Identify the single remarkable thing about exercise 50 in Rochut book 1.

[bloke]

.

[dp]

...that I can't remember it. at all. hoss is dead I guess

[arpthark]

Is the remarkable thing that all the free PDFs available online stop at number 37 or so and I have to wait to get home this afternoon before I can look at it?

[MikeS]

The only odd thing I noticed is that only two of the three “a tempos” have rallentandos ahead of them. The middle one seemed kind of superfluous. Also, it sounds much better to my ears at a significantly lower tempo than marked. Half note equals 88 is way too fast; 68-72 seems much better to me. I am sure when the answer is revealed I will strike my forehead with my palm in self-reproach.

[bloke]

Yes sir, it's way less subtle.

[Mary Ann]

Well I went honking all over youtube looking for a recording of this on tuba, but ended up listening to Chris Olka demo the Hagen 497 in 2018. Yikes. I don't think I've ever heard anything like that. I want to come back as a great big guy so I can try to get even one note in the bottom octave that sounds like that.

[MikeS]

Well I went honking all over youtube looking for a recording of this on tuba, but ended up listening to Chris Olka demo the Hagen 497 in 2018. Yikes. I don't think I've ever heard anything like that. I want to come back as a great big guy so I can try to get even one note in the bottom octave that sounds like that.

Here is a video of the etude being played on tuba (and by somebody who will not likely be on anyone’s NFL fantasy football roster this fall).

[bloke]

It's the sheet music itself, and not players. Again, it's the book. After all, it's a trombone book but the players have nothing to do with it.

[arpthark]

Can ya post a pic of the music so we might see it? I didn't think to find my copy last night after a concert and all the PDFs online are truncated. I do like a good riddle, though.

[bloke]

Okay, so everybody just buys the 40 whatever Bordogni tuba book. Never mind.

[MikeS]

I didn’t mean anything by posting the video other than @Mary Ann had looked for one unsuccessfully. Looking again at the sheet music I did see one notation quirk I don’t think I’ve ever noticed before. There is a slur starting on beat four of measure 53, continuing through beat three of measure 55. Both the and of beat four in measure 54 and beat one of measure 55 are eighth note C’s. In my book there is a straight horizontal line, like a hyphen, between them. I don’t think the notes are supposed to be tied, although it kind of works either way playing it. I wasn’t able to find another example of this in the book but I can’t claim my search was exhaustive.

This is probably also too subtle and wrong. On the off chance it isn’t, is the prize a Blokepiece #2 rim in leopard-spot H-Kote?

[bloke]

The answer doesn't matter, because apparently no one owns the book or has read out of it in the last decade or two, but since I started the thread I might as well offer the answer:

The answer is that there are no dynamic markings in the entire exercise.

It's probably not noticeable by a lot of tuba players, because we just tend to play loud.

[MikeS]

As promised…

By the way, my copy of this book is old enough that it is marked $6.95. It replaced another copy I wore out, which probably cost even less. Does anyone know what the hyphen I mentioned above is supposed to mean. Is it a tie?

[bloke]

Mine is priced at $2.75

[russiantuba]

I did a screenshot of most of it to view

[bloke]

extreme sidebar:
... as the original topic has been asked, answered, and isn't very interesting to anyone

Playing things like this with an extremely large bore 6/4 size rotary B-flat tuba (with an 18 ft long expanding bugle), I've had to teach myself to "release" into legatos (ie."slurs"). ...and it's not the fake slur (backing off the sound) that we hear children - as well as players who are trying to learn how to slur - execute. It's something that I'm doing with embouchure (relaxation...??) and not air. I'm not sure what I'm doing, because I'm reacting to positive sound results, rather than trying to do something physical consciously. Maybe this is why I probably don't enjoy teaching. Maybe I don't make a very good teacher.

I hadn't (until last night for perhaps 45 minutes) picked up a tuba in several weeks other than to straighten out damage on school owned instruments and a couple of customer instruments, so when I first picked this instrument back up, I had to remind myself of this newly discovered technique. The thing is that I had to separate reminding myself about it from consciously doing it, which is sort of tricky but can be done. If I'm playing this instrument daily, I don't have to think about it nor remind myself of it.

If any of you - including advanced players - encounter difficulty with slurring when playing huge rotary instruments, you might consider thinking a little bit about what I wrote above, and see if you can figure out what it is that I've discovered (and maybe even define it more specifically for others).

Candidly, I still have a little bit of trouble going down on this instrument g-flat 23 to open f at the bottom of the staff. Neither are wanting to be out of tune, it just bumps sometimes, but there is a workaround. I'm going to continue to apply what I said above to this one slightly problematic slur, and hopefully it will iron itself out. Admittedly, the difference in resistance of all that cylindrical tubing is part of what I'm having to negotiate. I will say one last thing about this subtopic: I have already double vented the third rotor, and it's still not quite enough for my number three slide release spring to be reliable, as that slide mechanism is completely reliable with the rotor engaged, so I'm ready to go ahead and drill a third vent, and who knows if that might help a little bit on this slur.

[bloke]

circling back to exercise 50:

A soprano working on this for Marco Bordogni in his studio would have been expected to phrase these passages, but - unless some tuba player has gigantic lungs and additionally knows how to conserve their air - we're going to do well enough simply to get through these passages with the air that we have available (without offering any musical phrasing - which would require even more air).

The video supplied by someone shows a young man doing a really good job of getting through this, and -to my ears - it's all at the same volume level. (again: excellent playing on an instrument that sounds to me as if it could benefit from more valve venting) I wonder if Monsieur Rochut added the dynamic markings in these exercises himself, or whether Bordogni actually put them in the originals. For the same reason as tuba players, I can understand Rochut leaving out any crescendi and diminuendi for trombonists. Truth be told, they use up more air than we do because of the oxygen required to power their arm muscles and move the slide.