When a bass trombone plays the tuba part in quintet

[internalanarchy]

I can't be the only one who thinks this would sound so much better with a tuba playing and not a bass trombone barking on the bottom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbP6024 ... rass-Topic

[GC]

You're not. I utterly hate that sound.

When my son graduated from law school, the college had a brass quintet of obviously accomplished players doing 45 minutes before the ceremony, and then processional, alma mater, and recessional. There was an admittedly excellent bass trombonist instead of a tuba. The group was highly musical, I must admit, but the bass trombone instead of what I felt should have been a tuba had me gritting my teeth for an hour all together. My jaws hurt by the time it was mercifully over.

Yes, I'm a pro-tuba bigot.

[jtuba]

Then you're not gonna like this recording of the four Ewald quintets

[bloke]

Mr. Rojak does a nice job.

[GC]

Actually, these sound appropriate. It does depend on the choice of music to a great extent. Maybe I'm just a tuba chauvinist pig instead of a total bigot. There are exceptions.

[internalanarchy]

Those sound better but still would sound better with a tuba I would say.

[bloke]

It depends on whether the 5th part is a "bass" part or an "equal line"...
...and some "bass" and some "equal line" parts can go either way.

You left off "compensating euphonium" which is in-between, and is capable of being played as low as either of the other two.

I played the Dahl on euphonium, which I think is the best choice, since it's tedious to have part 5 played by a bass trombone and nothing more than doubled (roughly half the time) by some sort of parenthetical part-6 tuba or contrabass trombone.

[iiipopes]

My high school did not have any bass trombones. Good ones were too expensive for the school to own one even then, and hardly anybody even had an F-trigger. So the bass bone parts in jazz band were played on sousaphone, a 1st generation King 'glass. I thought everything sounded as it should, and when I got to college I also thought the bass bone sounded too grainy.

[bloke]

Mr. Rojak does a nice job.

John (Rojak) is a musician. You should experience sitting next to him while the orchestra is playing (EVEN SOMETHING AS "PEDESTRIAN: AS) a Strauss waltz. ...so much stuff that's not on the paper. Some some who tend to be sheet music literalists would probably drop their jaw, but what he does with music is perfect, and he never gets called out for the extra things he does, because they contribute instead of distract.

[bort2.0]

I think a quintet with a bass trombone just sounds goofy a lot of the time. Like the tuba player was out sick and the bass trombone player had no gig.

Those clips were some very fine playing by the bass trombone for sure... But to me, I just keep listening and waiting for the tuba to come in and make it sound ... complete(?). Just sounds so unresolved to me.

[Dents Be Gone!]

I agree, guys. This is the way to go.

[bone-a-phone]

To some extent it comes down to music selection, but also some bass boners just can't keep it in their pants. Any time there's a tuba substitution, the bass bone has to back way off on the attack. The fast moving West Side Story recording is almost impossible to play so it sounds good on bass bone. Rat Rat Rat Rat...

I'm a tenor player dragged into bass bone playing kicking and screaming. It's so hard to consider it anything other than a percussion instrument the way you hear it get played that way so often.

The whole issue with the bass trombone sound getting darker and darker and the equipment bigger and bigger and more conical is specifically because people are instinctively trying to make it sound like a tuba. Less attack and more presence. I get so tired of hearing bass bone players say "bass bone has the same range as the tuba". Uuuuughhhh. First, no it doesn't, and second, it just doesn't make the same noise, especially in that range.

I play a fair bit of bass bone, and I'm always trying to keep it out of the obnoxious range which is some combination of pitch, articulation, volume and tone. I know I don't succeed all the time, because I can hear that edgy barking blatting sound coming from my instrument sometimes. You want to hear a lot of bad bass bone playing, go to ATW and listen to the college tbone choirs. All that testosterone with heavy brass with an utter lack of control usually points to the same thing - blatty barky FFF pedal notes. Of course that's also a great place to hear great bass bone playing. There are talented people who make it work, despite the odds.

I run a quintet, and it was hard for us to find a tuba player. I started the quintet specifically to get to play tenor trombone and get away from the bass, and subbing a bass bone for a tuba to me is just a wasted opportunity. I don't think there has ever been a situation when I said "Damn, I wish we had a bass bone barking out that low stuff instead of this fuzzy tuba sound". I threatened to make the quintet into a quartet instead where the bottom voice is intentionally written for bass bone, in a range where it can play more musically.

[bloke]

In particular, a GOOD cimbasso played by a TASTEFUL/NOT-OVER-THE-TOP (making the best of the "forte" type of resonance available from such an instrument, rather than a "big-band"-ish "fortississimo" type of resonance) player might sound OK on that piece (vs. a bass trombonist poking overly-hard at the notes...again: referring to "great musicianship" - referring back to John Rojak's likely take on this same piece).

That having been said (re: valved F cimbasso), that particular range (on a valved F instrument played at high velocity) is just a bit confounding.

[bone-a-phone]

In particular, a GOOD cimbasso played by a TASTEFUL/NOT-OVER-THE-TOP (making the best of the "forte" type of resonance available from such an instrument, rather than a "big-band"-ish "fortississimo" type of resonance) player might sound OK on that piece (vs. a bass trombonist poking overly-hard at the notes...again: referring to "great musicianship" - referring back to John Rojak's likely take on this same piece).

That having been said (re: valved F cimbasso), that particular range (on a valved F instrument played at high velocity) is just a bit confounding.

Yeah, I do think the interest in cimbasso comes at least partially due to the desire to remove some of the edge and give a bass trombone tuba-like qualities. And partially because tuba players have a hard time dealing with the side. The more valves you put on a trombone, the harder the slide is to manage. You're doing all that compensation manually.

[bloke]

So many people only associate the (so-called) cimbasso with the blatting - that they discovered that they could do with one of them - in elephant rooms.

They are ideal (5th "voice" vs. "bass part") for Renaissance quintet transcriptions.

Realize that I just sat next to a 2nd bassoonist (Mozart Requiem) and we played (mostly) unisons (including quite a few places where there were two staves of quickly-moving-along 16th notes) for the better part of an hour. Neither they nor the music director "called me out" once (and yeah, I consider my cimbasso to possibly be the most valuable instrument I own, but I was being particularly careful next to that $70K Heckel bassoon).

These "cimbasso" things (actually...OK, the good ones) are at their VERY BEST at "mezzo piano to mezzo forte".