Re: Re: 8va heros


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Posted by Rick Denney on February 21, 2003 at 15:22:10:

In Reply to: Re: 8va heros posted by Chuck(G) on February 21, 2003 at 12:30:02:

I've played that Grainger piece several times. When I was in San Antonio, I played the upper parts on F tuba and the rest of the section played the lower part. The blend was perfect. Ray could have played those upper parts on his C better than I could on F by some margin, but he bested me on the low notes by a much greater margin, so our arrangement served the music best. The bass tuba mixed in the section of contrabass tubas is an approach that seems to have lost favor, but I recall a lecture by Revelli saying that no band was complete without an Eb bass. Ray always directed our section to play the lower octave except for one player.

But now I have a Holton, so my current section mate gets to play the upper parts, heh, heh.

I've also played a movement of the De Meij work quite recently, and we plaved the C bass part as if it was written for string bass (i.e. down an octave). The part marked 8va basso made it too low for us to sound good, and we didn't tack on the extra octave.

Which brings another variation from the written music: There are times when I take very low parts up an octave, because playing them where written is too much of a stretch for me and they sound much better an octave up. Again, it's a matter of serving the music. Fortunately, it doesn't happen often. No conductor has ever complained.

Rick "who would happily take Bydlo down an octave if asked to play it and it was allowed" Denney


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