The worst keys for a non compensating 4 valve instrument are C and G.
For school band/community band use (B-flat tuba...??) that seems to argue that a non-compensating 4-valve instrument is even less useful, being that (as bands are flats-friendly ensembles) those are the two sharp keys with the
least sharps, and thus are the most likely sharp keys to be encountered.
D-major is troublesome for many B-flat instruments as (again, we tend to ignore epic 2-3 combination inconsistencies) F-sharp (bottom of staff) with quite a few B-flat instruments tends to ride quite flat, whereas the octave-lower F-sharp (ledger lines) tends to ride quite sharp with quite a few B-flat instruments.
...someone with a "hero" mentality may chime in with "The way that
I play in-tune is to listen" (etc...), but - as an analogy - violinists don't brag about how high of a bridge they can use (yet still be able to play with good facility) and woodwind players don't brag about how strong the springs can be on their instruments and still be able to play very fast passages...so I don't see why we need to brag about how many shortcomings we can overcome with our tubas.
maybe (??) consider this:
The more frantic our written music and the louder the deafening percussion, the MORE LIKELY we (as individual tuba players) are to play in-tune, when our instruments innately play close to in-tune (without much "muscling").
back to 3-valve compensating fiberglass sousaphones for a moment:
The overwhelming majority of high school tuba players aren't going to pull slides, and - if they do - its going to either likely be too much or without very much predetermined purposed. Further, as soon as they dent a slide tube or a slide freezes up with scale deposits, they're going to stop moving them anyway. As (again) the smaller-bore (11/16ths or 17.5mm) instruments are much easier to embouchure-manipulate pitch-wise (than larger-bore instruments), fiberglass doesn't dent, sousaphones play false tones beautifully, and the 3-valve compensating system - right off the bat - solves TONS of problems, I (being TERRIBLY redundant) believe that band directors need to be educated as to the practicality and
(particularly as we are headed into an epic depression - which individuals can choose to face or pretend isn't about to hit) economy of this, and there needs to be a grassroots demand for manufacturers to supply such instruments. As a postscript to this paragraph, WHITE is STUPID-LOOKING. These need to be manufactured (not only of REAL LIGHTWEIGHT fiberglass, and NOT that heavy resin-or-whatever-it-is crap) with a realistic-looking substantial/durable silver-metallic GEL-COAT over the fiberglass, and the valve sections (as with the ORIGINAL corps instruments) should be CHROME-plated, as silver plating (for school-owned instruments) is just plain stupid.
...yes...I realize that I seem to be wandering off-topic, but to what are the vast majority (or - at least - a likely plurality) of tubas sold...?
- schools, in
- the USA
again: (original topic title)
I
DO play 1-3 C (just below the staff) with 1-3 and a (my longest #1 slide tuning position - less then a half inch prior to hitting on the end of a stop rod I added) pull...and THE reason that 2-4 B-natural (B-flat tuba) is often "pretty darn good" is because (the 4th valve next-door C - which I do NOT use - is often considerably FLATTER THAN "low F" - with the sharpness of 2-4, then, being "countered" with the flatness of that particular tons-of-cylindrical-tubing overtone).
