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Former tuba players who switched to bass trombone always seem to love this excerpt while the rest of us simply have to put in the work to play loud valve and pedal notes with a good sound, even length and steady diminuendo. The breaths indicated are simply suggestions - some players can take fewer and I know other players who breath after every note in measures 3 and 4 with great success. The key is to play the quarter notes evenly without letting notes before a breath be cut short. I prefer to play the pedal E on the valve because the added resistance (and, yes, even the axial-flow valve has some resistance) helps me control the diminuendo.
This passage represents the power of Wotan's (the head god in Wagner's tetralogy) spear and is scored for contra-bass trombone (in octaves with trombones 1-3 only) but should be played on a bass trombone for auditions.
As suggested earlier, using the book, "Duets and Trios arranged from the works of Johann Sebastian Bach for Two and Three Tubas," arranged by Daniel Augustine and published by Southern Music (catalog B-260) can be helpful in developing this range as well if you play the duets detached and loudly instead of legato as marked.
To download the music of this excerpt as a PDF file which may be read and printed in a high quality output with Adobe Acrobat Reader (free software), click the icon below:
Go to yeodoug.com PDF download page.
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