learning

[bloke]

I've been spending tons of time with my newly-built medium-large bore (.687") compact B-flat tuba (with c. 9-inch bell THROAT), but it's now time to pull my C-tuba back down off the wall (.748" bore with c. 10-inch bell THROAT)...ie. "4/4 B-flat vs. 5/4 C".

I've learned that - in order to optimize the resonance of each instrument - it's really not so much an "air" thing as it is an "embouchure" thing.

The muscles around my lips are telling me that I'm using slightly different muscles - more of this / less of that (with each of these two instruments) to maximize their individual resonance needs/tendencies.

yeah...I know that I am the person who has stated that (in the past two or three decades or so) the "air" thing is emphasized a bit too much (at the neglect and sort-of ignoring of "lip muscles" thing)...and I know that I'm automatically biased towards the above-expressed "epiphany", but I wasn't really expecting it and it (well...sort of literally...) "hit me in the face".

...so here's something:

When trying out a different tuba, maybe (??) after warming it up and sort of figuring out the best compromise positions for the various slides...IF that tuba's sound is not pleasing - right off the bat, TRY slightly altering the embouchure (not mechanically/consciously, so much, but...) by allowing LISTENING to guide the embouchure.

BOTH of these instruments are GREAT, but - when I first pick each one up, and tend to vibrate my embouchure AS IF playing the previous instrument, they both seem "not so great"...and it's TOTALLY an adjustment in the muscles around my lips...with no (none of which I'm aware, anyway...) real adjustment in "air".
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F tuba is so different that I automatically seem to do the "F-tuba embouchure" thing...and the big Besson E-flat tuba - well... - just want's to sound happy/jolly/round no matter what..ie. the E-flat - I suppose - tends to "wallpaper over" any insufficiency in the "signal" that I send down it's bore...which may possibly (??) be why I'm so drawn to it, when I play jobs where I'm expected to play something on every single beat of every single measure.

[jtm]

Just incidental to the real discussion, but where do you measure the throat? The very end of the steady conical expansion?

[matt g]

Regarding your contrabass face:

Do you find that when you’re switching between them, it’s a gravitation towards relaxing something as opposed to tightening something up?

I ask because that’s what it always felt like to me when switching between contrabass tubas. For a while I had two BBb tubas (a Besson 994 and a 6/4 Holton/Miraphone) and a CC (MW 32). All of them played well enough and I had a mouthpiece matched to each (the importance of this cannot be overstated), but if noodling around between tubas, it was almost always a mindset of “relaxing the face” into the way the horn wanted to be played.

[windshieldbug]

"Usage" of air (fast, slow, direction) and embouchure (together with mouthpiece) absolutely change for each horn and key. Someone aspiring to be an orchestral tubaist would do well to practice this rather than look to try to make each combination to feel the "same"...

[bloke]

I don't know enough about anatomy (nor how to analyze myself) to know WHICH muscles are doing precisely WHAT differently...but I feel DIFFERENT muscles doing DIFFERENT amounts of work, when switching between the two different-length/different-size contrabass instruments.

throat: a spotted/non-precise designated point in a bell's taper where the bell begins to REALLY bend outward.

-----------------------------------

I would liken "revisiting B-flat tuba" to "a horn player revisiting (a really nice-playing) SINGLE F horn"; more care/attention/concentration must be paid (when playing higher pitches through a longer bugle), but the trade-back (that which is gained) is "additional resonance".

I've discovered something else as well:
Spending a few weeks blowing through a longer bugle (which is also a smaller bugle) has also improved my EMBOUCHURE focus/accuracy when going back and playing single-valve-combination arpeggios on the C instrument...particularly when arriving at the tons-of-additional-cylindrical-tubing arpeggios (played with 2-3, 4, 5-2-3, 5-4, etc.)

I tend to go through these in triplet rhythm (the voicing of arpeggios often encountered in Bach cello suites) with chromatic valve combinations:

arpeggio.png (3.48 KiB) Viewed 1188 times

more on "different muscles":
Back when I had 6/4-size C tubas around here, I would notice that - when setting them aside and picking up more conservatively-proportioned tubas, my sound would - at first - tend to be somewhat "gruff". I would always be slightly alarmed by that, but thought little of it (as I quickly adjusted). There's a high-profile player who seems to be doing less-and-less with B.A.T.'s...I tend to suspect that player may have come across some of the same findings, and decided that "what had to be done with a tuba that size, in order to imitate the intensity of resonance of a smaller instrument" wasn't particularly productive nor positive"...but (then again) I haven't discussed this with them.

...and (very likely) I DO adjust air (in fact, I'm CERTAIN of it) when moving between instruments...but (as shallow/moderate/deep/heavy breathing are all encountered throughout the day - and without any thought of it) that's surely why I don't notice it.

any of this:
Without AURALLY paying very close attention to the RESULTS of changes, is pointless.

[Three Valves]

Just incidental to the real discussion, but where do you measure the throat? The very end of the steady conical expansion?

Yes, I would roll up some butchers paper, shove it down the tuba and let it unravel.

The paper will be in contact with most of the bugle as it expands, but where it loses contact is where I would say the bell starts.

[Three Valves]

[Doc]

When time allows, I play BBb, CC, Eb, and F each day, and I notice the phenomenon you describe, although I don't give it much thought past acclimation. I always start off on the 496. If I follow with F tuba next, if I'm not careful, it's easy to play with big BBb air and BBb embouchure and sound like a foghorn. I just dial it in (ear as my guide). When I work down from BBb to CC to EEb to F, that same tendency is (obviously) minimal to unnoticeable.

When I had four large BBb tubas here at once, I noticed that there was minor variance in the volume and speed of air required for each, but the real difference was how the embouchure changed to achieve a clear, resonant sound.

So it seems to me that this phenomenon simply "exists," regardless of similarly or differently keyed instruments, and we just simply need cause the desired sound to come out of the bell by listening the sound into existence - keep playing until you hear what you want.

[hbcrandy]

Bloke wrote:

When trying out a different tuba, maybe (??) after warming it up and sort of figuring out the best compromise positions for the various slides...IF that tuba's sound is not pleasing - right off the bat, TRY slightly altering the embouchure (not mechanically/consciously, so much, but...) by allowing LISTENING to guide the embouchure.

BOTH of these instruments are GREAT, but - when I first pick each one up, and tend to vibrate my embouchure AS IF playing the previous instrument, they both seem "not so great"...and it's TOTALLY an adjustment in the muscles around my lips...with no (none of which I'm aware, anyway...) real adjustment in "air".

Though I never had the privilege of lessons with Arnold Jacobs, I heard Mr. Jacobs say on a recording of one of his lectures that filling the instrument with air is not the most important requirement. There is, already, air in the instrument just like the rooms we are in. The goal is to fill the instrument with rich vibration that will make the air in the instrument vibrate. I did, however, study with Warren Deck for 2 years. Warren's big thing with me was to listen to your sound as you played, including the sound of your instrument coming back at you off of the walls of the hall. He seemed to be telling me that my ears are a valuable tool to guide yourself to guide your embouchure to a good sound. When I applied these previous two concepts to tuba when I still played it and now horn, the results were that of GREAT improvement.

[tubanh84]

I have experienced this when going back and forth between my CC and F tubas. What works for one doesn't necessarily work for the other, even in the middle register where they are both (very) good horns. I always couch it as "having to remind the horn how to play in tune," but the longer I go on, the more I've decided to admit that it's not the horn's fault....

IN GENERAL, I've found a focus on the corners of my embouchure to be the most direct route to success and happiness.

[bloke]

I have personally also found the "keep the same exact rim" thing to be a fallacy.

I like a certain STYLE of rim, and I know WHY I like that style of rim (and not just "because")...

...but I use THREE DIFFERENT mouth-opening sizes (YX.Ymm, YX.Zmm, and YY.Xmm) of that style of rim for different instruments...and to the benefit of the sonority of each of those instruments.

(How many people who play alto, tenor, and bass trombone - use precisely the same rim - including the same mouth-opening/cup-width) with all three instruments...and sound really great playing all three...?? Few, I would wager...
...and how about "when I play oboe, I go ahead and use an English horn reed - but made to be inserted into an oboe, because - well - I'm just more accustomed to that size reed"...uhh..NOPE !)

[russiantuba]

This is why I do a rotating daily routine, with 2-3 days cross training between the horns using the Baer Cross Training Method (based on the Bell Scales), and performing the ones on CC 8vb where written. I normally do a CC only routine, and a F only routine 2 days each as well. Each horn is different.

Back when I had 6/4-size C tubas around here, I would notice that - when setting them aside and picking up more conservatively-proportioned tubas, my sound would - at first - tend to be somewhat "gruff". I would always be slightly alarmed by that, but thought little of it (as I quickly adjusted). There's a high-profile player who seems to be doing less-and-less with B.A.T.'s...I tend to suspect that player may have come across some of the same findings, and decided that "what had to be done with a tuba that size, in order to imitate the intensity of resonance of a smaller instrument" wasn't particularly productive nor positive"...but (then again) I haven't discussed this with them.

My DMA professor played a Cerveny Piggy with his full time ICSOM orchestra when I arrived, and he had no issue getting the intensity of resonance. He ended up finding an original factory York 4/4 CC to replace the one he had stolen that belonged to his teacher. People seem to use the 6/4 York Style CC tubas because their teachers did and had audition success on them, and I think many of their teachers used them because Jacobs used one. Jacobs got the original one because Donatelli couldn't hold the horn, and it was something a bit better than what he was playing on at Curtis. Bob LeBlanc mentioned in an interview (and I heard it several times as well) that Jacobs was willing to trade one of the CSO Yorks for the York 4/4 CC that he owned, as he preferred the smaller horn.

I go back and listen to old recordings that I enjoy several times, mainly LAPO, NYPO, Cincinnati Symphony with Mike Thornton, and a lot of Russian Orchestras. The Russian Orchestras have such intensity in the tuba sound, and are playing Zimmerman-style tubas (St. Petersburg), so a large bore 4/4. Warren Deck, at least on the recordings I like, played a large 4/4 rotor CC, and Roger Bobo I don't think played anything larger than a 186. Mike, like a lot of tubists in that generation, played Alexander 163 CC tubas.

[KingTuba1241X]

Bloke wrote:

When trying out a different tuba, maybe (??) after warming it up and sort of figuring out the best compromise positions for the various slides...IF that tuba's sound is not pleasing - right off the bat, TRY slightly altering the embouchure (not mechanically/consciously, so much, but...) by allowing LISTENING to guide the embouchure.

BOTH of these instruments are GREAT, but - when I first pick each one up, and tend to vibrate my embouchure AS IF playing the previous instrument, they both seem "not so great"...and it's TOTALLY an adjustment in the muscles around my lips...with no (none of which I'm aware, anyway...) real adjustment in "air".

Though I never had the privilege of lessons with Arnold Jacobs, I heard Mr. Jacobs say on a recording of one of his lectures that filling the instrument with air is not the most important requirement. There is, already, air in the instrument just like the rooms we are in. The goal is to fill the instrument with rich vibration that will make the air in the instrument vibrate. I did, however, study with Warren Deck for 2 years. Warren's big thing with me was to listen to your sound as you played, including the sound of your instrument coming back at you off of the walls of the hall. He seemed to be telling me that my ears are a valuable tool to guide yourself to guide your embouchure to a good sound. When I applied these previous two concepts to tuba when I still played it and now horn, the results were that of GREAT improvement.

Interesting theory, it's been tossed around and discussed ad-nauseum but..if you cut your lung air supply off from your lips and just vibrated it probably wouldn't work too well. I think one of the resident acting scientists gave a mathematical equation on how that works once.

[bloke]

When a tuba is sitting somewhere in the earth's atmosphere, there is already air in a tuba,
so a tuba doesn't need air put in it.
When we blow, we are (not very quickly at all, fwiw) replacing the air that's in a tuba with other (no-better-than-what-was-in-there-already) air.
The single reason we are blowing is to coax our lips into vibrating - vibrating sympathetically with the valves-changeable length of the air column in the tuba.
Larger amplitude lip vibrations tend to render louder sympathetic vibrations from tubas.
Were there some way to cause our lips to vibrate without air being blown past them (which there isn't - not that anyone has discovered), a tuba would still sound.

[jtm]

I've been spending tons of time with my newly-built medium-large bore (.687") compact B-flat tuba (with c. 9-inch bell THROAT), but it's now time to pull my C-tuba back down off the wall (.748" bore with c. 10-inch bell THROAT)...ie. "4/4 B-flat vs. 5/4 C".

So, my C tuba has a 16.5" bell and c. 7" bell throat. Should I even call it a 4/4 C?

[bloke]

Why shouldn't you?
It's larger than the 1960's/1970's 2J/3J/4J/5J/10J/12J/O-99/TB-10 tubas...yes?

I've been spending tons of time with my newly-built medium-large bore (.687") compact B-flat tuba (with c. 9-inch bell THROAT), but it's now time to pull my C-tuba back down off the wall (.748" bore with c. 10-inch bell THROAT)...ie. "4/4 B-flat vs. 5/4 C".

So, my C tuba has a 16.5" bell and c. 7" bell throat. Should I even call it a 4/4 C?

[jtm]

No idea about that....
It is, however, larger than the 1965 Bb 186, which is about 6 1/2 at the tenon, so I won't worry about it.

[peterbas]

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