Daily Tuba Routine Post

[russiantuba]

With the recent chat about daily routines, I decided to contribute what I do on mine to make it a serious, hopefully helpful topic with some pedagogical viewpoints .

First, though I have been using this routine for a few years now, I do interject other routines in and change up what I do, sometimes for a couple months at a time and revisit older routines. I feel doing the same routine, even from my DMA (brass gym, which I traveled to study it with Sam Pilafian directly), makes one locked into their routine. I always treat the daily routine as a working practice session, and as I get older, with less time to play, many of days it is all I do, sometimes after a long day of teaching or whatnot. I also find that much growth can happen here, so being locked in by the same routine, we don't hear the issues, while switching routines from time to time, doing similar exercises that aren't the same, can reveal actual weaknesses, and also reveal strengths. For me in particular, it also gives me exercises to give to students so they can benefit and easily surpass me and allows me to keep things fresh.

This year, I have been focused on cross training between F and CC. I have done this before, but with a lot more orchestral playing, I have focused on the big horn. I have been using a modified version of the Alessi routine, as recommended by a colleague who has produced many job winning tubists who told me his focus is on the fundamentals. This routine, isn't easy, but is encompasses the 5 main areas I require from a routine, which is sound, articulation, flow/flex/fluidity, basic dexterity/intervals, and control. I do transpose the F tuba one up a perfect 4th.

Here is a look at today's specific routine, after dealing with a whole lot of bath-tub issues that will spill into the rest of the week. I sat down and did some mindset visualization exercises, as I have done with coaching from Steve Rosse of the Sydney Symphony then play a single note to make sure my horn is working. Then, taking from something @bloke suggested on a post, I believe offsite, I have started with a lyrical melody. Yeah, my lips aren't totally warmed up and its a good way to play a melody cold. Today's was No. 9 from Dr. Jeffrey Cottrell's Studies in Ancient Irish Song, published by Cimarron Music Press. It is very doable to play popular song melodies, improv something, Conconne/Bordogni, to get the creative juices going. I do these on whatever the lead horn of the day will be (if I am able to cross train).

Today, my unlacquered Miraphone 1291CC was the lead horn. I use a Blokepiece Symphony with the WM 32.6mm rim on this, which is similar to the PT88, but gives more clarity and evenness of sound in the ranges. My F tuba is a lacquered piston Gronitz PF 125 with a Blokepiece Solo #0 with the same rim (but in gold titanium) if anyone cares.

After the initial melody, I start with Remington's Long Tones, starting on 2nd space C and going down, ending on a G, start on a G, go to C, start on C and go to pedal C in the famous format. I do these at 60bpm with a drone (even though my basement is frozen). After doing yoga during the pandemic when I started running, I found that other cultures who meditate to drones have a "ground" in their purpose and being, and these serve as the same thing, especially with a drone. 60bpm is a natural occurring circadian rhythm, so I feel very natural having this as the tempo to start and hone in. I don't have the science to back this up, but just in my own findings. I strive for a big, even sound in all ranges, breathing after every note to ensure steadiness of sound and the ability to attack after I breathe. I have covered about 1/2 of the every day range in the first 5 minutes of playing, then I go to a tongue repeater exercise, which is a free tongue, more of a tension release exercise, out of time and rhythm. Following this, I perform a James Stamp flow study at 60 bpm, kind of thinking of it as a total stretch from the ground, to return to a basic ground. The fourth exercise is a set of sixteenth notes in 6/8 time that goes in half steps throughout the ranges. Trombonists famously do this one, and I use it to equalize the "head, throat, and chest voice" to ensure my low range and upper range has the same resonance. The final exercise of this set is a Scholssberg exercise, which I bump the metronome to 72bpm to ensure I do it in one breath and keep the tone even--smoothness is not the goal.

After this, I play a note on my F tuba to make sure it works, then do a slurred intervallic exercise that covers a large range. If I am doing a one horn day, it covers the fluidity and some pedal range, descending to a pedal Gb on CC. The next exercise is a full range lip slur in one breath, which I also do on F tuba. Again, if bumpy, it is okay if the rhythm and sound are even, and I do these at pp dynamic to ensure I am working some softer playing and to strengthen my response in all registers. I then switched back to CC tuba, doing an extended Remington lip slur that covers the entire range (an extended version of Remington's moguls in the brass gym). The next 2 exercises, also on CC, are flexibility with repeated notes, which make sure I stress the downbeat weight while maintaining the slur smoothness and evenness of range. The second of these is a reverse of the first. Lip slurs build control.

I then switched back to F tuba, do an exercise of wide intervals of 6ths and 7ths. This one I feel is harder on F due to the range of intervals is tighter. The next exercise is descending lip slurs which I also do on F, in sixteenth notes, and works on control of rhythm and some speed. I switch back to CC and do two exercises from the Arban's--the basic articulation exercise towards the front which I use to work double tongue, and then 5 of the Arban's interval studies from the first one in the book. I slur the first time, as I believe the slur is harder to produce and makes me produce the center, and the second time I tongue, to help build control. The final arpeggio I use a marcato accent.

This normally takes 35 minutes or so to do everything without stops, but as I mentioned, its a working session, I go back, make things better, under control, so often takes an hour, and if not mentally focused, sometimes longer. I have heard mention of methods like Roylance's Thunderdome that makes everything in the routine super hard to make the rest of the playing for the day easier, and I am a proponent of that, but also want to include several of the earlier exercises to promote mastery and control for the mental health that is important to playing.

If I have time after this, I normally do some of the Alan Baer cross training scale exercises because I want the session to last at least 50 minutes of face time if I am able. I didn't get that today unfortunately. Other days, I do the Olka Dirty 30, especially when in a rush, sometimes do the Roger Bobo Mastering the tuba opening exercises, Davis's 20 Minute Warm Up (wish there was a CC version), Brass Gym, Phil Sinder's new book "Daily Tuba Routines".

I do not buzz. After my best friend got focal dystonia and hearing his teacher, a specialist, criticize buzzing, I asked myself why I buzzed. As a student of the Arnold Jacob's pedagogical line, if I can sing it, I can play it because the song is in the mind, and learned to transfer it directly to the horn. I can go through another post on this... but after hearing some of the top artists like Christian Lindberg and David Zerkel, both of which have clearly stated that they don't buzz, and two of my favorite sounds on their respected instruments, I stopped doing it as well.

With all of that said, I can, and have several times, gone into a performance without having played more than 5 minutes. I believe the "warm-up" is all mental, and really the first 5-6 minutes of playing is all the body actually needs.

In all seriousness, I hope this discussion helps spark new ideas for me to add on as well

[bloke]

Yeah. Actual warm up is very short. The rest of it is "working on things" (which we label "fundamentals", but they are still things that we play, because we are ~playing~ those things that we call "fundamentals") and I really believe that jumping right into some difficult passages after five minutes (or even before being warmed up at all) is a great thing to do, because a whole bunch of us freak out when someone just asks us to pick up our instrument and play something, because we haven't gone through our "routine". Further, there are such things as tacet movements and even tacet pieces, whereby we haven't been playing for 5 or 10 minutes, and our instrument is not as warm as it was 10 minutes earlier when we were playing a lot. For those who are auditioning for part-time or full-time play work, there's often a considerable gap between a practice room warm up and waiting one's turn to audition.
We've all seen top artists who sing and play the guitar on talk shows just begin to play and sing after chatting with a talk show host, and they're just as cold with their fingers and their voice as we are with our lips and our fingers and our instruments. Playing cold well is a skill, and it's a valuable skill.

If I had more time and more energy, I'd work more on fundamentals, but most of my income doesn't come from playing the tuba. My work-around is to have some very easy to play instruments (okay) and mouthpieces, and I tend to dig into pretty difficult music when I do have time to practice and I try to apply "fundamentals" when working on difficult music. A fast slurred descending two octave arpeggio within a vocalise is just as much a "fundamental" as anything else. If I can't execute it very well, I can go over it several times until it starts improving, and that's just about the same thing as someone going through the same little repetitive "fundamental" tunes every day that they've actually mastered, except I'm working on things that I've not mastered.
Were it that I had the 30 minutes to devote to some fundamentals twice a day on different instruments, I believe I would rotate the ones that I worked on daily so I could just spend 10 or 15 minutes on those things, and work on different ones tomorrow and different ones 2 days from today and so on, rather than try to work on a 30 minute list of "fundamentals" every day or even twice a day.
Realize that anyone's list of fundamentals are actually a list of tunes, even though they might be very slow tunes and/or very monotonous tunes. A musician can practice those tunes or they can practice other tunes. Systematically working towards eliminating flaws in one's playing - regardless of what the tunes are - is the key...well...along with phrasing (without which any of that which we play would ever be "music").

[sweaty]

I don't buzz, mostly because I can't do it in the low range. As a close substitute, I take out the first valve, play my tunes a little slower to hear my pitches well, and finger along as usual. After doing this a little while, I put the valve back in and play the tunes again with the complete instrument. The sound is more solid, resonant, and smooth. My lips seem to protrude further into the mouthpiece, enabling more lip tissue to vibrate.

I do a lot of singing while practicing, focusing on the inherent purity and openness of the voice, then trying to imitate it on the horn.

[russiantuba]

I really believe that jumping right into some difficult passages after five minutes (or even before being warmed up at all) is a great thing to do, because a whole bunch of us freak out when someone just asks us to pick up our instrument and play something, because we haven't gone through our "routine". Further, there are such things as tacet movements and even tacet pieces, whereby we haven't been playing for 5 or 10 minutes, and our instrument is not as warm as it was 10 minutes earlier when we were playing a lot. For those who are auditioning for part-time or full-time play work, there's often a considerable gap between a practice room warm up and waiting one's turn to audition.
We've all seen top artists who sing and play the guitar on talk shows just begin to play and sing after chatting with a talk show host, and they're just as cold with their fingers and their voice as we are with our lips and our fingers and our instruments. Playing cold well is a skill, and it's a valuable skill.

I did some post doctoral study with Roger Rocco (Jacob's longest studying student and world class pedagogue). He said at a masterclass of Bud Herseth, he was demonstrating his warmup routine and students were about to take notes, and he pops out a Brandenburg Concerto without having played at all that day, and stated how much of it was mental. I have felt locked into my routine as of late, and adding this in has helped. For a few years post DMA, I didn't have time to ever warm up, and just played, and this reverts back to those days and brings back lots of memories from tours and other gigs where I have had to pull out a cold horn on cold lips and just play. It might not be perfect, nothing is.

After hearing this, I stopped calling them warm ups and called them fundamentals.

Last May, I had the golden opportunity to finally play Symphonie Fantastique, and was on the first tuba part, my MM professor on the 2nd (he had a couple of gigs where I was the only one covering a couple rehearsals so we swapped). Though I have always considered myself more of a soloist/chamber player, I have bene doing a bit more orchestral work as of late and this was an excerpt for an audition I had taken. Easy enough. After not playing for 40 minutes when mvt 4 comes and you have to do the octave Bbs (or an hour and a half into rehearsal), it is quite a bit harder and had me recall this alone on not warming up and playing cold.

[MiBrassFS]

I used to have this long, drawn out, ridiculous “warm up.” It was crippling in some respects. Through a certain set of changes of circumstance, it suddenly went away by necessity. It’s now pretty much, “toot, toot, toot, let’s rock.” For better or worse!

[bloke]

Yeah I do believe that the warmup thing is a mental thing. It takes a minute or so to physically warm up a tuba in the late spring, summer, and early fall, and it does take maybe five or more minutes to warm up a tuba to playing temperature in the winter - at least if it's in a place like my house (where I don't keep the heat up to a very high temperature because otherwise I couldn't afford to pay the gas bill). This is probably off topic, but in the winter I do turn the temperature in my practice room up to 70 or so when I'm practicing, because the bell and top bow tend to stay cold and that causes intonation problems. Am I suggesting that I can hear the grass grow? No. But I can hear when I'm playing out-of-tune and the tuba is not behaving as it typically does when a room isn't freezing cold. Do I understand that when most people talk about a "warmup", they mean a bunch of exercises that they play every day that take up 15 or 30 minutes of time, and not ~physically~ warming up their instrument? Yes I do, but that's not what I do.

I also observed that some of my trombone-playing friends - who go through long warm-up routines and then play taxing orchestra rehearsals - complain about their mouth being tired at the end, and maybe even their arm. I wonder if they would feel better at the end if they had played for 30 minutes less, in other words had not played for 30 minutes before the rehearsal started. I have no idea about tuba players, because there's really no such thing as a tuba playing job where there's more than one tuba, so I don't chat with tuba players when working.

I'm thinking that sometimes personal practice sessions involve just a little bit of dread, and these so-called warmup routines might serve as a way of getting players in the mindset of playing and past the dread.

I do understand the "chamber tuba" concept, but it really doesn't exist in the wild, and only exists in government music zoos.
In the wild, there is (mostly) orchestra playing, sit down jazz combo jobs, New Orleans style brass band jobs (standing or marching), polka jobs (depending on the region of the country), a little bit of crossover/hybrid music (depending on the band and what their concept is), and - more than some of these other things - brass quintet work. Maybe 10% of 20% of all these types of work are paid, and the majority of people who do this work are not paid to do it and do it "for the love of it". Many non-musicians don't consider brass quintets (nor accompanied tuba solos) to be "chamber music", at not least outside of universities (ie. "music zoos"). As an example, at cancer wards in hospitals, they might hire a flute player and a cello player or a clarinet player and a keyboard player - and they might even hire a string quartet, but they're not likely to hire a brass quintet. There's also a great deal of wind band music music played in the USA, but to be paid to do that (with only a few rare exceptions in the USA) one must enlist in the military, and all the rest of it is played "for the love of it".

[Colby Fahrenbacher]

@bloke, you've stated this multiple times, so I am going to push back against the notion of "warmup is a mental thing." Music making is an abnormal physical process where we demand that our bodies perform functions well outside their norm. Doing so can, and does, often lead to physical injury. In this regard, music making is very similar to athletics, where good instructors encourage appropriate warming up of muscles and techniques prior to high exertion in order to prevent injury.

Note that I said "appropriate warming up". There are absolutely ways to hurt yourself or cause other problems with a bad or overly taxing warmup. A smart warm-up prepares you for the task ahead without degrading your performance of that task. That warm-up will be highly specific to the individual and tasks ahead.

I should also note that I don't disagree with the idea that we need to be adept at performing without a warmup. As you've pointed out, life happens and sometimes you don't have the luxury of a warmup. It is a skill that needs to be developed and maintained like any other skill.

But encouraging a complete lack of warm-up is reckless for those who partake. Every high exertion event becomes a roll of the dice, where you might be fine, or you might not. There will always be a risk, but an appropriate and thoughtful warm-up makes injury less likely.

[bloke]

...so why do you tag me? Sometimes, I wonder if the only reason you come here is to sort through my most recent posts and to find things (regardless of the topic) with which to disagree.

Unlike how you seem to only check in to seemingly read my posts and then respond in the negative, I'm not particularly interested in what you have to say. How about just saying what ~you~ have to say without tagging me, and expressing it from your point of view rather than in the context of my point of view?

I'm just an old guy who fixes horns, sells a few products, and plays some regular gigs. I really shouldn't be living rent free in your head, particularly as we've never met and likely never will. I don't think about you, and you really shouldn't be thinking about me.

I'm fine with you warming up and warming up and warming up and warming up. You're way up there, and I'm way down here.

Admittedly, I'm just a bit saddened that playing music seems so unnatural to you, though. It seems pretty natural to me. I was never able to make it up to Chicago to sit with Mr. Jacobs for an hour at a time and catch his vibe, but I believe that just sitting down and playing (with it feeling like the most natural thing in the world) was his primary message and objective, and is why everyone left their sessions with him feeling so good about what just happened.

I've said before that the most important thing about playing well is for the player to give themselves permission to play well. I really feel like there's a guilt thing associated with not doing some specific song and dance before doing song and dance, and - if that's not done - there won't be an ability to dance and sing... perhaps a neurosis of some sort...(??)

I do believe in dividing up the different types of skills and working on them separated out from each other, but I don't believe that I need to work on them prior to playing - well... - music, in order to earn permission to play music well in any particular session, whether it's a home practice session, a rehearsal, or a performance.

[Colby Fahrenbacher]

I tagged you because I was replying directly to a very specific comment you made and have made on multiple occasions.

I respond to you because I disagree with what you have to say and think it is important for people other than you and I see that dissenting opinion voiced. You post so frequently on anything and everything that your average lurker would be forgiven for believing that you are a confident expert in all matters. You are not.

I respond to you because you so frequently post contentious opinions, gross hyperbole, misinformation, or troll. I don’t respond to others as much because they generally behave themselves in public. You do not.

If you have no interest in what I have to say, don’t respond to me. A vast majority of the time, my comments are in response to a statement you have made. My recent “Tuba Post” post is one of very few exceptions where I have instigated anything without an initial post by you.

I’m not sure where you would get any impression about how “natural” tuba playing comes to me based on my thoughts about warming up. It coming natural to someone doesn’t reduce the likelihood of a performance related injury, warming up does (as did good, efficient technique, your general health, and your diet).

Your an old guy who fixes horns, sells products, plays gigs, and spends an insane amount of time posting on this forum as if it were gospel and gets mad anytime someone disagrees with you.

Be honest with me, had i not tagged you on that last post, would you have ACTUALLY responded any differently? I highly doubt it. I’ve done so in the past, and you have always responded as if I was speaking directly to you.

[bloke]

You just proved my points.

[Colby Fahrenbacher]

Not even in the slightest. I know this is difficult for you to understand, but there are many people who visit this forum and simply read but never post. Most of the time, that includes me. When I post, it's because I have read something that I feel strongly about. Most of the time, that's an opinion posted by you. But I don't come here with the sole purpose of disagreeing with you. You just happen to be the most frequent poster who contributes the most disagreeable content.

[bloke]

You just proved my points.

[russiantuba]

@bloke, you've stated this multiple times, so I am going to push back against the notion of "warmup is a mental thing." Music making is an abnormal physical process where we demand that our bodies perform functions well outside their norm. Doing so can, and does, often lead to physical injury. In this regard, music making is very similar to athletics, where good instructors encourage appropriate warming up of muscles and techniques prior to high exertion in order to prevent injury.

Note that I said "appropriate warming up". There are absolutely ways to hurt yourself or cause other problems with a bad or overly taxing warmup. A smart warm-up prepares you for the task ahead without degrading your performance of that task. That warm-up will be highly specific to the individual and tasks ahead.

I should also note that I don't disagree with the idea that we need to be adept at performing without a warmup. As you've pointed out, life happens and sometimes you don't have the luxury of a warmup. It is a skill that needs to be developed and maintained like any other skill.

But encouraging a complete lack of warm-up is reckless for those who partake. Every high exertion event becomes a roll of the dice, where you might be fine, or you might not. There will always be a risk, but an appropriate and thoughtful warm-up makes injury less likely.

@Colby Fahrenbacher , I HIGHLY encourage you to take a lesson with Roger Rocco on this. He also has cured many of focal dystonia, longest studying student of Jacobs, including himself and was one of the first to mention this concept to me. In fact, I believe Mickey and him are pretty good friends and you'll see many of his ideas present. He is located in the Bourbonnais area. If you want someone a bit younger and an active player, his friend Sergio Carolino teaches the EXACT same concept. In fact, they met at his recital at UIUC and discussed this concept.

In fact, a huge part of focal dystonia is mental and part of the recovery is retraining neural synapses (or building new ones) along with relaxed breathing (hence why I think the breathing tube concept just to open up the oral cavity is a bad idea IF relaxation isn't taught along side and is the focus).

Colby, since you are preaching the fears of overuse syndrome and damage to the chops from not warming up, when do the effects of an actual "warm up" wear off in your opinion? An hour without playing? I can say I have sat through MANY orchestral rehearsals where I haven't played more than an hour then I have to play in a rehearsal. How about operas where you can't even horse flap the lips?

When I run, if I have to take a break to tie my shoe, or I am not running within 10 minutes of stretching and haven't kept loose, I basically have to stretch again. The elasticity of the lips I feel reverts back if not being used so based on what you are inferring, orchestral playing is reckless to the tubist.

[Colby Fahrenbacher]

Sigh, this is what I get for not being more specific. Let me clarify:

I do not believe that the mental aspect does not play an important role in music. I am saying that a mental approach is not a complete replacement for a good, healthy warm-up.

You and Bloke were both essentially suggesting "There's no need to warm-up, it's just a mental game". I disagree with this idea. I am suggesting that you should both warm-up and be mentally engaged, and the balance between the two will vary based on a number of circumstances.

You've asked an impossible question because "the effects of warming up" don't suddenly stop after a certain period of time. Their benefits fluctuate as a function time and will vary from person to person and depend entirely on the situation. Which is exactly why Bloke can be right about what works for him while simultaneously completely wrong about what is best for others.

My use of the word reckless was specifically geared towards the idea of "recommending a complete lack of warmup", which is not the context that you just used it. In response to your statement that "orchestral tuba playing is reckless to the tubist", I would say that orchestral tuba playing, depending on the literature, carries some level of risk of injury with it.

We mitigate that risk through appropriate warming up, among many other tactics (including good mental strategies).

[bloke]

@russiantuba

Maybe I approach things wrong. I've been wrong lots of times, but whenever I'm through practicing or through playing a job, whether it's some really easy playing job or I'm serving as a ringer for some concert band and I'm playing countless musical figures with almost no rests, I never finish with my mouth muscles hurting, nor the skin around my mouth hurting, and I could always play some more if I had to. As long as I take my white dress shirt off and hang it up, I can wear it to the next gig, because it's always dry. Playing the tuba just isn't hard, at least it shouldn't be. I think maybe playing the trumpet really high for a long time or the clarinet or the violin is likely very athletic, but playing the tuba just isn't, as long as the player remembers to take in enough air to make the thing go and has worked at it enough to develop a particular level of expertise (okay, and maybe paying enough attention to avoid tensing muscles that have nothing to do with playing). Even those instruments I just mentioned.. I observe the best players play them, and - based on what I can see - it has actually become easy for them.

The only times my mouth has ever tingled from numbness and my ears rang from constant loud (mostly, the culprit being snare drum) playing have been NOLA brass band gigs, but those are hilariously fun, absolutely worth it, and - as soon as the tingling went away and my ears quit ringing - I was fine and ready to play again...the next set - remembering to stick my earplugs in.

Ironing out sousaphone bells can wear out some people, because it's upper body, it's holding something out in front of and away from the person's abdomen who's carrying out the operation, and it's having to absolutely control a reasonably heavy object that's being pulled at a precise angle under a good bit of drag through a piece of machinery which - if not pulled through just so - defines that the activity ruins (rather than restores) the object.
When I first tried this (in my early 20's), I couldn't imagine how anyone could do it. Several decades later, it's just going mindlessly through the motions while listening to the radio, and there's no pain and no discomfort involved, even though I'm getting pretty arthritic, because I'm getting pretty close to 70. Do I warm up in relation to these sessions? Sure. The safest part of the job - which is running the tip of a roller next to the rim of the sousaphone bell - serves as a good warm-up, but that part pays just as much as the rest of it.
Playing the tuba is mostly the same. I can either enhance or ruin a piece of music, but it's gotten to the point where it's just as easy to do either one, and one of them pays money, where as one of them obviously would not. I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but there are so many symphonies whereby the composer offers the tuba player some relatively mundane and unnoticed entrance early in the first movement which gives them an opportunity to play just a little bit before they are asked to play a very conspicuous passage just a bit later. Those are nice little warm-up opportunities.

[russiantuba]

@bloke

Agreed. A lot of times it’s soft chords too. I tend to play very loud doing orchestral stuff and I shift to thinking big.

I actually rarely warm up when doing popular music gigs, like a double set with 6+ hours of playing in tuba quartet, a lot of times on F. I might horse flap on the way and bring plenty of water (hydration and sleep/rest are probably ultimately more important to the lips than a physical warmup).

Something else to think about, is efficiency of the air. I don’t think about air when I am playing. If I am efficient, the flow of air does the work.

Normally, after these long gigs (especially when I play the big horn), my stomach muscles have more fatigue than my lips.