Reply To: Need tuba help quick!

[nafmeadmin]

Bb tuba plays in concert pitch, and its music sounds as written in bass clef. If you get a Bb when you play open, it’s called a Bb (NOT a C, even though you’d call the same fingering a C on trumpet). BBb tuba is a non-transposing instrument. The low Bb that comes out would be written as the Bb below the 2nd ledger line underneath the bass clef staff. (The exception would be if you are playing music scored for an English-style brass band, where the bass parts are sometimes written in treble clef and transposed the same way trumpet parts are. But for most American-published music–anything you’d play with a concert band or orchestra–the tuba would play/read in concert pitch.)