Basic Styles of Playing Tuba

Video Transcript

Hi everybody Kevin Smith here again, TubaLove, and I'm talking now about the basic styles of playing the tuba. Later on I'll be expounding on this a little more. But really fundamentally there are two basic styles of playing. There's a slurring style and there's a tonguing style. So, if I play something slurring that means it's the notes. There's a term that is used in music that's called legato, l e g a t o. It's an Italian word. It just means in a smooth or gliding manner. So. Where the note seem to just go together, and I didn't really have any breaks except when I you have to breath once in awhile. But for all intents, they were gliding. That's legato. If I'm doing something, lot of marches or something that I'm playing. That's the tongue. You hear that break, that distinct break between, and so that would be tonguing. You can break tonguing down into staccato, which is more of an abrupt. So, regular tonguing. Staccato, there's even more of a break, a little bit short. That's staccato. Then Pitch staccato which you hear on a string base a lot is even shorter sound. You kind of plucking something. Ah so that's the two styles of playing, slurring, tonguing. Remember too when you're slurring, when you have to add valves. You're going to have to take a little more of a breath because you're adding the tubing. So if you want to keep that sound flowing through, make sure you got the breath coming through.

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