Hey whatsup everybody. I stumbled upon this website today and got hooked reading all the advice for bass trombone players. I`m a freshmen in UofM`s marching band on the euphonium which i`ve been playing for like 8 years or so, I`ve been an on/off drummer for about 2 years and a an on/off trombonist for a little over a year and a half. Now with our second semester of school starting in like a week, I want to join the campus band since I won`t have marching band all the time. The only brass instrument I owned was my beginner euph from like 6th grade and I didn`t think it would be fitting for a college band so i broke down and bought a bass trombone on eBay. Luckily, it wasn`t a scam and it`s a really nice instrument. (I apologize for the huge bio but i figured this way I won`t have to explain myself later.)
So anyways, here`s my question. How come in my lower range I can play the notes Bb (second line of bass clef) down to an F and pedal Bb down to a pedal F really easy and in decent tone but the Eb through C in both of those octaves is considerably much more challenging to play? I can`t play those notes as loud and they lack tone. Any advice? My trigger and valve seem to be in practically unused condition so I`m figuring it`s probably dealing with my embouchure. I know I need to practice more; I`m not asking for a five-minute-fix but I was wondering if this is normal. A friend of mine who plays bass trombone finds it crazy that it`s way easier for me to play a pedal F than a low C just above pedal Bb. :0 I dunno.

I play bass trombone in my jazz band at my high school my second year of playing it.i have been playing tuba for the 3 years prior so i know the feild of loww brass, and plan to major in music. i also have this problem with my bass playing low F to low C. i think that the reason fot this is that as a trombone player with the slide and higher notes that we are acustom to using little slide length as possible for thiose notes. when you add a peice of pipe that is as long as yout 6th position your quality of sound goes way down. i recently gave my bass a bath to clean it so all the food inside would get out and make the inside smoother. also dents and dings also disrupt quality of sound. i have the same issue on using the 4th valve on my tuba. on my bass trombone i have major difficulty hitting pedal Bb (3 spaces below cleff) and my 2 triver slides are long enough that i can tune the triger to Eb instead of F and play the pedal Bb as trigger 7th. hofully this cleared some up but i trust that your playing at a college band is better than mine let me know if i helped you at all my email is fantomtuba2003@yahoo.com and my aim screenname in fantomtuba and baseboneman3000