New Drill Of The Week #23, “Buzz Kill”

[Chris Olka]

Sorry for the long absence. Hope you find it a help:
Drill Of The Week #23, "Buzz-Kill"

[BopEuph]

Thanks for these, Chris!

I really need to get on to these. When I first saw them my journey on tuba was just beginning (after years of playing euph). The low end of your drills was so intimidating that I ended up avoiding them, since I couldn't even play a simple low A on the horn for the first year without a lot of work. Maybe it's time to go back to the first drill and do actual weekly drills!

[Chris Olka]

My “webmaster” and “publisher”…wife…has started transposing them for Bb bass/brass band as well. Learning them on euph might unlock some “goodies” on tuba? Just a thought. We’ve gotten so many requests for transposing them for F-tuba that we are looking into this as well. Hope they’re a help to you!

[BopEuph]

Thanks! I actually made a 100% switch to tuba about 8 years ago when my euphonium was stolen and I decided it was impractical as a freelancer to replace it. Instead, I dove head first into my 12J, and learned enough fast enough to start taking jazz gigs on it. It's not a huge amount of supplemental work when adding to the bass, but there are bands around here (Orlando, of course) that appreciate a tuba player who can improvise bass lines in any genre. I just avoided the ranges that weren't speaking until I improved.

I've done some transposing on your videos in the past, and debated on experimenting with some production additions to your videos (put the music on the screen, equalize the talking and playing--your earlier videos are really quiet, etc.), but it's a lot of work, rather than just get used to the videos as they are.

I just never thought playing the extreme low range on tuba would be more difficult than the euphonium range an octave higher. Thought it would be basically the same effort on each respective instrument, but it took a lot of work to get my low range on tuba down...and the pedal range is still tricky and makes me dizzy! But I think I'm at least in a position where it'll finally be beneficial to put some time into it!