volume of sound in relation to size of tuba

[bloke]

I'm perfectly capable of playing quite loud, and actually I'm sort of known for it. I don't flip that switch unless it's the right time, so I don't believe my colleagues make a joke about it, but they just know that it's there when it's needed or when it's time.

Anyone reading this having read what I typed just above, I'm sort of deciding that playing a kaiser B-flat rotary with a huge bore and a huge bell (as mine is a hybrid with an "American"-shaped 6/4 bell), I probably need to spend more time practicing at higher volume levels, and this includes even playing bel canto vocalises - and even during their softer passages.

It's easy to just play and not listen to ourselves, and it's hard to listen to ourselves while we play (which is why quite a few people record themselves for self-evaluation) but I strive to listen to myself as I play, because I know it's hard. I'm hearing myself - while practicing - playing loud enough to make a "good" sound, but I'm thinking back to all the really good music directors' verbal comments (ex: "Even if it's marked ppp, I still need to hear you...") and even things that they've written (such as Frederick Fennell) about enough energy into an instrument to make it really vibrate as it can and should.

Particularly with more difficult and marked-soft bel canto exercises, I'm finding that - playing them at a "woodwind piano" when they are marked soft - it's quite a bit more difficult to do execute really smooth slurs, and particularly on the "back side" of the instrument (with a B-flat instrument: aka "the sharp keys"). When I step up the volume level from a clarinet mezzo piano to a 6/4 tuba mezzo piano, the slurs come out nicely and are far more reliable - particularly when there is a long run of them, whether it be a group of grace notes, scalular, arpeggiated, zigzag arpeggiated, or whatever...
... and this stuff was so much more easy with a piston C instrument, but I knew that when I decided to move over into this realm, and I knew I'd have to step up my game (even as I'm into my late 60s).

I've always prided myself on being able to control the instrument at soft volume levels. It's something that a lot of players have to go back and master (after finding that it's a skill required to be successful at auditions) after years of developing speed, accuracy, the ability to produce tremendous volume, and other things. I've always worked at playing soft, because that's where I've always found it's the easiest to embarrass one's self in a symphony orchestra or even a quintet (both in regards to simply being too loud, and in regards to controlling the pitch) and so often fading away to nothing sounds so much better than fading away to something...

... but it's time to notch up every volume level on this particular instrument at least one or one and a half notches to make sure that everything works. It's sort of like running an engine too lean (or maybe even without enough oil) to do otherwise. If I want to go back later and see if I can move all over this gigantic instrument at a super pianissimo level and sound just as good as a 6/4 tuba mezzo piano, I can go back and do that if I have time, >>> but I also have an F tuba (and etc.)

I'm sharing this, because maybe it helps someone. I think back when I taught I was a fairly good teacher (??). I didn't do it for very long, and I don't have the patience to do it, because so many who seek instruction are looking for tricks or immediate fixes, rather than guidelines for improving over time. Moreover, I felt like I was putting more energy into some of the hour-long lessons (and this was teaching 18 to 23-year-old - supposedly - grown-ups) than some students were putting into weekly practice, and I don't like the idea of spending my life wasting my time, nor the idea of wasting other people's time nor their parents-nor-anyone's money.

OK... enough with the introspective and actually-about-playing posting, back to the hardware posts, and I hope everyone has a great weekend.

(Had it been possible, I would have posted this as a haiku.)

[MiBrassFS]

I play da toooba
It is not a clarinet
Soft is relative

[bloke]

I play da toooba
It is not a clarinet
Soft is relative

It's easy to offer forth sometimes-true truisms...as long as we don't have to face up to the fact that they're not always true.

At the risk of appearing that a short response trolled me into replying with a long one (attempting to avoid that trap will short bullet points)
- For a very long time, symphony orchestra/quintet/everywhere-tubas-are-found-in-note-composed-music composers have written for "tuba" and not for "bass tuba" or/vs. "contrabass tuba".
- For a very long time, the overwhelming majority of tuba players (if only one tuba owned) have mostly purchased/owned contrabass tubas.
- There are plenty of times whereby a very quiet tuba is expected to not-in-the-least overwhelm/overbalance a soft clarinet, YET - in the very same compositions - the very same "tuba" is expected to NOT be overwhelmed by a set of timpani, a snare, crash cymbals, and a bass drum, and a chest of high/loud trumpets and trombones - with the operators of each of those each giving it their all.

It's a remarkable decibel-range challenge for the "tuba".

Thankfully (notice that I was mostly referring to rapid/smooth-movement playing at very soft volume levels in the original post), when we are asked to play as soft as a very soft clarinet in a symphony orchestra, it's (typically) "static" (very little movement from one pitch to another) playing.

[iiipopes]

What bloke said. Fortunately, the human ear is progressively less sensitive to dynamic levels as the pitch frequency lowers. So we can play a tad louder and unless there is a resonance in the performance venue, it won't be perceived as overpowering the upper voices. Graph/chart below:

Equal Loudness Graph Chart.png (85.08 KiB) Viewed 696 times

[bloke]

That's a good point, and maybe that's what the previous person who responded was pointing out (just without using a graph).

All of that having been said, it sure is easier to move from one pitch to the next - playing a very large tuba - with the lips vibrating at a wider amplitude.

[MiBrassFS]

Not trolling at all. I agree.

[peterbas]

What bloke said. Fortunately, the human ear is progressively less sensitive to dynamic levels as the pitch frequency lowers. So we can play a tad louder and unless there is a resonance in the performance venue, it won't be perceived as overpowering the upper voices. Graph/chart below:

Equal Loudness Graph Chart.png

How do we define "dynamic levels".
example, for 1000 Hz (reference)
from 20 to 100 phon you need also a physical 20 to 100 dB SPL change = 80 dB higher

for 20 Hz
from 20 to 100 phon you need a 90 to 130 dB SPL change = 40 dB higher.

So you need a lot more energy to be heard, but a lot less more energy for being heard louder.

[je]

Having spent most of my time playing euphonium, the vast majority of my tuba playing has been Bb, with a bit of C noodling. However, as mentioned in another thread, I recently acquired a 3+1 Eb tuba, and one of the big initial surprises was how softly it can play cleanly. I mean, it's controllable down to volumes similar to what a euphonium can manage.

It has been decades since I touched a C tuba, so a question currently on my mind is whether it has enough of the qualities of an Eb tuba to make the Eb redundant. The math makes me think that a C tuba feels much more like a Bb than an Eb, but if that's true then why is C the preferred tuba in the US? My guess is that it's due to the typical ensemble role, i.e. laying down fundamentals, in whole notes, half notes, and sometimes even quarter notes. Is it the case that the C tuba is unwieldy much like the Bb, but that it rarely matters in practice?

Anyway, my limited experience leads me to suspect that playing softly is only an issue with the big tubas, and/or low range.

[bloke]

Really soft playing with a really large tuba - and with a really large bore - isn't that hard. It's doing that and moving around the range(s) of the instrument (at quiet volume levels) with considerable velocity - using such instruments - that becomes somewhat tricky.

Notice >all< the factors that I put together.

[iiipopes]

What bloke said. Fortunately, the human ear is progressively less sensitive to dynamic levels as the pitch frequency lowers. So we can play a tad louder and unless there is a resonance in the performance venue, it won't be perceived as overpowering the upper voices. Graph/chart below:

Equal Loudness Graph Chart.png

How do we define "dynamic levels".
example, for 1000 Hz (reference)
from 20 to 100 phon you need also a physical 20 to 100 dB SPL change = 80 dB higher

for 20 Hz
from 20 to 100 phon you need a 90 to 130 dB SPL change = 40 dB higher.

So you need a lot more energy to be heard, but a lot less more energy for being heard louder.

That is the question. It all comes down to the conductor's ear. I believe some decades ago Boston Symphony Hall tried to define dynamic levels in terms of decibels, without success. A church I belonged to thirty years ago, and was on the organ committee as an ad hoc member (I was in grad school and could not attend all the meetings) purchased a pipe organ and one, well, engineer, on the committee tried to pin the organ builder down on the same issue. I rose and addressed the committee and said, to effect, it was a stupid question, that many more variables go into voicing an organ for the particular space than simplistic decibel numbers. The committee shut him up. The organ is fantastic.

The entire point of this digression is not to pin absolute decibel numbers onto a particular dynamic level. The purpose of my post was to illustrate that the lower the pitch, generally the less sensitive the human ear is to dynamic levels and changes, and therefore if a tuba player needs to put a little more air through the horn to stabilize articulation, intonation, and dynamics, the player probably will not be perceived as overpowering the rest of the ensemble in a quieter dynamic passage.

I disagree with the conclusion of this post. Changes in dynamic levels are the square of the energy of a given dynamic. So quite the contrary, you need geometrically more energy to be heard at a louder dynamic. Don't confuse the energy to produce a certain perceived dynamic level, which can be more in the bass than in the treble as the chart indicates.

[Charlie C Chowder]

This is all way over my head!!!!

CCC

[peterbas]

What bloke said. Fortunately, the human ear is progressively less sensitive to dynamic levels as the pitch frequency lowers. So we can play a tad louder and unless there is a resonance in the performance venue, it won't be perceived as overpowering the upper voices. Graph/chart below:

Equal Loudness Graph Chart.png

How do we define "dynamic levels".
example, for 1000 Hz (reference)
from 20 to 100 phon you need also a physical 20 to 100 dB SPL change = 80 dB higher

for 20 Hz
from 20 to 100 phon you need a 90 to 130 dB SPL change = 40 dB higher.

So you need a lot more energy to be heard, but a lot less more energy for being heard louder.

I disagree with the conclusion of this post. Changes in dynamic levels are the square of the energy of a given dynamic. So quite the contrary, you need geometrically more energy to be heard at a louder dynamic. Don't confuse the energy to produce a certain perceived dynamic level, which can be more in the bass than in the treble as the chart indicates.

What are you disagreeing with, since to me you are saying the same thing. Only the term "geometrically", I don't know what you mean by that.

[bloke]

I believe he may mean multiple times as much, rather than only additional.

Even if multiple times are actually required, that doesn't necessarily mean that the operator has to put out multiple times the effort, though it may (??).

I myself have messed around with a decibel meter in the past, and - with tubas - I've kind of noticed that decibels don't go up all that much, and that timbre can be changed more easily than the needle on a decibel meter.
=============
Rather than this sidebar regarding decibels, I believe the main thing that I'm noticing - with this particular size and type of tuba (which is not only a six quarter, but a 6/4 with an extra large bore) - is that to move around on the instrument becomes easier when the player's lip vibration amplitude is increased.

[peterbas]

I'm just reading the values of the chart.

[bloke]

A few other tuba related things:

Different horns have different overtone series. They are all similar, but different at some level of detail.

Loudness is typically perceived in the human ear as a band level (integrated across a frequency band) as opposed to spectrum level (like dB re 20 uPa @ 1m // Hz).

Some tubas “sound louder” or “get on tape better”. I usually think those are also more in tune with themselves such that the Fourier series lines up better so that the levels “sum” a bit more coherently.

In regards to what I think is the intent of the OP, bigger tubas don’t seem to excite those upper frequencies as quickly, given equivalent player input, to smaller tubas. As such, that’s why they can “sound softer” or have those fluffy words like “blanket the orchestra” or whatever. So, the per hertz level of the bigger tuba may be higher than a smaller tuba at the same perceived dynamic marking, but the smaller tuba might be exciting those higher modes more and the band level is higher, so it sounds louder.

It would be interesting to be able to truly control the player input (humans are difficult) and compare the spectra for various tubas.

[Mary Ann]

I have yet to encounter a tuba player who regularly produces pitches in the 1000Hz range. Trumpets, yes.

[matt g]

I have yet to encounter a tuba player who regularly produces pitches in the 1000Hz range. Trumpets, yes.

The harmonic series guarantees those pitches are there, but the roll off is probably something like 12-16 dB per octave at that point (or more) so they simply aren’t perceived in the ear very well. A spectrogram would likely indicate energy in those ranges. I’m pretty sure someone like @Rick Denney has posted images like that in the past.

[bloke]

No one has any control over a thread topic and I probably used some nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that misdirected the intended point of my original point, but mainly I'm referring to the energy I'm putting into the instrument more than I am the amount of sound that comes out of the instrument.

If I could back up and start over, I believe I would say that playing this particular type of gigantic 18-feet-bugle tuba with a gigantic valve section bore, in order for slurs to work nicely - and particularly for high velocity slurs to work nicely, my lips need to be vibrating more than they do to do the same things with smaller instruments...

... but maybe that observation is too obvious. Even if it is obvious, I'm required to act on the obvious for the instrument to respond better under those conditions.

[peterbas]

Something like 1 or 2%.
But it seems to vary rather a lot.

"an extended region in which the sound output rises by about 15 dB for each doubling of blowing pressure, and (3) a saturation region in which sound output rises by only about 3 dB for a doubling of blowing pressure."
(from Blowing pressure, power, and spectrum in trumpet playing, Fletcher. Not a free article)

[peterbas]

I have yet to encounter a tuba player who regularly produces pitches in the 1000Hz range. Trumpets, yes.

The harmonic series guarantees those pitches are there, but the roll off is probably something like 12-16 dB per octave at that point (or more) so they simply aren’t perceived in the ear very well. A spectrogram would likely indicate energy in those ranges. I’m pretty sure someone like @Rick Denney has posted images like that in the past.

Here is one from a trombone, up to 8000 Hz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zApAf3MDU98