Posted by DC on February 01, 2003 at 00:03:25:
In Reply to: which takes more air - bass bone or tuba posted by Marty Neilan on January 31, 2003 at 23:49:33:
While you can flow more air on a tuba with its larger bore, the bass bone in the low register gives you less amplification for the same note than the tuba. Also the trendy practice of getting as dark a sound as possible on the bass bone can work against you when you have to play louder to reach a level of brillance to project in ensemble.
What is helpful is to play some tuba etudes on the bass bone and work for efficeincy (SP) where all the air is turned into sound-its easy to fall into the trap on the bass bone of blasting to play loud and thereby wasting some of your air.