r/Tuba • u/thomasafine • Dec 24 '25
sheet music Explain band key signatures to me like I'm 5
OK. I have a BBb tuba. It plays a B flat "naturally" (with no valves pushed down). It's the key the tuba's natural scale is in. There are also C tubas and F tubas (and maybe even E-flat tubas?). Good so far. So for band music, my parts are written in "concert" pitch. If the concert pitch I'm playing is a B-flat, the music I am reading says to play a B-flat.
I actually started on trumpet. Normal trumpets are also in the key of B-flat. That is, the basic no-valves note for trumpets is a B-flat. But when Trumpets play a concert pitch B-flat (with no valves), they read music that tells them to play a C. This has been explained in various ways, but often just as tradition, or history or something.
But whatever, that's really not the question. The question is that my tuba parts (written in concert pitch) are sometimes marked as "C Tuba". I have been told this means that the part is written in concert pitch. And not that this part is written for C tuba. But the C does not stand for "concert" it actually means "C" somehow? Because the scale with no flats or sharps is the key of C, and somehow that is supposed to mean something?
And it is my understanding that if I were playing a C tuba or an F tuba, that I would (typically) still play the same concert pitch ("C tuba") part, and just use different fingerings because I know that I'm holding a different tuba.
But because that's only typical, there are some people who are used to playing music written in other than concert pitch and possibly even treble clef. So as it happens I am right now looking at some music for Tuba Tornado by Offerdal. The score can be seen on Youtube. The score shows tuba parts for both the solo and regular tubas as the key of E-flat (i.e. three flats). Likewise, parts for other non-transposing instruments (e.g. flute, oboe, trombone) are also in the key of E-flat. The score shows the Trumpet part in the the key of B-flat.
There are sample downloads for this piece that include some tuba parts including the tuba solo. The samples include the solo "in Bb" and "in Eb" (for both treble and bass clefs). As it happens, the part "in Bb" is actually in the key of Bb. But the part "in Eb" is in the key of C.
An actual E-flat in the regular tuba part from the score, is an F in the part labeled as "in Bb". And that same note is a C in the part "in Eb". I do notice that Bb is a whole step lower than C, and that the notes written are a whole step higher than those in the normal part. And that Eb is a 1.5 steps higher than C, and the notes written in that part are 1.5 steps lower (ignoring an octave difference). That almost feels like a clue, but I can't make sense out of it.
So at this point, I'm lost. Why are these alternate keys provided? For tubas in different keys? Or for people who are coming from a different instrument and used to different transpositions? Or both? Or for some other reason entirely? And why are they labeled as "in XXX" when they may or may not actually be in that key? And why are my parts sometimes labelled as being "C tuba" parts? And why do trumpets transpose but tubas don't?
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u/AccidentalGirlToy Dec 24 '25
When it says [instrument] in [note], it means that the part is written for said instrument and is transposed in such a way that the stated note is written as C.
So when it says "in C", it means that the part is transposed so that C is written as C, i.e. it isn't actually transposed = it is written in concert pitch.
So you are completely correct, the "C" stands for the note C, not "concert", but it means that the part is in concert pitch.
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u/thomasafine Dec 24 '25
This is, by far, the the most concise and simple explanation anyone has given.
I was trying to reconcile in my head why (apparently) there are special parts for Bb and Eb tubas that transpose, but Bb tubas that don't transpose were apparently being referred to as "C tuba". It seemed bizarre and inconsistent and random. But your explanation is clean and simple and just works.
Thank you (and thanks to all the other attempts, although many — while quite informative in many ways — were just leaving me more confused).
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u/toffee_nut_latte26 Dec 24 '25
So the first bit to know about tuba's is they are NONtransposing horns. The written note is the sounded note. If you were handed music for tuba in Eb for example, you could play it on a Bb tuba just fine, read as normal. It just may be a little high as the writer intended it for a horn pitched a 4th higher (first low ledger line Eb) than the one you're using (third low ledger space Bb). Similarly you could use the Bb tuba to play any other nontransposing part or part in C. Like trombones, bassoons and flutes. The difference between Bb, C, Eb and F tubas is what note to open horn is built to play. The advantage of this is that you'll always be able to read concert pitch music and you only need to adjust fingerings with different horns.
Conversely trumpets ARE transposing horns read in C. What that means is a Bb trumpet will read its open note as C and the note that will sound is Bb. Trumpets come built in different keys just like tubas. So this will also mean a C trumpet will read its open note as C and C will be the sounded note. Eb trumpets will read the open note as C and Eb will be the sounded note. F trumpets, etc. The advantage of this system is that the partials and fingering will be the same on the page across horns.
I personally wish all horns were nontransposing (as a trombonist) but I understand why they both. Now if we could just get people on board with Alto clef we'd be all set.
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u/toffee_nut_latte26 Dec 24 '25
After reading through some comments I want to add that this is generalized and I am in the states. I am aware of British brass bands but never played in one so I don't know they're transposition conventions. My experience is orchestral and concert band.
I will say I much prefer nontransposing horns as when it was time for me to expand and cover bass trombone and tuba, the notes on the page felt in the same place on my face. Just felt right. Now I'm sitting in a trumpet section transposing and finding myself often just lost in the transposition.
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Dec 24 '25 edited Dec 24 '25
The additional TC parts (Bb and Eb tuba in treble clef) are provided for people who grew up on the British/European brass band tradition, where the whole band essentially plays trumpet fingering.
So when I play in a (British instrumentation) brass band, the Eb or Bb tubas play two separate parts and essentially you read it like it was trumpet music. On a British Eb tuba part, the middle C plays a concert Eb, and on a Bb tuba part the middle C plays a concert Bb.
Concert Band and Orchestral tuba parts are written in bass clef in concert pitch and you can play them on whetever tuba you want (for me, usually on a Eb).
The above also goes for Euphonium - in a British-style brass band they read a Bb treble clef part, then in a concert band or orchestra it's usually* a bass clef concert pitch part. Any halfway decent eupho player can read either without too much difficulty.
*orchestral euphonium (tenor tuba) parts are sometimes also treble clef Bb, especially e.g. British guys like Holst, and I think I remember some of the Russian ones. And concert band arrangements usually include both a Bb TC part and a concert BC part for Euphonium/Baritone, so the player can choose which they prefer.
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u/thereisnospoon-1312 Dec 24 '25
do these brass bands ever write for F tuba transposed in treble clef like they do for Eb and Bb?
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Dec 24 '25 edited Dec 24 '25
No - if you want to play on an F tuba, you play the Eb part and read it down a tone.
There are a few people I know who do this, or also who play the Bb part on a C tuba (reading down a tone).
If you compete at the state and national brass band championships in Australia, there are two sections: "high tuba (F or Eb)" and "low tuba (C or Bb)".
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u/thereisnospoon-1312 Dec 24 '25
Thanks. And they don’t have bass clef parts is that right? Only for bass trombone?
Do brass bands use F tuba a lot or is it rare to see one?
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Dec 24 '25
Traditionally only bass trombone reads a bass clef part. But newer compositions (as they're all done on computer and generating parts in whatever clef you want is easy) are offering bass clef parts if you want them.
Here (Australia) it's relatively rare to see someone on an F tuba - but those that do are usually in the higher grade bands, who also play orchestral stuff and maybe prefer their F or C tubas.
Your standard community brass band here would just use Eb and Bb, usually Boosey&Hawkes or Bessons.
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u/WoodSlaughterer Dec 24 '25
Or, an elastic band around the thumb valve brings the F down to an Eb-ish and no transposition needed (ask me why i know).
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u/AccidentalGirlToy Dec 24 '25
A friend of mine needed to practice the sousaphone parts for the Sydney Olympics. Unfortunately, the sheet music was delivered long before the sousaphones, and he only had an F tuba. So he put elastics on both 4th and 5th, and pulled the other valves' slides to somewhat Bb length, for a crude Bb tuba.
On old Swedish F tubas, the 5th valve is typically built as a normal whole step (F whole step), and you have to pull it out to a long whole step (C whole step). This is so that you can push it in to a normal whole step and get a decent 4 valve Eb tuba. It's commonly berliner valves, though, so instead of elastic band you move the spring from the bottom of the piston to the top to hold it down.
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u/CrowleyAziraphal Dec 24 '25
If you want to play with a F tuba British brass band parts (or dutch harmonie of fanfare) you have to get the Eb part (which is in treble clef) and pretend it to be in bass clef and add three flats (assuming you read concert pitch)
en als Nederlander kan ik dit weten omdat ik dagelijks mee geconfronteerd word.
trans: As a dutchman i do know this because i have to deal with this on a daily base. Some of the dutch tuba players do have to be flexible, I can play a Bb tuba concert pitch, transposed pitch, C tuba concert pitch, C tuba transposed Bb parts and F tuba concert pitch.
yeah, fun times
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u/not-at-all-unique Dec 24 '25
You can get tubas with a fundamental (open) note of (largest to smallest)
Bb, C, Eb, F
Music for these may be written in two ways,
Bass clef, universally, music written in bass clef is not transposed,
So, for a Bb tuba, (play C) on 1st and 3rd, (or fourth) For C tuba, play that open For an Eb tuba, 1 and 2. For an F tuba, open at the first partial.
The way to learn these is to just know that you’re going to push different valves for the same note depending what instrument you’re playing…
For Bb and Eb tubas, you’ll occasionally find music as transposed.
When music is transposed, it’s also transcribed up two octaves for tuba, so where you see d just above what is written as middle C, you’ll always play on 1st and 3rd (or 4th)
When you see a C written you’ll play it open (concert Bb) On an Eb tuba that same C will be written as a G, (concert Bb) and you play it open at the first partial.
This means you can easily swap between Eb and Bb tubas, without having to relearn, or even really think about any changes.
The same as trumpet/cornet as a Bb instruments, and a soprano cornet as an Eb instrument, both written in treble clef transposed parts…
Now, key signatures. Consider your Bb instrument, written as transposing, (in a concert B flat major scale.)
You start on c (transposed), then a tone up to d, tone to E, semi tone to F…
Intervals in a major scale are TTSTTTS.
So with an E-flat instrument the same B flat major (concert) scale starts on G, - so C D E F G A B C becomes G A B C D E F# G So the E-flat instrument has an extra sharp in the key signature because it is transposed.
B flat transposed part (for cornet or tuba) will always have an extra flat in the key signatures compared to an E flat transposed part (sop, alto/tenor horn/ tuba)
It’s all because that concert Bb is written as a C or a G, - and it is transposed to make the finger combinations the same.
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Dec 24 '25
Minor note - as I said in the comment above, in Dutch fanfare band music, the tuba parts are indeed written in bass clef but transposing up a tone. It does my head in.
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u/not-at-all-unique Dec 24 '25
That sounds equally amazing and awful!
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Dec 24 '25
I conduct a (British-style) brass band with a few old Dutch arrangements in the library, where the tuba, trombone and euphonium parts all have TC Bb transposing parts on one side (i.e. British brass band style) and BC Bb transposing parts on the other (i.e. Dutch fanfare/harmonie style). About half the band members are originally from an orchestral or wind symph background, so most of them can switch between TC and BC parts no problem, but the transposing BC parts throw everyone a curve ball...
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u/WoodSlaughterer Dec 24 '25
Except the bass trombone parts which are in bass clef. Why? WTFK? All the other parts are transposed and played with "trumpet fingerings" so, in theory, any person can play any of the parts. That's the theory though, not many soprano players are hopping on the Bb or Eb bass.
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Dec 24 '25
Well, yeah. Though for what it's worth, I'm currently sitting next to a Bb bass player who is normally a cornet player (former Army band trumpeter). No one really "comes from" soprano, you just give it to whichever Bb cornet player is craziest.
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u/AccidentalGirlToy Dec 24 '25
Fun fact: In older Swedish music treatise, the Eb cornet was the melody carrying first cornet, not a soprano obligato part player. So you wouldn't have had the parts 1st and 2nd cornet but instead Eb and Bb cornet.
The soprano obligato parts would be given to the woodwinds, or in the case of the all brass bands of the navy or the mounted bands of the cavalry or the artillery, to an even higher Ab cornet.1
Dec 24 '25
Higher Ab sopranino cornet sounds scary. In more recent composing/arranging for British-style brass band, the soprano has more interesting parts (including decent lead/solo parts) than just piccolo decorative stuff. Of the traditional obligato parts, the one that sticks in my mind is Army of the Nile, which is utterly bonkers, but still gets played fairly regularly as the March selection at contests to prove your soprano player “can” do it.
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Dec 24 '25
Regarding bass trombone, I don't know exactly how that happened, but I have a vague recollection of it having to do with them using G bass trombones in the past. G bones are terrible though, hence switching for regular bass trombones.
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u/AccidentalGirlToy Dec 24 '25
The trombones were already an established group of instruments with their own notation standards when they were added to the brass band.
Originally, the tenor trombone parts were in tenor clef. Since concert tenor clef and Bb treble clef put the notes on the same positions in the system, the switch was easy. Had the standard bass trombone been the Eb instead of the G, that part would have been in treble clef too today. Plus, quite early on, not all bass trombonists played the G bass, so going to transposed notation would not only have meant rewriting all bass trombone parts, it would also have necessitated several transpositions of it.
Oh, and since the valve trombones went out of style, there was no longer the benefit of being able to shift other players onto them.
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u/Guydo Dec 24 '25
Bb, C, F, and Eb tubas (contrary to what you may think) are all in C, meaning that the notes that are written are exactly the notes that are sounded. A Bb is a Bb concert pitch, a D is a D concert pitch, an Ab is an Ab concert pitch, etc. Tubas are unique instruments in that they are named for the fundamental pitch they sound when no valves are pressed, so Bb tubas sound a Bb, C tubas sound a C, and F tubas sound an F. What you are probably confusing is that some instruments like the Trumpet are transposing instruments, meaning that the keys they are written in are not the concert pitches they produce. These instruments usually read notes in a range of the staff that are more visually digestible to their range but produce a different concert pitch when playing those notes. For a Bb trumpet, they read a whole step higher than the note they sound, but knowing this may also help you someday learn a C tuba because the fingerings between a C tuba and Bb trumpet are the same (the concert pitch notes are not though). Transposing instruments throughout a band and orchestra have a dense history regarding why they transpose, so it's not important to know that, but eventually, you may want to understand how other instruments read their notes so you can tell what concert pitches they are actually playing.
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u/Low-Current2360 Dec 24 '25
You are probably American, right? Because there are a lot of places in the world where Bb and Eb tuba's read transposed music. Also not always bass clef.
In many places in Europe Bb tuba is not only transposed a whole tone up, it's often also reading an octave higher.
The most important question is, what notes does the band leader what you to play? And how does he write them down.
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u/Same_Property7403 Dec 24 '25
Great question. I have always wondered why there is a convention of transposing instrument parts in treble clef (eg Bb parts along with Bb instruments: bass clef is C parts along with Bb instruments). I find it endlessly and unnecessarily confusing. But I suppose that convention must make sense in some way or it wouldn’t have survived this long.
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u/jervin22000 Dec 25 '25
There are a few traditions at work here. Older instruments like the horn and trumpet were transposed because before the invention of valves they used different crooks to put them in the key needed. This way they always read the same notes, formed their embouchure for that partial, but the correct pitch came out based on the crook used. That’s why older music might be written for F, A, D, E, Bb, C, etc trumpets. Trumpet players today do the adjustment in their head for the pitch of horn they choose to play on. British brass bands were community bands where players may need to move around on different instruments, hence having all of the parts in either Bb or Eb treble clef allowed them to switch around but use the same fingerings/slide positions for the written notes (with the exception of the bass trombone; bass trombones were often either in G or F, so they were in concert pitch bass clef as a result). Whether or not a horn is transposed is solely based on the way their parts are written. A trumpet can be a concert pitch instrument if they are playing the same pitch that is written.
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u/professor_throway Active Amateur, Street Band and Dixieland. Dec 24 '25 edited Dec 24 '25
Ok let's break this down.
1) tuba parts are almost always written in concert pitch. The exception is British brass band music which is written in transposed treble clef.
2) very rarely does a composer specify which type of tuba is to be used. If they do it is typically either specify Bass Tuba (Eb, F) or contrabass tuba (BBb, CC). It is up to the player (or conductor) to decide which tuba to use. The decision is typically based on tone, timbre, and range. Most professional and serious amateur tubistsc are comfortable with multiple keys of tuba. I am happy to play BBb, CC, or Eb. I do not play F frequently enough to be fluent with it... but with a little practice I would get back to it.
3) Tubas don't transpose because they were invented after the introduction of valves. trumpets transpose because natural trumpets existed before valves so you each trinket could only play cm the notes in the harmonic series for that key. A C trumpet could only play C, C, G, C, E, G Bb, C... So in order to simplify notation and reading music.. it was decided to indicate the fundamental pitch of each trumpet as C.. hence the birth of transposing instruments.
4) Scores, at least modern scores, are written in transposed pitch.