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It’s my very first post here, so I hope it’s in the right place. I simply cannot play a first valve C in the staff without warbling. I just cannot center the pitch well. I’ve never been able to. Do some horns have idiosyncrasies that make some pitches harder to nail? I’m playing on a Meinl Weston 25 with a Conn Helleberg mouthpiece mostly, but also a Conn 18 and Conn 2 mouthpiece. It’s strange… like the horn just changes when I try to play that pitch. It feels different, like the back pressure is different and the tone is way different and edgy.

Random guess without hearing you play: that note tends flat on a lot of tubas, so it could be that your ear is hearing the pitch correctly and you are trying to buzz the right pitch, but the tuba isn't cooperating. Does playing it 1+3 (or even 4) correct the issue somewhat?

Have you tried that note on a different tuba? Do other notes with 1st valve combo play ok? I wonder if there may some sort of obstruction in your 1st valve.

Years ago I had a miraphone 186 that played poorly. I took it to a tech for cleaning and he said that the valves, rotary, were installed incorrectly.

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5th partial (open D down to 1-2 B-natural) is known (ok: "by me") to be quite flat on a model 25.

Consider having your #1 slide tricked out (perfectly aligned, for on-the-fly tuning), and (if it seems appropriate) shortened, so that the #1 slide can be pushed in far enough to play that C in tune without epic "lipping".

I tend to suspect that your ear is dictating that you're physically struggling to "lip" that C up to pitch.

Otherwise (gross), I've (rarely) tracked down pitch "fluttering" problems to gross flaps of scum flopping back-and-forth inside valve circuits.

My BBb tuba gives me a hard time with G at the top of the staff. It's the tuba - other tubas are fine with that note - but I think more precisely, other tubas are fine with the way I play that note, and this one isn't.

I can hit it more successfully with a different approach, but haven't got to the point where I do this automatically. Part of the problem, somewhat in the same vein as bloke's observation above, is that the pitch there is a little high, vs my tendency there to play a little flat. But it's also about how my chops work and so forth. I guess I can see this as a learning aid.

I don’t see that I can reply to specific users here, but thanks for the insights. I have long thought the same thing that there is something physically causing this issue. I’ll have to look into that. When I remove the rear rotor cap, the alignment marks seem to be correct. 1+3 valves do not help, neither does 4. Pushing in the tuning slide DOES seem to help a bit. I might get one of my colleagues to play it a little this evening and see if he encounters the issue. Maybe it’s just me and my anatomy.

postscript to my previous post:

one of the finest brass players I know (a principal trumpet player) wrote:The reason you're having trouble hitting/playing that note is because you're trying to play it in tune.

I struggled with a well-known-make/has-its-fans but small-shop tuba (the most out-of-tune of the three sizes of contrabasses it offers) playing C-sharps above middle C. I finally released that the frequency where it was vibrating on the instrument (with two or three valve combinations) was probably 35/100ths to 40/100ths of a semitone HIGHER than "music".

...the second-space C on the model 25: likely roughly that much too low.

Bereabuck wrote: ↑Mon Apr 01, 2024 12:31 pm I don’t see that I can reply to specific users here, but thanks for the insights. I have long thought the same thing that there is something physically causing this issue. I’ll have to look into that. When I remove the rear rotor cap, the alignment marks seem to be correct. 1+3 valves do not help, neither does 4. Pushing in the tuning slide DOES seem to help a bit. I might get one of my colleagues to play it a little this evening and see if he encounters the issue. Maybe it’s just me and my anatomy.

If I were having this problem, I would try to play it intentionally flat, or move around in the slot to see if it wants to slot in a different place than your're buzzing it. I use this method to set my valve slides -- where it "wants" to play as opposed to where I have the slide set, and adjust the slide as needed to get the harmonic series for that valve as close to in tune as I can get it. Some will be sharp or flat because it's a brass instrument.

If you can descend D, Db, C on the open fifth partial and land on the C without issue, its likely that the problem is that the tuba is flat on that note and you’re fighting it. Working down an already flat series wherein the notes are gradually getting flatter gives the ear some bias and usually tricks you out of the problem (and you’ll be playing that C about a quarter tone flat).

That fifth partial is the most notorious partial, even on good tubas. Octaves and other partials can be dead on, but that partial will commonly be flat, as it’s numerically that way from the Fourier series.

Anyhow, a primary factor in the decision making process, for me, has always been accessibility to the first valve slide. Then it’s a matter of the ability for that slide to actually be short enough to play that C (or D on a C tuba) just a bit high since the B natural (Db on C) may need that extra bit.

Most Bb tubas seem to have slides cut on the long side and this partial suffers.

The same pitch with many Conn 4/4 (Elkhart) sousaphones (14K/36K, etc.) suffer from the same issue, yet in spades.

- the C is already flat acoustically
- the #1 circuit is too long by design to "compensate" for the fact that they are only equipped with three valves.

This post has actually been really helpful for me.

On the 20J I have trouble with a clean attack on the F right below the staff, but beyond the initial flutterI can play it in tune. For fun I tried it 1+3 and I can hit it much more cleanly. Back to open and focused on just the attack and not the pitch and sure enough, I can hit it clean but then it runs about 15 cents flat. If I lip it to be in tune I can't hit it cleanly.

One of these days, I need to find time to take some lessons and let a knowledgeable teacher help me with issues like the this.

I think you have the concepts now to figure it out for yourself -- you just have to go find those notes that are a bit wacky and figure out how to fix each particular wacky note. That's why people move slides in and out and even have main slide triggers, to fix that stuff on a tuba they happen to like to play otherwise.

What I've been reading here tells me that you have a good ear for pitch, and are playing instruments which aren't particularly friendly to what you're trying to accomplish.