Euphonium Fingering Chart

Seven combinations, six open notes, half a tuba

A euphonium is roughly nine feet of mostly conical tubing — exactly half the length of a BB♭ tuba, which is why it sounds exactly one octave higher and why every fingering in this chart is the tuba's fingering, one octave up. Like every valved brass instrument it runs on seven valve combinations: open, 2, 1, 1+2, 2+3, 1+3 and 1+2+3. Valve 2 lowers any note a semitone, valve 1 a whole step, and the combinations add those steps up. What the valves cannot do is choose the pitch: each combination is a complete harmonic series, and your lips and air pick which note of the series speaks. The open horn alone plays six notes in this chart — B♭2 (2nd partial), F3 (3rd), B♭3 (4th), D4 (5th), F4 (6th) and B♭4 (8th) — with no fingers moving at all. Every note page names its partial as well as its valves, because on a euphonium the partial is half the fingering.

The low register is built downwards from F

Below B♭3, the chart is organised around F3, the 3rd partial. The six notes under it — E3, E♭3, D3, D♭3, C3 and B2 — are that one open note lowered step by step through all six remaining valve combinations, ending at B2 with everything down. Two things follow. First, the pattern is perfectly regular down here: there are no surprise fingerings in the low register. Second, the bottom two notes of that ladder, C3 (1+3) and B2 (1+2+3), use the longest combinations and therefore play sharp — combined valve slides are always a little too short. Every euphonium player manages this: lip the notes down, or use a fourth valve if the instrument has one. It is no accident that the University of Mississippi chart used to check this page lists a fourth-valve fingering first for exactly those two notes.

Three valves, four valves, or compensating? Read this before you worry

School euphoniums and baritone horns usually have three valves. Many step-up euphoniums have four, and professional British brass-band euphoniums are almost always compensating four-valve instruments. This chart is deliberately a three-valve chart, because that is the instrument in school band rooms — and because mixing the systems in one table is how fingering charts go wrong. If your instrument has a fourth valve, you do not need a different chart. The rule is the same one every method book gives: play valve 4 wherever this chart shows 1+3 (in this range: C3 and F2 an octave below the chart) and valves 2+4 wherever it shows 1+2+3 (in this range: B2). Valve 4 makes the same interval as 1+3 — a perfect fourth — but in tune, because its single slide is cut to the full length. On a compensating instrument, extra loops then correct the remaining low combinations automatically when valve 4 is in use. The fourth valve also opens the chromatic notes below E2, down toward the pedal B♭1, which a three-valve instrument can only fake as unsteady false tones; those notes are below this chart's range.

Bass clef or treble clef? The two ways euphonium music is written

This chart is in bass clef, at concert pitch — the notation of American school and concert bands. Written B♭2 sounds as B♭2, the same as trombone and tuba parts. But in the British brass-band tradition, euphonium and baritone parts are printed in treble clef, transposed: the player reads the part as if the instrument were a large B♭ trumpet, and the written note sounds a major ninth (an octave plus a whole step) lower. So the concert B♭2 that opens this chart is written C4 in a treble-clef part, and concert F3 is written G4. The fingerings do not change at all — only the name on the page does. That is why every note page here carries a "written in treble clef as" fact: find your sounding note in the chart, and the page tells you what the same note looks like in the other clef. If your part is in treble clef, read its notes a major ninth down (written C = concert B♭) to use this chart.

Euphonium or baritone horn — what is the difference?

The fingerings are identical, but the instruments are not. The euphonium has a wider bore that expands conically along most of its length, a larger bell, and a dark, mellow, singing tone — it is the tenor voice soloists play, and in a concert band it typically takes the lyrical lines and countermelodies. The baritone horn has a smaller, narrower bore, more of it cylindrical, and sounds brighter and lighter — closer to a big cornet than to a small tuba. In British brass bands the baritone has its own distinct parts, sitting between the tenor horns and the euphoniums; in American schools the two are often treated as interchangeable, and many "baritones" in school cupboards are really small-bore euphoniums. For fingering purposes none of that matters: one chart serves both, which is why the baritone has its own chart page built on this same note set. Marching baritones and marching euphoniums — the forward-bell versions carried on the field — use the same fingerings again.

A sensible way to practise from this chart

Learn the open notes first — B♭2, F3, B♭3 — until your lips can find each one without the valves changing; on a euphonium, most wrong notes are the right fingering aimed at the wrong partial. Then learn each partial's ladder as a family: play F3 and step down through E3 to B2 without tightening up. Practise the sharp pair, C3 and B2, against a tuner early, so the lip (or the fourth valve, if you have one) becomes part of the fingering rather than a repair. And keep the low register loose: B♭2 wants slow, warm air and a dropped jaw — a euphonium is coaxed down there, not forced.

Sources

Every fingering in this chart was checked against two independent references: the NoteAtlas euphonium fingering chart (bass clef) and the University of Mississippi's chromatic fingering chart for euphonium and baritone horn by Micah Everett. The two sources agree on all 25 main fingerings in this chart, and both were cross-checked against Yamaha's official BB♭ tuba chart — the euphonium's tube is exactly half the tuba's length, so its fingerings are the tuba's, one octave higher, and all 25 match. Where the Mississippi chart prefers a fourth-valve fingering first (it does for low B and middle C, the two sharpest three-valve combinations in the low staff), the three-valve fingering it lists alongside is the one charted here, and the fourth-valve swap is explained in the three-valves-or-four section above. The five alternates on the note pages (for D3, F3, G3, C4 and D4) are the ones both sources list for those notes.

Euphonium fingering questions