Tuba

The tuba is a member of the brass (Hornbostel–Sachs 423.232). Listen to 3 recordings and learn how it makes its sound.

Listen to the tuba

Tuba-range-C-high

0:08Public domainWikimedia Commons

0:08

Tuba-range-C-low

0:08Public domainWikimedia Commons

0:08

Mozart - Requiem (Krips) - IV. Tuba mirum

3:47Public domainby Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWikimedia Commons

3:47

Tip: press play to see the sound's live frequency spectrum in blue over the waveform.

How the tuba makes its sound

In the Hornbostel–Sachs system, which classifies instruments by how they produce sound, the tuba belongs to the brass (lip-vibrated aerophones): the player's buzzing lips set the air column vibrating – trumpets, horns, trombones, tubas and the didgeridoo.

More broadly it is one of the aerophones (wind instruments), where sound comes from vibrating air.

Its timbre – the colour that lets you tell it apart from other instruments playing the same note – comes from the mix of overtones its body and resonator emphasise.

Range of the tuba

The typical range of the tuba runs from D1 (36.7 Hz) to F4 (349 Hz) – about 3.2 octaves. Harmonics extend its sound far higher.

From Wikipedia

The tuba (Latin, "trumpet"; UK:; US: ) is a large brass instrument in the bass-to-contrabass range. It is a member of the valved bugles, a large and diverse family of instruments characterized by their wide conical bore and use of valves to alter pitch. The tuba usually has four or five valves, although some models have three or six. Descending from the serpent and ophicleide, the tuba was invented in Prussia by Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht and Johann Gottfried Moritz and patented in 1835 as the Baß-Tuba, pitched in 12-foot (12′) F. Its five valves provided a fully chromatic contrabass instrument with a deep, full contrabass timbre.