Tuba Gubbins

This is the fancy gubbins of a tuba.

It is, for those technically minded among the blip fraternity (and maternity, paternity and whatever the -ity word is for sisterhood*) the rotary valve block from a Cerveny B Flat Bass tuba.

The valves open lengths of pipe which change the pitch of the instrument, which used in conjunction with the natural harmonics of the pipe-work (think bugle calls), give it a chromatic scale of several octaves.

The tuba has been in our band hall for as long as anyone can remember, almost unplayed. It is not a good tuba, and is the wrong type for British-stylebrass bands anyway.

My plan of using the free-gift Nikon coolpix for weekday blips at work crashed and burned today. The idea of casually whipping out the coolpix when a blip presented itself just never happened. The few photos I did take were very poor, even by my standards, and I have ended-up taking my camera out for the evening just to get my blip.

Ah well, it's good company, anyway

*Is it sorority?