History of the Tuba

Series Summary

The oompah sound of the tuba is probably one of the most distinctive things this low-register brass giant has going for it. Often found in orchestral settings, marching bands, and Bavarian beer festivals, the tuba is a large valve instrument that produces deep, smooth notes and tones. Whether it’s creating a pulsing bass line for accompaniment, or actually playing the lead melody in a song, the tuba’s sound is hard to miss. And it takes a special kind of person to play this beast of an instrument. Tubas are not known to impart to their owners any abilities to look cool or “rock out.” Rather the opposite—tuba players are often stigmatized for choosing something less popular than, say, the mighty, ubiquitous three or four: guitar, drums, bass, and keyboard.

If you have been considering taking up tuba, this video series is perfect for you. Not only will you learn the history of the tuba, you will learn how the various tuba parts function, basic breathing techniques for playing the tuba, and how to play various major and minor scales. Once you've got that down, try an improvisational tuba jam session to really get a feel for playing the tuba.

Video Transcript

"Hey, the tuba is the biggest member of the Brass family, and has the lowest range. And Kevin is one of the unique few who can play one of these things. He has intense air capacity, in which of course, with aerophones you need to breathe and use your diaphragm. These are all big words for kids, but we're going to find out more about them in a little while. Tell us more about the tuba here, Kev. Well this tuba is not actually one of the biggest tubas; this is called a three quarter size tuba. Literally, it is three quarters the size of a regular orchestral tuba. I personally like it because it's not as big. This one gets a beautiful register all the way through. But in general, let's see, the tuba is mostly closely descended from an instrument called the ophicleide, which is a form of bugle, a keyed bugle in the 1800's and before that time there was an ancient instrument called the serpent. And it was patented in Prussia, and I think primarily for military purposes then as a lot of brass instruments were. The composer, Richard Wagner, built a particular tuba for a large group playing and primarily, in the onset, it was used in a lot of the bands playing in Great Britain. Now there are tons of different designs of tubas as well as different keys. This one happens to be called a "C Tuba", which may not make sense to a lot of you kids out there yet, but I'm sure before this is all over, it will. And one thing that all brass instruments do share is the way that we play the instrument as well as the primary structure of the instrument. We all have this thing here, called the mouthpiece, which comes out of the stem like that, and that is how we produce the air out of the instrument, by putting our mouth like so up to the mouthpiece. If we lower our jaw, it makes the sound lower, and if we raise up our jaw, it makes the sound higher. Very important for brass players to keep their instruments clean, especially their mouthpieces because anything we eat, for example, if we don't brush our teeth or whatever, will find its way through the mouthpiece and probably down the horn and then clog it up, and that's not fun for anybody."