Bowling Green State University

ScholarWorks@BGSU

Honors Projects Student Scholarship

7-2021

Tubular!!: Works for Tuba(s)

Christian Bush
bushct@bgsu.edu

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Bush, Christian, "Tubular!!: Works for Tuba(s)" (2021). Honors Projects. 619.
https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/honorsprojects/619

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 Tubular!!: Works for Tuba(s)

Christian Bush

Honors Project

Submitted to the Honors College

at Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for graduation with University Honors

July 2021

Michael Laurello, College of Musical Arts, Advisor

David Saltzman, College of Musical Arts, Advisor

 1

Introduction

Tubular!! is an album that was produced during the Spring and Summer of 2021. It was

made possible through the support of many friends, colleagues, and mentors, and will serve as a

cornerstone upon which to build my career as a performer and a recording engineer. The album

and liner notes can be found on my website: https://www.christianbush.com/tubular. The

appendix at the end of this paper contains screenshots of the website.

Section I: Research Questions

This project was conducted with two main questions in mind: Why commission and

record new music featuring the tuba? What recording techniques can I use to produce lifelike and

sonically pleasing tuba recordings of myself?

Section II: Literature Review

When deciding which composer I wanted to commission for this project, I looked at the

repertoire for the solo tuba and tuba ensembles, and noticed a couple of things. For one, there are

few pieces for tuba written by non-white, non-male composers, and second, there are few tuba

trios in existence (Morris 2007; Institute 2021). These factors served as inspiration for me to

commission composer TJ Cole to write a tuba trio for the project.

“TJ Cole (she/her, they/them) is a Philadelphia-based composer, originally from the

suburbs of Atlanta. She has been commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra,

Carnegie Hall with Ensemble Connect, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the

Louisville Orchestra, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Nashville in Harmony with

Intersection, Time for Three with the Sun Valley Summer Symphony, Play On Philly!,
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the Music in May Festival, Music in the Vineyards, the Lake Champlain Chamber Music

Festival, One Book One Philadelphia, among others” (Cole 2021).

The remainder of the pieces on the album were chosen to promote the tuba as a solo instrument,

and the tuba trio as an ensemble. When selecting other pieces for the album, I looked for works

that I felt demonstrated the technical and lyrical capabilities of the tuba, while spotlighting the

work of contemporary composers.

The other domain of this project was the recording. I conducted research on miking the

tuba specifically and stereo miking, which is “a technique intended to create a spatial sound

impression by the use of two or more channels” (DPA 2020). Several sources served as jumping

off points. The dissertation, “Recording the Classical Tuba,” (Dine 2019) offered

recommendations that come from a recording engineer who is also a tuba player. Although the

dissertation does not have as exhaustive a list of microphone recommendations as other texts I

read, or any recommendations for preferred stereo miking techniques, the general perspective of

a tuba player was valuable in my decision-making. Other sources included Modern Recording

Techniques (Huber 2018), which is more geared towards studio/pop music, Classical Recording:

A Practical Guide in the Decca Tradition (Haigh 2020) and Recording Orchestra and Other

Classical Music Ensembles (King 2017). These latter texts were both valuable for their

recommendations with regard to microphone placement and recording in concert halls as

opposed to studio settings.

Additional sources for this project included commercially produced albums, and the sheet

music for the pieces I will be recording. All of these sources helped me to refine the sound of the

album during the mixing phase in order to effectively demonstrate the tuba’s abilities.
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Section III: Methodology

Hundreds of hours went into this project before the recording ever began. Along with

research and planning in the Fall of 2020, I was practicing repertoire, rehearsing with my

collaborators, and communicating with composers. I was also experimenting with microphone

layouts. After reading through different texts that ranged from string quartet and orchestral

recording to tuba-specific recording, I settled on a microphone layout that is commonly called

“big AB, small AB” (King 2017). This blends the direct sound from a smaller, close-spaced pair

with the more diffuse hall-sound from a wider-spaced pair farther back in the hall. After deciding

on the “big AB, small AB” pattern, I began to experiment with spacing. The distance between

the pairs, the distance between each microphone in each of the pairs, and the distance from the

pairs to the tuba all affected the sound in drastic ways. The spacing I ended up deciding on was

the small AB pair being eight feet off the ground and twelve inches apart, just behind the tuba.

The big AB pair was fifteen feet in front of the small AB pair, sixty-five inches off the ground,

and eight feet apart. Through experimentation I found this setup to be the most accurate and

acoustically pleasing representation of the tuba’s sound. A diagram of the setup can be seen

below in figure 1.

Fig. 1 The diagram I created for the microphone layout

 4

Next, I began recording. The general process for most of the pieces was to schedule a

recording session, drive to the recording location, set up, record for a few hours, tear down, and

drive back. After those recording sessions, I would splice together different segments of audio to

make one cohesive “run” of the piece and then send it to one of my advisors, Professor David

Saltzman. Professor Saltzman would then listen and give feedback and recommendations about

what to change. From there I would go back and repeat the process until we were both satisfied.

This part of the project took an immense amount of time, effort, and planning. Managing four

people’s schedules (my trio and my assistant recording engineer) and a hall schedule in the

middle of a pandemic was a major task unto itself.

After I had a completed run of each piece, I sent the recordings to my other advisor,

Professor Michael Laurello. Professor Laurello then gave me advice and recommendations on

how to mix the pieces to make the tracks sound more cohesive, and fix some balance issues.

After some back and forth, Professor Laurello mastered the album for me. While all this work

was going on, I was also designing the website (pictured in the appendix).

Section IV: Addressing the Research Questions

Before the literature review, I asked a couple questions. First, why commission and

record new music featuring the tuba? I will outline four main reasons. The first is a lack of

repertoire. Although there has been more writing for the tuba in the past century, other

instruments in the orchestra, like the violin, have been around longer and have historically been

taken more seriously as soloistic instruments. Second, in addition to a general need for more

repertoire, I specifically see a need for more trios in the tuba repertoire. When I formed my trio,
 5

the Johnson Three, in the summer of 2020, we quickly noticed that there was not much repertoire

out there for us to play.

A third important reason I see to commission and record new tuba works is a lack of

diversity. Most Western Art Music, historically and presently, has been written by cisgender

white men. Tuba music is certainly no exception. We live in a diverse world, and I believe that

the compositions musicians play should be more inclusive of underrepresented composers. The

final reason I see to commission and record new music for the tuba is a lack of quality

recordings. There are plenty of recordings of tuba out there that do not adequately portray the

tuba’s capabilities because the recordings are not well recorded and often lack clarity of sound.

The next question I asked was: “What recording techniques can I use to produce lifelike

and sonically pleasing tuba recordings of myself?” The microphone setup I decided record with

was the “big AB, small AB” (King 2017) setup. The diagram can be found on page three, figure

1. This setup was arrived at through a combination of research on recording techniques and

experimenting with microphone spacing. I believe the sound that I accomplish with the

microphone setup in this album represents me well as a tuba player and a recording artist.

Section V: Limitations/Differences from Proposed Project

First, I want to discuss some of the limitations that shaped this project. The first

limitation was access to equipment and recording spaces. When I first envisioned this project, I

imagined being able to test many different microphone types and configurations in multiple halls

to realize my ideal tuba recording sound. Unfortunately, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it

became apparent that I would not be able to easily gain access to the halls on campus or access

the microphones in the College of Musical Arts. Because of this, I had to produce a sound that I

was happy with using only four microphones. This forced me to focus on listening to stereo pairs
 6

without relying too much on spot microphones. I think this limitation ultimately helped me to get

more creative in my techniques and experimentation.

The other limitation was time. Even with the extension I received on this project, a little

over six months is a quick turnaround time for a project of this scale for a full-time student. This

limitation also caused me to get creative and figure out ways to edit that saved me time. I became

more skilled at editing audio because I often did not have enough time to go back to the hall with

my collaborators to re-record sections, so I had to edit the material I already had.

As with most other things during the Covid-19 pandemic, this project did not go as I

originally planned. The project was originally slated to be completed in May of 2021, but due to

the size of the project and the amount of work involved, I needed to extend the project into

Summer 2021 for completion in July. Covid was a contributor to the timeline problems, but other

problems included the scope of the project and my own sense of my availability. The project

ended up being even more time consuming than I had planned for and this caused me to fall

behind with my timeline.

The next difference has to do with my research questions. When I first submitted the

proposal, my original second question was “What are the most accurate and acoustically pleasing

techniques for recording tuba?” This question changed to “What recording techniques can I use

to produce lifelike and sonically pleasing tuba recordings of myself?” After setting out to test

configurations I realized that my original question was too difficult to answer because of it

would require objective measurements to be answered, which would have gone beyond the scope

of the project. I was also not able to test as many microphones in as many configurations as I had

set out to in the proposal so I did not feel I could answer what was “most accurate and

acoustically pleasing.” Hundreds of different microphones in a thousand different configurations

 7

could be tested and you still wouldn’t truly be able to answer the question of which technique

was best because the answer is ultimately subjective. Recording is just as much art as it is

science and one person’s ideal sound might be totally different from another’s. I figured I could

not answer which techniques were best, but I could, through research and experimentation, figure

out which techniques using my limited equipment would make a sound that I thought best

represented me.

The final difference from my proposal is the mastering of the album. In the proposal, I set

out with the intention to work with Professor Laurello in order to learn how to master, and

master the album with him. Because of the adjustments to the timeline, and the amount of work I

already had to do for the rest of the project, I was not able to master the album myself.

Section VI: Conclusions

The main output of this project was the album and liner notes that are found on my

website linked at the top of this paper. The album will serve as a useful tool for me to market

myself as both a tuba player and a recording engineer. Although further study can be conducted

into recording techniques for the tuba, I did find ways to record myself that I feel represent me

well, and I will be able to use these recording techniques I have developed during this project to

better record myself and other tuba players. The last important output of this project is the

addition of a new piece from a member of an underrepresented group in the field. Happy Harp

will hopefully carve out a place in the tuba repertoire and be performed for years to come.
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Appendix: Website Images

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References

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of the Arts, 2018, soundmedia.jp/nuaudk/14Tuba/index.html.

Cole, TJ. “Biography.” TJ Cole Music, www.tjcolemusic.com/biography.

Cooper, Dan. “Higher Sample Rates For Recording And Mixing - When And Why You Should
Use Them And When You Shouldn't.” Production Expert, 5 Mar. 2020, www.pro-tools-
expert.com/production-expert-1/2020/3/4/when-and-why-you-should-use-higher-sample-
rates-for-recording-and-mixing-and-when-you-shouldnt.

David Zerkel. Tuba Helper, CD Baby, 2011. Spotify,

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Dine, Larry, "Recording the Classical Tuba" (2019). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and
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Grant, James. Three Furies for Solo Tuba. 1993. Delaware: Grantwood Music Press, 1993. Print.

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 32

Huber, David Miles, and Robert E. Runstein. Modern Recording Techniques. Routledge, 2018.

Hynds, Aaron. "The Composer's Guide to the Tuba: Creating a New Resource on the
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