A question about tuba tunings

Well, it’s not like you’re a violist!

I’ll be awfully disappointed if that doesn’t become a SDMB meme. The mental imagery alone…

There are convertible tubas that operate that way. In my day Corps bugles were definitely different animals. As TubaDiva pointed out however G Keyed instruments are no longer mandatory.

I’m getting all misty and nostalgic now…

Nothing on earth like standing in the middle of a corps horn line circled up and doing a music only runthrough of their show.

As someone who survived it for 3 years, I agree. On several occasions members chose not to march again due to joining the millitary. It was said “s/he wimped out and joined the Marines”

“I’m marching phantom cause I like 4th place” sung to the tune of the 1812 overture.

Norton has raised a flag concerning this page: “Suspicious Web page detected.” This is the first time it has ever raised a flag for me. Perhaps there is something more to Japanese war tubas than meets the eye?


But after editing, the warning is gone. This is weird.

Talking of “shoulder cannon”, didja know that the word “bazooka” was originally a reference to somebody or other’s trombone, and only later applied to an anti-AFV rocket gun?

[small hijack] It actually goes back to a homemade invention from about 1918. “Two gas pipes and a funnel” was the description. [/hijack]

Specifically credited to comedian Bob Burns.

From http://users.aristotle.net/~russjohn/burns.html , which has a picture of one.

Except I just found a cite from a 1918 newspaper that describes the invention exactly. I posted it as an antedating over at The American Dialect Society.

But, to give credit, I do lots of my searches because of things I read on the Dope.

Some of the accounts on Burns suggest that he introduced into his act in the 30’s and 40’s after having come up with it 20 years earlier. Burns could have easily invented it before 1918, since he was born in 1890. The link I provided said he invented it at age 16.