Today is International Tuba Day. 10 facts about tubas:
The word "tuba" comes from the Latin word for tube, and was originally the name for a type of trumpet played in Ancient Rome, which was straight rather than looking like the tubas of today.
A person who plays the tuba is called a tubaist, a tubist, or simply a tuba player.
The forerunner of the tuba was an instrument called a serpent. These were made of wood and had holes rather than keys. They were bendy, hence the name.
The first tuba as we know it today was patented by Wilhelm Wieprecht and Johann Gottfried Moritz of Berlin in 1835.
The tuba is the largest instrument in the brass family. The standard size weighs about 30lb although smaller, lighter versions are available for schoolchildren and beginners. They come in a variety of sizes. The number relates to the width of the tubes. The standard size is 4/4 with 3/4 the kids’ size. They can reach up to several metres in height but these are hard to play and in some cases so bassy they’re virtually inaudible.
The tuba is often a part of a marching band, and you can get tubas which are convertible, that is adjustable so they can be made easier to play while marching or when sitting down in an orchestra.
Jazz bands use them when playing outdoors. Generally a jazz band will use a double bass for the bass sound, but being made of wood are vulnerable to humidity and weather conditions, so outdoor bands use the tuba instead.
Tubby the Tuba is a song first recorded in 1945. It’s about a tuba who finally found a melody to play thanks to a bullfrog he met while feeling depressed about only ever playing supporting bass parts. The song was written by Paul Tripp and George Kleinsinger.
That said, the tuba does get significant melodies to play in many classical works. These include: Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, Gershwin's An American in Paris and Gustav Holst's The Planets.
A record for the greatest number of people playing the tuba together was set in 2018 by the Kansas City Symphony with 835 tubas.
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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