Re: Why not start new players on CC or F ?


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Posted by Rob Perelli-Minetti on January 11, 2000 at 08:35:43:

In Reply to: Why not start new players on CC or F ? posted by Tom Brekhus on January 10, 2000 at 23:00:13:

I think the reasons are largely historical: until the past 20 years or so in the United States somewhere between 95% and 98% of tubas in service were either BBb or Eb. As far as I can discern from looking at catalogs from the major instrument manufacturers in the teens, 20s and 30s, CC instruments were always custom orders and F tubas practically unheard of, except a few European imports. [Remember, also, the German tradtion is F and BBb, not CC].

Through the 1940's and into the '50s, young players were typically started in elementary school on Eb tubas, often moving to BBb somewhere in either junior high (now middle) school or high school. The typical high school band before WWII had a mix of BBb and Eb tubas and sousaphones. Professional bands (as opposed to orchestras) also had a mix of BBb and Eb instruments (e.g. Bill Bell is described as having played a King Eb sousaphone one whole season with the Goldman Band in a '30s King catalog).

Interestingly, in the old catalogs, one sees various sizes of BBb and Eb tubas from what we would now call 3/4 up to what we would now call 6/4.

Somewhere around the '50s, Eb tubas fell out of favor. The reasons are not entirely clear today: there seem to have been intonation problems with mixed sections, there was a reluctance to have two different sizes of horns, larger horns generally came to dominate the tuba/recording bass market (e.g. the 4/4 King 1240/1 (now 2340/1) and the Conn 20/1/2/3/4/5J series in variants of 3 and 4 valves, recording and upright bells, upright and front action valves) at least at the school and college level. When I started playing in 1958, it was still on an Eb, but within two years the Ebs were gone and everything in the school system was BBb. I never actually saw an Eb sousaphone until I found a pair in the local community band instrument room (a 4 valve York & a King).

Sousaphones were originally built in BBb and then Eb, reflecting the distribution of upright basses and helicons. As school instruments, as the recording bass pretty much replaced the upright tuba, the sousaphone was increasing seen as a reasonable replacement for the upright tuba: for the same money you could equip two players with sousaphones as you could one with a recording bass and a sousaphone!

As you look at schools today, you do see more and more tubas, and more and more 4 valve horns being purchased. I haven't done a scientific survey, but I would venture that the average age of the tubas in high schools and middle schools in the US is significantly younger than the average of the sousaphones. If our local high school is fairly typical -- an affluent suburb of New York -- the difference is striking: 4 Yamaha YBB641 which are less than 5 years old and 2 King 2341 uprights which may be 20 years old as contrasted to the venerable sousas - 3 Conn 20Ks around 40 years old, 3 King 1250s (the middle schools the the rest of what was once a set of 8 Kings) of similar vintage or older, a newer Besson (hated by all for heavy weight and bad intonation) and a 1930's vintage King Giant.

Unless a director has unlimited funds (ha!), s/he will replace instruments with ones which are similarly pitched to what s/he has, which almost always now means BBb.


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