The Tuba: A precise fingering system for microtonal playing
Until now, notes between the semitones on brass instruments have largely been approached through approximate techniques such as half-valving. This book introduces clearly defined fingerings that make these microtonal pitches playable with precision, stability, and confidence.
Beyond Approximation
For decades, microtonal writing for brass instruments has relied on approximate techniques such as half-valving or embouchure adjustment, often resulting in inconsistency and uncertainty in performance. This book moves beyond that limitation by showing that specific microtonal intervals can be played with normal valve combinations and clearly defined fingerings. Rather than being treated as unstable effects, these pitches become precise and controllable elements within a practical musical system.
The book covers the principal orchestral tuba types — BBb, CC, Eb, and F — including both compensating and non-compensating instruments, as well as different valve configurations. Each tuba type is presented through its own set of examples and dedicated tables for microtonal intervals, allowing the fingering system to be applied clearly and consistently across the main forms of the instrument used today in performance and composition.
The First Volume of a Brass Microtonality Series
This book is the first volume of a broader project devoted to microtonality across the brass instruments of the orchestra. Developed initially in response to the needs of the composer’s own works, this research is now made available to performers, composers, and educators as a practical and systematic resource. Presented in a two-colour edition and extending across 181 pages, the book includes a large number of tables, musical examples, visual materials, and mathematical ratios that support both theoretical understanding and practical application. Its aim is not only to offer a complete microtonal framework for the tuba, but also to lay the foundation for future volumes for trombone, euphonium, horn, and trumpet.
In this sense, the book is intended not only as a complete resource for the tuba, but also as the starting point of a wider microtonal framework for the brass family as a whole.
FOR COMPOSERS: A New Possibility for Composition
This book offers composers a practical and reliable framework for writing microtonally for the tuba. Through detailed tables of clearly defined fingerings, it provides access to specific microtonal pitches and intervallic subdivisions, allowing the desired result to be clearly understood, notated, and realized with a high degree of accuracy in cents. Rather than relying on approximate notation or uncertain performance outcomes, composers can work with precise fingering solutions that make microtonal writing more controlled, predictable, and musically effective in contemporary composition.
FOR PERFORMERS
This book enables performers to play notes between the semitones using normal valve combinations. These microtonal pitches can be approached in the same practical way as the other notes of the chromatic scale, without the need for unusual techniques or modifications to the instrument. Because these pitches already exist within the natural harmonic series of the instrument, performers are not dealing with something artificial or foreign. The book makes them accessible through clearly defined fingerings, indicated above the microtonal notes in the musical examples, allowing the intended intervals to be performed with precision, stability, and confidence. The system has been tested in performance and refined in collaboration with professional musicians.
Beyond Semitones in the Donemus Webshop
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