thirty minutes early this morning and cleaned it with a brush and also jetting hot water through it. A lot of wonderful little things came out.

The music director is oohing and ahhing over the solo...
"Most tuba players don't play both of those instruments. I'm accustomed to having one of the trombone players play that."
next rehearsal:
"That high G sharp is really beautiful..."
etc...

I'm sure I'll f*** everything up on the concert.

The thing about me is that I know I'm just a tuba player, so I just don't ever get nervous. (ie. "Hell, what do you expect? You're lucky that I'm currently not lost, I know when to come in.")

I'm using the euphonium and a Wick mute on the muted passages in both of the movements that have muted passages. Whoever is familiar knows that there's an A flat at the top of the staff that's muted, and then there's an OPEN E-flat just below the staff a handful of bars later. That lower pitch comes out just fine on the non-compensating four valve euphonium valves 1-4 with the first valve slide pulled out a little bit... and I already have the fourth slide pulled out to tune 2-4 to tune the low B natural in the section of Bydlo in between the two solos. Also, instead of pulling the main slide for the sharpness of the mute, I'm just pulling out the first slide for the sharpness of the mute since it's an A-flat, so - in order to play the E flat in tune, so that all I have to do is get rid of the mute. I don't have to additionally pull out the first valve slide.

Those of you who play the solo and do it on euphonium might consider using muted euphonium instead of muted tuba where muting is called for. It's much easier to schlep and insert/remove a euphonium mute versus a tuba mute, and obviously it's going to sound way more like a muted French tuba (that for which Ravel wrote) than a muted contrabass tuba would sound. In fact, it's going to just sound more muted, period.

The contrabass tuba is more satisfying to modern ears for most movements but the little solo passage that is slow, in common time, and imitates the previous statement of the same solo - which was pizzicato - I understand how it would sound with a French tuba, and how it fit with that instrument to Ravel's ears, because contrabassoon takes over right at the end - and contra is more of the same type of grunty sound. Nevertheless, I'm not trying to make waves, and I'm playing that particular solo passage on the contrabass tuba.

Unless playing where acoustics are ideal, if you practice Bydlo with an accompaniment online, I would sincerely recommend practicing it to where you can barely hear the accompaniment at home, because the low strings don't have much articulation and (unless some amazingly acoustically perfect venue) one really has to pay attention to the pulse - which is not particularly obvious when your own sound (vibrating your own head) sort of drowns out mostly what the accompaniment is that's being offered to you.

I won't be home until midnight tonight.
Tomorrow morning, I should best get up no later than 5:50 a.m., because I have two church services over in Memphis.
Call is 7:45 a.m., and it takes an hour to drive over there and get inside and get in place with my instrument. I'm still not feeling particularly good these days, and I think I need the 55 minutes before I leaving home to try to make myself feel okay.

Again, I missed my niece's wedding in Memphis today, and my oldest daughter and her horn-playing husband flew down from Pittsburgh to Nashville and then grabbed rental car (a Tahoe, since they're considering buying one... my daughter is very active with the Boy Scouts and wants a "big ass car") and are in town for it.

I believe we're all getting together for lunch tomorrow/Sunday. (Mrs bloke, my daughter and her husband, and my daughter's aunt - ie. my sister) are probably all getting together for lunch somewhere around 12:30 in Memphis somewhere tomorrow after I'm done. I think by 3:00 or 3:30 p.m., my daughter and her husband need to drive their rental car back to the Nashville airport to catch their flight back to Pittsburgh. (They lucked into a non-stop priced cheap for the return trip.) I hope I don't fall asleep during lunch on Sunday... nor during either of the sermons... I guess I hope that the preacher says a whole bunch of bizarre s***, so that I stay awake during both of them. It's an easy gig, because everyone hired for the gig is first call. There just isn't much Sunday in late October demand for brass players, so the church had their pick.

Where I am today, it's too far to drive home between the dress rehearsal and the concert. I'm probably going to drive around for a little bit, find something cheap to eat that won't make me sick, then find a shaded place at the venue, and take an extended and badly needed nap.

I must have guessed right (based on the instruments and mouthpieces that I personally have available) on the instrument and the mouthpiece combination, because the principal trombone player plays a lot of euphonium and teaches it as well (Micah, at Ole Miss), and he's asking about the mouthpiece.

[bloke]

Listening to the recording, I played OK...but I miscalculated. more bluntly: screwed up

...Putting the little Korg tuner up to one of the speakers, the aggregate/corporate/average tuning was mostly around A-443 to A=445 (with some higher, depending on how frantic and technically challenging)...

...but I had practiced the solo passage striving to keep everything DOWN to A=440, including special valve combinations for A-sharp, E-natural, etc...
Had I just pushed the main slide to the quick and used the regular (sharp) valve combinations, the orchestra and I would have "agreed" more.

but bloke, you're the soloist, and they are supposed to follow and accompany the soloist

fine...but would you have said this had I been playing c. 10 or more cents flat to a fixed-pitched accompanying instrument?

It was OK-but-not-OK. I believe part (most) of the reason that I found myself struggling to hear the pulse (rehearsals) was due to the fact that they were playing in G-sharp minor "plus", and there I was playing in regular ol' G-sharp minor.

I'm not blaming them. I could have played that sharp, but it just wasn't occurring to me that the problem was that we were playing in different keys (as the accompaniment - pretty much is "low rumbling" and difficult to interpret aurally anyway).

I'll see if I can figure out how to do "snips" (recording excerpts, as no one is really interested in hearing a recording of a freeway philharmonic performing the whole of "Pictures"). Maybe (??) the pitch level discrepancy isn't as stinky to others' ears as it is to mine...but it probably is.

The brass section of this two-rehearsal freeway philharmonic is really quite good...and - when the brass plays alone (even "really loud" - which typically means "sharp" with lesser brass players), I'm seeing much more "green" on my little Korg tuner...but - when everyone else enters - it's a different story.

principal trumpet: Typically this is John Schuesselin, a wonderful player (who was awarded a "performer certificate" at Eastman, and they don't pass those out like bubblegum), but he was recovering from the flu, so the young man who was originally hired to play 2nd swapped parts with him. They did a "good" job, and it was also good for them to have had a chance to cover that literature.

I wouldn't have felt insulted in the least had the music director suggested,
"bloke, you're flat to them", or had he suggested "you people are playing quite sharp to bloke".
(Had he told the orchestra that their pitch was high, I would have been more than happy to raise my pitch.
again: It's easier to play these licks in this movement sharp.
Lord knows, it would have been far easier than keeping everything in the A=440 range.
Instead, he was showering me with compliments... (which are never instructive ).

Well (anyway), this was probably the last of my major-works checkoffs for "baritone horn parts played with symphony orchestras"...
...my first ever (probably when I was 21) having been Don Quixote, and my second (probably a couple of years later) having been Heldenleben...LOL...using a borrowed Willson 2900 (with a borrowed funny-shank-size mouthpiece).
I finally did The Planets a few years ago (probably with covid, and with a molar that was broken in half and hurting like hell...but I did I good job, and didn't screw up the high (concert) B-natural in Mars...and being helped a lot with a non-schmaltzy string section ).
(These days, I'm playing Fantastique on the euphonium when it comes up. Is is more important to play a work with an instrument that easily covers the tonal range of the part, or to be some sort of F tuba hero?...yeah...of course: to be an F tuba hero... )