The Tuba Virtuoso | Øystein Baadsvik | TEDxTrondheim

Thank you. This is what probably most people think of when they see a tuba, but now for something completely different. Vittorio Monti's Czardas, originally written for violin. Thank you. I know what you're thinking. Why on earth did you choose a tuba? And here's the obvious answer. I chose the tuba in order to attract the most beautiful girl in the school. And here she is, my wife Anna on piano. To be honest, that's not really what happened. What happened was I wanted to start in the local wind orchestra and tuba was the only available instrument. So for me it was tuba or nothing. And in the beginning I did the typical tuba playing as you heard me do when I walked on stage here, which is sometimes referred to as ompa-ompa. This is what we do in the wind band. It's not the most glamorous job in the band, but it's extremely important. And as all tuba players of you here know, it's a lot harder than it looks. Now, it could have all stopped there. I could have put on my five years of playing in the band and then go on to do something else. But a very important life changing experience happened to me. I had a very enthusiastic tuba teacher called Eivind and he introduced me to the magical world of tuba, which for most people is very hidden. For example, did you know there is a tuba international organization? It used to be called T-U-B-A, Two Beasts Universal Brotherhood Association. It still exists, but under the name I-T-E-A, International Tuba Euphonium Association. I like T-U-B-A better. I started listening to recordings. At that time wasn't many around from tuba solo playing. One of the pioneers or some of the pioneers was Harvey Phillips and Roger Vogel from the U.S. We have John Fletcher in England and Michael Lynn in Sweden made a great impression and it struck me. It's not about the limitations of the instrument. This piece of metal has no limitations. It's about the musician. Let me play a song for you that I composed myself called Two Beasts Universal Brotherhood. Thank you. This five meter long pipe of brass was invented first time September 12, 1835. That makes it a very young instrument, really. It's not until about the 1950s you started playing solo on the tuba. For me, that's part of the joy, finding out what's possible on this instrument. One thing I tried very early on, how fast can you play on a tuba? To do that, you've got to use double tonguing. You guessed it, double tonguing is the opposite of single tonguing. Tu-tu-tu-tu is single, tu-ku-tu-ku is double. Here's what it sounds like. There is a Doctor Howe's TV show episode where a tuba player plays so fast that he dies. And it turns out that the producers of the show watched one of my YouTube videos where I play a really fast song called Carnival of Venice. I won't do that today for safety reasons, but I'll keep on playing the double tongue in the low register. So let's follow it now. When I did that for my teacher, he said, I'm sorry, but that doesn't sound like a tuba, it sounds more like a helicopter. So you should stop doing that immediately. Of course I didn't. What I did, I added a little accent with my belly. So watch my belly while I play those helicopter tunes one more time. All right, then you can add a little in between the helicopter sounds. As you understand, I had a lot of spare time when I grew up on the countryside outside Trondheim here. So I started experimenting with something called Multiphonics, where you sing and play at the same time. All right, so when you combine that sound with the helicopter and this one that hasn't got a name yet, you get a song that I composed myself and that's called Fnuk. And this is really to make you think after this conference that tuba is the coolest instrument on the planet.