Talk:Tuba

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Public Musicology

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 15 August 2022 and 9 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): LoweTones (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by LoweTones (talk) 02:54, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Technical Writing

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 August 2024 and 17 December 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): RMB0627 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by RMB0627 (talk) 18:24, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

tenor clef??

The range of the tuba in the infobox is given in bass and tenor clefs. Does this make sense? Is the tenor clef used for the tuba in ANY circumstance? -- megA (talk) 06:24, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

When playing the high register indeed. Chansonchen (talk) 15:11, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Yeah not really... Jon (talk) 02:10, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

New American tuba book

Note to self: read these books. — Jon (talk) 02:11, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

References

Something of a todo list

Here's some things (I humbly suggest!) we ought to do to get this article progressed to WP:FA.

• More about tuba making in Germany, historical and modern, Gerhard Meinl?
• Summarise some more notable players, direct to List of tubists
• Tuba mouthpieces

— Jonathanischoice (talk) 09:33, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Really great work here so far! As the main author (I think?) of the list of tubists, I'm glad you're interested in connecting the pages further. If I have time, I'll try to review the article for GA in the next few days. Aza24 (talk) 21:02, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Tuba/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Jonathanischoice (talk · contribs) 10:59, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: Aza24 (talk · contribs) 00:41, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Should be able to take a look at this later this upcoming week. – Aza24 (talk) 00:41, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Preliminaries

• Article is generally MOS compliant
• Article is generally neutral & stable
• Not obvious copyright violiations

The Lead

• In general I think the lead is the weakest part of this article currently. The WP:LEAD guidelines indicate that the goal is to summarize every section. Currently, I don't see that the performance or repertoire sections are summarized

 Done - see below; rewritten lead.

• I am also not seeing much coherency between lead-article-infobox. For instance:
  • The range: only in article & infobox, not lead

   Done

  • The inventors: only in article & infobox, not lead (seems particularly crucial)

   Done

  • Classification: only in infobox, not article or lead

   Done - I covered off the "wide bore valved bugle" angle in the lead, and it is in the construction section. I see there is no specific reference, so I'll fix that.

  • Classification number: only in infobox, not article or lead

  Maybe - the Hornbostel-Sachs number is a bit technical and not usually discussed in individual instrument articles that I've seen so far (but I could be wrong?) although I will add a MIMO citation for it at least.

  Fair enough, citation was the main part needed in any case – Aza24 (talk) 21:45, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

• To address some of the above, what about something like, "Descending from the Serpent and Ophicleide, the Tuba was invented in 1835 by Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht and Johann Gottfried Moritz in Prussia. It first appeared as the Baß-Tuba, which added five valves...

 Done - see below; rewritten lead.

• This line "By the 1850s ... with rotary valves." seems a bit confusing to a unfamiliar reader. For instance, why should the reader care about piston or rotary valves? Much of it seems a bit too specific for the lead anyways, for instnace, why do we care that "Červený is from Austria Hungary?

 Done - see below; rewritten lead.

• Perhaps after "timbre" you could start a new paragraph, with a streamlined version of the aforementioned line, and then content on repertoire and performance

 Done Maybe - I've had a crack at rewriting the lead, to better summarise the main points of the article; let me know if you think it needs more work.

Looks much better. To my eye, it may be still be worth splitting the sentences starting on "The tuba evolved..." to a new paragraph, but fine regardless. – Aza24 (talk) 21:45, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

 Done Jonathanischoice (talk) 04:01, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

General remarks

• A lot things in this article are too subtle, if you will.
  • For instance, you are saying in the lead "It first appeared in 1835 in Prussia". But in the article you say "invented the Baß-Tuba in F (Prussian patent 9121, granted 12 September 1835)". This year is of course very important to readers, and should not be hidden away in a parenthesis like this.

     Done

  • Similarly, the inventors are completely understated "He and the Berlin-based instrument maker Johann Gottfried Moritz". We need something much more direct

     Done

    • In fact, it would be great if this section could start with Wilhelm... and Johannn... invented the invented the Baß-Tuba in F around 1835, their patent dating... Wieprecht had required an instrument..."
• We usually don't have a see also (Serpent and Ophicleide) for terms that are mentioned/linked in the article already

   Done - I moved these to the more appropriate §Origins section with a "Further information" hat instead of "See also"

• "neither instrument could play much below C₂ into the contrabass range" — the importance here is unexplained. Was their a demand for something lower? Was there specific rep that needed something lower?

   Done - moved, Wieprecht's requirements for military bands.

Sources

• The lead line "In British brass bands and military bands, a tuba player is called a bass player" is not cited in the article or lead

   Done - I can only find a source for the instruments being referred to as "E♭ bass" or "BB♭ bass" rather than anything specifically about "bass players" even though it follows grammatically; removed.

• This line is also not cited anywhere: "As with any brass instrument, sound is produced with a lip vibration or "buzz" in the mouthpiece"

   Done - removed, not a particularly important point. Can probably re-add and cite if you disagree.

Final thoughts

These are some intial comments, more later. Putting this on hold for now. – Aza24 (talk) 23:00, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your review! These are good points, I will work on them over the next 2-3 days. Let me know if new things come to light. June is a Good Article backlog and mentoring drive month, so this will be well timed. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 23:19, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

@Aza24: I've worked on your points, if you'd like to continue your review. Cheers, Jonathanischoice (talk) 06:39, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

@Aza24: let me know if there's more you'd like to see done — cheers, Jonathanischoice (talk) 09:34, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the pings John, reading through the article again now, with less of a focus on the lead. Aza24 (talk) 21:10, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Further thoughts

• The history section is much more to the point, I believe. Although I am still a bit confused as to the purpose of the paragraphs on saxhorns? Because a saxhorn is not in the tuba family, right? Perhaps a line is needed along either explaining it as a rival to the tuba, or another early tuba variant or something to that effect

  It's complicated, and not as simple as "tubas are not saxhorns". Bass-contrabass valved bugles with wide conical bores were being made everywhere all at once; in France Sax "invented" his line of instruments in the 1840s, which were only later called saxhorns. They were largely copies of German instruments, and even retained the Berlin piston valves. Contrabass saxhorns in E♭ or B♭ are functionally tubas. I will give it a review, and I've recently been in touch with Jack Adler-McKean who has suggested a couple of corrections.

  Maybe - @Aza24: could you elaborate on what you mean here? If it helps, I've added a paragraph clarifying the 19th century nomenclature around bombardon and tuba, which essentially became synonymous by the 1940s; the source goes into detail, but essentially the modern tuba owes as much to the bombardons and contrabass saxhorns as it does to the original Wieprecht-Moritz Baß-Tuba!

  @Aza24: possibly just this point left, if you have thoughts here? Cheers — Jonathanischoice (talk) 00:29, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

  That addition helps, thanks, I think the confusion was mostly on my end. Looks good here! Aza24 (talk) 04:13, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

• For names without articles, sometimes its good to give a year range so the readers have something, i.e. "Allen Dodworth (1817–1896)

   Done - although, I might have "Allen Dodworth" wrong; Joseph Lathrop Allen was a (Boston) maker, and Harvey B. Dodworth was the NY bandmaster and soloist who commissioned an OTS cornet in the 1850s (Eliason, 1981). No, never mind; fixed.

• The layout of the history section is a bit confusing. The "Twentieth-century developments" is really just a "The tuba in Britain" and "The tuba in France" combined section. The Chicago, Jazz and to a lesser extant Italy sections all include 20th century content.

   Done - addressed this by renaming the subheading, and shuffling content around a little.

• It seems strange to me that William Bell is not mentioned in the article. Since there is not much in the history section after ~1950 for non-Jazz tuba content, perhaps Bell could be mentioned with Tubachristmas and it's founder Phillips. Also wondering whether you would consider it worth mentioning the small amount of solo tubists, such as Øystein Baadsvik, August Schieldrop and Velvet Brown—that would give more late 20th-century content as well

   Done - had a crack at this and basically re-worked the bottom half of the History section with some more citations, let me know what you think.

• The Sizes section is nicely written

  Thank you!

• Can "taper" link to something (or perhaps have a definition in paraenthses?)

   Done - it isn't satisfactorily treated anywhere I can link to, but one day I'll roll my sleeves up and rewrite the fairly scrappy brass instrument article and its relatives.

• Do we have a reference for The Planets sentences?

   Done - Bevan (2000), pp. 396, 399 (Ex. 12.10)

• The sources, you are missing some "pp." for the multi-page ranges, Ref 5, 15, 20, 23, and many others

   Done - gosh, there were rather a lot of them 😐

• John, I'm not seeing much else to comment on. Really nice job here and thanks for your changes/fixes so far. I think after this batch of comments is addressed, we should be good here. – Aza24 (talk) 21:45, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

  Cheers, I will address all these points hopefully over the weekend. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 10:12, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

  Looks great all around. Passing now, congrats! Aza24 (talk) 04:15, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.