Wulf's Webden

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Scaling Up

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I passed an early landmark in my tuba career today – a one octave E♭ scale (ascending and descending).

It turns out that playing a brass instrument is a bit more than just hitting one of the notes of of the overtone series and then pressing various valves to change it to another note. The valves change the effective length of the instrument and it turns out that it is a combination of this and the embouchure (mouth position) that actually produces the desired note. So, rather than using a simple formula as you would on bass (eg. press the A string at the 6th fret to get an E♭), it is easier to start with playing a pitch reference from something like a piano and learning the combination of how you blow and what you press to hit the target.

It’s not all the way to mastery but it is an important step to being able to do something musical with it.

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