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Contra/Tuba Line


ussglassman

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rediculous...this isnt college marching band?!?! Go back to 10 and just teach them how to play. I swear, instructors are getting so lazy these days. Rather than TEACH your kids how to play, just add in bass guitars and double the size of your tuba line so you can have 8 or so "strong" players and 8 or so people carrying horns LOL. I'm sure these oversized tuba lines all had to audition, but its just stupid IMO to have that many horns. If you want the same volume you had back in 'the day,' go back to the horns that produced that sound instead of faking it with these band instruments and adding more and more and more people. Its just going to get dirtier and dirtier......

I understand your frustration, for me it feels like so many tuba 'players' pussyfoot around and don't really play the horn. Yeah they may sound great and have outstanding technical ability when your standing 2-3 feet away. To bad you can't hear them when the entire ensemble is playing. To be brutaly honest, you could put half of these kids on 2 valved Kings and you still wouldn't hear them! For whatever reason this seems to be a tuba 'problem'

side note: [in Blue Band] at a game, right after pre-game, I stayed on field level to assist staff in handing water out. When I finally went up to join the band, they were playing. I was a little annoyed that I could hear the bass trombones base trombone section (4 people) and they were OVER POWERING the 29 sousaphones!!! Isn't this a bit messed up????

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WHOA, chill man.

Hornlines have gotten bigger...have ya noticed? Now, had you said "Go back to 10 [and make the hornlines smaller]" then I wouldn't have given your rant a second thought.

Have you also noticed that some drum corps drill writers don't know how to stage the tubas, or they just don't care? That they just want 80 hornline "dots" on the field, treating contra no different than trumpet, regardless of acoustics and human hearing?

Did you notice the sound of Carolina Crown last year? Apparently, some "lazy instructors" at world-class Cavies, Phantom, and Bluecoats kind of liked it. Cadets wanted 16 as well, but couldn't get enough qualified people. Have you thought that maybe...just maybe...these corps HAVE used the proper audition process, and the players are all qualified? Cadets [edit: mistakenly said Crown at first] could've forced the number, but didn't. Bloo is still carrying an alternate! (17 tubas on roster)

You're likely to get your wish, however, with the increased role of the synth as low-end proxy. It's happening all over the West Coast right now. SCV (12 tubas) and BD (12 tubas) absolutely rely on the low end of the synth (sounds good, too, just sayin'), with BK (12) and Bluecoats (16) much less so. Bloo has some good low-end synth moments, but with the 16 tubas, and qualified designers, they'll get the best of all worlds: Awesome power from both Tubas AND Synth.

I'm sorry your experience has made you think that every tuba line is 1/2 tubas and 1/2 schmucks. "It ain't necessarily so."

Your logic that BITD instruction was good, so 10 players was "enough" kind of contradicts the 1/2 players, 1/2 schmucks argument too. It's entirely possible that instruction today is the same (very good), and the quality of the membership is the same (very good), and bigger hornlines need bigger tuba sections. It's that simple.

Yeah, its entirely possible that all 16 tubas in these corps are players. I'm just saying, it seems rediculous to me when you had hornlines BITD with 4 or 6 tiny G contras on the field that laid down more bass sound than some lines of today who march 16 of the most technologically advanced BBb tubas ever built.

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Yeah, its entirely possible that all 16 tubas in these corps are players. I'm just saying, it seems rediculous to me when you had hornlines BITD with 4 or 6 tiny G contras on the field that laid down more bass sound than some lines of today who march 16 of the most technologically advanced BBb tubas ever built.

Please point me to recordings of those 4/6/8 member contra lines of yesteryear that laid down more bass sound.

And when you do, I'm pretty sure I'll observe the following:

a) well-staged, as in up front, probably standing on the front sideline.

b) smaller hornlines

c) sound that I wouldn't let my dog make

(please, mention '79 Spirit, I dare ya... :worthy:)

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rediculous...this isnt college marching band?!?! Go back to 10 and just teach them how to play. I swear, instructors are getting so lazy these days. Rather than TEACH your kids how to play, just add in bass guitars and double the size of your tuba line so you can have 8 or so "strong" players and 8 or so people carrying horns LOL. I'm sure these oversized tuba lines all had to audition, but its just stupid IMO to have that many horns. If you want the same volume you had back in 'the day,' go back to the horns that produced that sound instead of faking it with these band instruments and adding more and more and more people. Its just going to get dirtier and dirtier......

And have the tubas overbalance the rest of the corps? The whole corps hasn't been playing that loud lately and it's been explained multiple times how they wait to add the impacts and other parts later. It's early July and with plenty of stuff to be added, things to be cleaned, and impacts/volume to be added, it's a bit soon for you to accuse them of not knowing how to play.

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