The Tuba

The tuba is the lowest-pitched of the brass wind instruments. It contains a wide conical bore, three or four valves, a deep cup-shaped mouthpiece, and vertically coiled tubing with an upward-pointing  bell. Friedrich Wilhelm Wieprecht and Johann Gottfried Moritz patented the tuba. The tuba was one of several efforts to provide a suitable valved brass bass for the wind band.The B-flat contrabass is sometimes known as the "double B-flat" tuba. A tuba with circular coiling is a helicon; the sousaphone is a variety of helicon. The term tuba is also applied to other low brasses, especially saxhorns.

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