Re: Preferred position of tuba in quintet
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Posted by Rick Denney on May 13, 2003 at 11:42:28:
In Reply to: Preferred position of tuba in quintet posted by Jim Andrada on May 12, 2003 at 16:11:56:
I've read all the comments, but I'm of the growing conclusion that it doesn't really matter that much.
I agree that connection with the audience is more important than the subtleties of tone coloration. The Candian Brass, for example, rarely arranges themselves in a chamber-music style, with all people facing each other. Sometimes, they play from opposite corners of the room. I believe that the facing-each-other style is appropriate in, well, chambers, where the "audience" surrounds the musicians and where the music is really for background entertainment. But for a stage, I don't think it works as well.
When I was in the TubaMeisters, we played on the "street" within a theme park. We usually lined up in a row so that we could all face the audience. If the audience surrounded us, we'd often arrange in a cluster pointed out instead of in. Audience members seeing your face and your eyes is as important as hearing your sounds, it seems to me. Yes, we usually put the fourth player on the outside of the group pointed inward so that we could all hear the critical rhythm part, but that's about it. We played a recital at Southwest Texas State a month or so after our theme-park gig ended, and we started it with some serious classical music. For that, we used stands, and arranged ourselves in a V, like this:
T1 E2
T2 E1
____________________
audience
For several reasons, the tension in the room palpably relaxed when we were done with the long-hair music and launched into our standard Polka set. Part of it was our arrangement. We went from the V with stands to a widely spaced row at the edge of the stage, playing head tunes:
E1 E2 T1 T2
_______________________________
audience
Audiences love this arrangement, and the subtleties of the effect on the sound are not on their radar screen. And our audience in this instance was a music-school audience.
More important than how you are arranged, it seems to me, is to find a way to stand when doing a straight stage performance. I have seen the CB sit, but most of their tunes they play standing. I think the reason is mobility. If you are standing, then during parts of the music where you need to have a direct sound, you just turn to point your bell at the audience. When you need the resonant room-reflected sound, you can turn away. You can't stand in a church gig, but in those circumstances the room effect is almost always the predominant desire, and I always sit where my bell is not directly pointed at people. Having the music memorized is important if you want to achieve that mobility, but I have to confess that I've never had quintet music memorized.
In thinking back on my various quintet gigs, I recall that we nearly always sit where we could see each other enough to send eye messages, and where the kiddies won't stumble over us or our instruments. That's probably good enough.
For recording, it's a whole different ball game. There, the connection with the audience is 100% sonic and the decision have to be made to serve that objective.
Rick "who has never seen, say, a dixieland band play in chamber-music arrangement" Denney
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