- a Memphis "masterworks" concert
- an important
end-of-the-month church engagement- both will be with John Mueller (retired principal euphonium, "Pershing's Own"...He and I are both playing euphonium on one job, and - ironically - he's playing trombone on the other job)
- I'm using the REALLY BIG euphonium on both jobs
> to match John on one of the jobs
- to cover some bass trombone parts (which occasionally creep up towards that middle-of-treble-clef B-flat) on the other job, but - mostly - are medium-low and need to be loud/resonant
...so the tubas have remained "quiet", and the euphonium is being played - here at blokeplace.
To me, euphonium practice (compared to tuba practice) is just a bit boring. I reached out to a trombone/euphonium/tuba teacher (who, primarily, is a trombonist) and they suggested that the workaround for that is to play a large percentage of "fast" stuff.
OK...That works, but (sure...) I'm also working on tone production and intonation.
WITHOUT working on "range" (but simply "PLAYING" the really huge euphonium a good bit), I FINALLY achieved a (my term) "marketable" double-high E-flat (whereas - in the past - that range was only solid/focused on the little Yamaha 321 euphonium)...so that's interesting (to me)...and - again - I'm no euphonium soloist, but a blue-collar euphonium (not "-ist", but) player.
Since the orchestral work programmed is written in B-flat treble clef, I've pulled out my TRUMPET Amsden book. (I have multiple copies of both the B-flat treble and the bass clef books, which - over the years, were included with various used instrument purchases.) This is reinforcing those old reading skills, as well as offering me the "fast notes" anti-boring practicing thing. I've found - SINCE walking away from the C tubas - and NO LONGER playing "C" as the open pitch, that moving to B-flat tuba has weakened my B-flat treble clef reading (slightly) as that reading (just as with C tuba) requires looking at C as the open pitch...and - by this point - I've walked pretty far away from that.
GADGETRY:
It is true that euphoniums' acoustical designs usually define that most faulty tuning tendencies lean towards the sharp sides of things...thus the typical heavy, overbuilt, borderline Rube-Goldberg (left hand thumb) thing which has been devised. My instrument currently features no tuning gadget, and I do pretty well by [1] warming it up, [1] playing the two normally-encountered lower G's with 3rd valve,[3] adding the 3rd valve to the 1st valve on the upper E-flat, and [4] PRACTICING - so that my embouchure can stay more open, when playing higher pitches.
As far as additional mechanical fixes are concerned, I'm thinking about a RIGHT HAND thumb thing which is simpler, would offer a pair of springs (for more balance...as I've found - on other gadgets - that a combination springs at each end of a mechanism lessens the amount of work required of the player's thumb. I won't be building it in time for these jobs, but it could (??) end up in the Repairs forum.
MOUTHPIECES:
I'm not a euphonium mouthpiece expert, but (having spent MORE time with MORE shapes and sizes of euphonium mouthpieces (over the last few years) and with TWO extreme sizes of euphoniums, I believe I've decided that AS WITH QUITE A FEW TUBA MOUTHPIECES, many of the most popular euphonium mouthpieces' throat diameters are too large (ok: "for me"). I believe that it's just fine (as with tuba mouthpieces) to add depth and change the interior cup contour to assist in achieving various types of tone colors, but I don't "get" automatically adding throat diameter when adding cup depth. I really don't think it accomplishes a whole lot. ok..."low range response"...but (other than wide displays of virtuosity in old-school euphonium cadenzae and - well...
...the meant-to-be-sarcastic thing I recorded the other day) that range is not found on paper in very many pieces. Further (just as with tuba) a player can quickly become accustomed to a smaller throat (automatic for medium and high ranges) and can quickly teach themselves to more thoughtfully gauge the quantity of air flow - in the low and very low ranges (rather than "so what? as hard as I can blow works with a giant throat, so: so be it!")...so (??) I may well be looking into that. 