Buzzing exercises

[gocsick]

Just a curiosity...

I found buzzing exercises to be really helpful after picking the Euphonium up after not playing one for 30 years. The trombone community seems to go all in for buzzing off the horn. I recently decided to take a lesson on trumpet just for one and buzzing was recommended as part of a regular pre playing warmup.

I've tried off horn buzzing exercises, BERP and freebuzzing, on tuba but didn't find it particularly useful. I haven't seen many tuba teachers who recommended buzzing as part of daily or regular practice.

So why is tuba different? It can't just be mouthpiece size... can it?

[pompatus]

Just a curiosity...

…

So why is tuba different? It can't just be mouthpiece size... can it?

Arnold Jacobs’s Tuba Studies begins with a full page of exercises intended to be buzzed on the mouthpiece alone. I can’t answer your question, out of lack of experience, but just thought I’d offer that observation.

Best of luck in your research, AND buzzing!

[LeMark]

I buzz with every one of my students, every lesson, no matter what their level. It's usually in a short Echo form, but sometimes I'll have them buzz their music if I think it needs it.

I listen for pitch, tone, and tongue clarity. We expand range beyond what they think they can handle, and I often surprise them by revealing what notes above the staff they were actually hitting, which gives them confidence when playing music that goes up there.

We rarely buzz below the staff, and if we do, I have them half way cover the end of the mouthpiece with their pinkie finger

[bloke]

Trumpet mouthpieces aren't much shorter than tuba mouthpieces. That being the case, they represent a much larger percentage of the length of a trumpet than a tuba mouthpiece represents of the length of a tuba. Even more importantly, the part that's missing in a tuba mouthpiece is the smallest bore capillary portion, which is the critical part for creating resistance. I don't see anything wrong with doing that stuff, but the only purpose I see in it is to develop better pitch control without relying on the instrument as much. Vibrating into a tuba mouthpiece doesn't feel anything like blowing into a tuba (compared to how much vibrating into a trumpet mouthpiece feels like vibrating into a trumpet) so I would recommend that anyone who does it with a tuba mouthpiece add an extension on their mouthpiece that adds enough to perhaps make the tuba mouthpiece be about four times as long as a trumpet mouthpiece. It's going to be much easier to buzz, it's going to feel much more like playing a tuba, and it's going to be more like playing mf (which we usually do) rather than playing ffffff (which we never do).
I've noticed that when I have vibrated into tuba mouthpieces all by themselves, the way that I create a vibration doesn't much resemble the way that I do it when a mouthpiece is inserted into a tuba. What happens is that I'm having to create resistance in my embouchure to cause the vibration, rather than the resistance of the instrument causing the vibration.

The things that I pointed out above are the reason why a tuba - which has a mouthpipe which begins with only a .525" bore size or so - plays so much differently from one that begins with a .625" bore, as the first several inches of a tuba mouthpipe are actually the equivalent of the back bore of a trumpet mouthpiece.

[Mary Ann]

What I noticed with buzzing on a horn mouthpiece, and this was documented also by Fred Fox in is book, is that if you are buzzing, for example, F at the top of the staff, and you change nothing and put the mouthpiece in the horn, the pitch that comes out is a minor third lower than what you were free buzzing, because you need more air flow to have the horn produce that pitch.

I haven't free buzzed on tuba because that's what I'm doing in the cup anyway. I do of course note the increased air needed to get those higher notes out, despite the buzz pitch. You need to blow much harder to get Bb on top of the staff out of a Hagen than out of a Norwegian Star. Tube length matters, but I think that's pretty obvious to multi-brass players.

[bloke]

All brass instruments are related, but they are all starkly different. This truth is the reason why all of these F tuba manufacturers are making these crappy F tubas, because they're sacrificing "the good" for "the similar to contrabass" in order to increase the chances that potential buyers will be able to play them on first blow, and then (duh) purchase them.

[LeMark]

What I noticed with buzzing on a horn mouthpiece, and this was documented also by Fred Fox in is book, is that if you are buzzing, for example, F at the top of the staff, and you change nothing and put the mouthpiece in the horn, the pitch that comes out is a minor third lower than what you were free buzzing, because you need more air flow to have the horn produce that pitch.

I haven't free buzzed on tuba because that's what I'm doing in the cup anyway. I do of course note the increased air needed to get those higher notes out, despite the buzz pitch. You need to blow much harder to get Bb on top of the staff out of a Hagen than out of a Norwegian Star. Tube length matters, but I think that's pretty obvious to multi-brass players.

As someone that has been teaching for 35 years, I am going to have to disagree with literally everything you just said. In my book, free buzzing is without the mouthpiece at all. I don't use it a lot, but there is a place for it from time to time.

As far as pitch, tone, and evaluating air stream goes, buzzing on the mouthpiece is very valuable as a tool for improvement. If it was good enough for Jake, it's good enough for me

[gocsick]

@LeMark .. Thanks

I will revisit buzzing exercises on tuba. Maybe my experience with trumpet and euphonium will provide some guidance for tuba.

[matt g]

When at the top of my game, I could replicate every pitch I could play while mouthpiece buzzing. To me it’s a feedback loop: get stonger by practicing to be able to buzz on the mouthpiece competently, buzz competently (with precision) to increase accuracy and precision on the horn. This can then be extended to free buzzing (no mouthpiece at all).

As mentioned above, the tuba mouthpiece has far less “back pressure” (impedance) when compared to other brass mouthpieces, with possible exception to the larger bass trombone mouthpieces (Schilke 60, Bach 1G, etc). This makes it incumbent on the player to manage airflow at the aperture versus letting the instrument help out. But this is where the magic happens: once the player can articulate and navigate pitches across the full register on the mouthpiece alone, it becomes much easier to play with exacting precision.

Mentioned above, using the pinky as a “choke” is helpful for young players. I did this as well through high school. Also nice is that the player can vary the choke settings so that eventually he/she can progress the use of the mouthpiece to no crutch at all but also understand how to use the pinky effectively. For example, with cold chops, the player might not be able to buzz across the register easily without the pinky, but after a few minutes of buzzing, the chops are ready to buzz without the pinky throttling the end of the shank.

I found that the practice of mouthpiece buzzing was useful as a quick way to warm up the face without the horn (let’s say on the way to somewhere you’ll be playing later) and also a nice way to cool down after a session, mainly because the focus on buzzing and breathing is a bit more zen-like than holding a wad of plumbing in your lap and poking buttons and reading dots. It’s just breath, buzz, and pitch.

The main two things I’d focus on with the mouthpiece only work were:

Articulations, since there’s no hiding bad airflow behind the tongue and hearing the different types of articulation (“t”, “d”, “air”, etc) is a bit easier.

Slurs, as there is no tubing to support slotting of notes that works as another crutch for the embouchure. Bonus points for using a tuner to reinforce intervals in the ear.

[bloke]

Okay "free buzzing" means no mouthpiece.
Based on that definition, I see it as even less useful, and even less related to playing music on an instrument.

I'm not sure that I want to practice things that aren't much like playing in order to improve playing, other than maybe brisk walking or jogging...

... I believe I've mentioned before that when I need to practice and feel lethargic, that I go outside and walk briskly for maybe a half mile or a mile and then sit down to practice and the lethargy is gone. In other words, an actual warm up.

I've never thought of an instrument as a crutch, and comparing imitating the feel of the instrument to a crutch is a foreign concept to me. I knew couple of people who practiced outdoors in the woods all the time. For the most part - with their sections in their symphony orchestras - they played too loudly, as even the most energy put through an instrument outdoors isn't going to sound that loud.

I might totally be on the wrong track and might be totally misguided, but people do hire me to play music.

[matt g]

Okay "free buzzing" means no mouthpiece.
Based on that definition, I see it as even less useful, and even less related to playing music on an instrument.

Free buzzing is nice when you have no access to any sort of mouthpiece and need to do something*. However, the amount of work needed to buzz without the rim in place is a great deal more than with the rim and you could be reinforcing things that simply won’t work well with the rim in place. I used to carry around a rim (embouchure visualizer) I hacksawed off a Yamaha 67C4 (that I got for free) to buzz on so that my chops had a meaningful anchor to form an aperture on.

*warm up the chops a bit, demonstrate a technique, make rude noises

[bloke]

I realize that I'm not conventional, but I played a job a couple of weeks ago, and I think I did a really nice job. It was three services with about an hour break between them and different locations, and it was with the F tuba which I haven't been playing in quite a few months.

I'm taking a rest right now from muscling the dents out of sousaphones, because it taxes my shoulder muscles, and I'm heading right back out. A whole bunch of nights, I think I'm going to take a hot bath and then practice on the tuba some, but the reality is that most the time I just wash up a little bit, fall off to sleep, and don't practice at all during the summer. All I ever seem to lose is maybe a small amount of endurance. The sound doesn't get worse, the flexibility doesn't get worse, the dynamic range doesn't diminish, and so on. I'm not claiming that I'm one of the "top ten tuba players" or anything and I'm certainly no savant, but I'm able to hold on to what I have and go right back to it. Okay, if I practice a whole bunch of hours every day and sacrifice making money to pay bills, I might get just a little bit better, but that's about it. If I'm going to vibrate my lips, I'm going to do it into a tuba. I don't feel the need to do it otherwise.
I believe one thing that a whole bunch of people don't do is to give themselves permission to play well if they haven't been doing a whole bunch of their routines and practicing. I give myself permission to play well, and it seems to work. Maybe it's worth a try...??

[LeMark]

The only thing I use free buzzing for is to teach students how to play in the high range without the feeling of SMASHING the face into the mouthpiece. Self supporting embouchure. It's also good for seeing if the middle of the lips are vibrating or the buzz is off to the side. I sometimes use a trumpet mouthpiece instead of free buzzing to correct either of the above problems. If it was good enough for Sam, it's good enough for me.

[bloke]

That's fine. I never think of other players that much and what they do when they practice, though I have admired and strived to imitate some players' sound qualities... and not all of them were tuba players.

I know it doesn't relate to a large percentage of players, but I mostly pay attention to the sound I'm making and not to what I'm doing to make it. I do have one physical flaw that I'm aware of when I play, which is that I could take in more air than I do sometimes and it would result in it being a little bit easier to play. I believe the reason I don't take in enough air is because maybe I have a pretty good size chest (??) and mediocre air intake ends up being just enough. One thing I actually work on is to breathe more deeply than I do when I don't think about it. When I breathe more deeply, everything's easier. I'm pretty sure that since I only owned my F tuba for several years that that's how I got in the habit of not bothering to take in a lot of air between phrases. That particular instrument just doesn't require a lot of air, no matter what I'm doing with it. Playing the big contrabass tuba and forgetting to breathe deeply, I do kick myself a little bit, because when I go back and breathe deeply, everything is pretty much effortless... I'm not an "air is everything" person, but enough air is important.

[LeMark]

One thing to keep in mind is buzzing is a tool for improvement. Think about that for a bit. When I hear a certain world famous trombone player say he doesn't think it's helpful, I think that maybe captain prodigy never had to struggle to change his playing.

It's not going to do much for someone that is doing things 99% right, but for the player who might have been playing a few years that can't understand why they are struggling at certain tasks, it's INVALUABLE as a practice tool. As a teacher who is tasked with taking players to the elite levels, it's valuable for two reasons.

Keeping the young players from forming bad habits
Getting older players to develop habits that will allow them to improve

I never took lessons in Jr High or high school, my first lesson was my freshman year of college. I had problems with my playing that I was unaware of, and once I started a regiment of buzzing and slurring, they all went away and I caught up and passed many players that I lagged behind previously. I've seen similar stories from countless students of mine in the last 35 years. In fact I'll go so far as to say that I've never seen a student in his first lesson that I thought could buzz at an acceptable level, but by the time they could, they were a greatly improved player.

I remember about 15 years ago teaching a student that actually pushed back on me when I asked him to buzz. He didn't see the point. I told him to trust me and do it for one month the way I asked him to. If he didn't see an improvement, I would never ask him to do it again.

He went on to make Texas all state 3 times, and become a band director. what do you know, he makes his students buzz the damm mouthpice

[bloke]

That trombone player you're discussing without naming him triggered a lot of people, but one thing that he demonstrated is absolutely the truth, and this probably bothers people too:

(I suspect this occurs with higher brass, but I know it happens with trombone and lower, because I've tried it over and over.)

>> When vibrating the lips into a brass instrument and the instrument is taken away, the lips stop vibrating. That tells me that vibrating the lips without an instrument is done in a different way than it's done when the instrument is there. If people want to vibrate their lips differently than when the instrument is in place, I'm not here to stop them from doing that. Remember? I'm the guy who doesn't have the patience to teach people, because it always makes me think of the analogy of being back in the sleeper portion of an 18-wheeler cab and hollering up to a novice driver in a noisy cab trying to tell them what they're supposed to be doing, and they are too distracted by trying to do what they're supposed to be doing to hear anything I'm saying.

I fix horns, and show up and play nice sounding stuff for people who want to pay me to do that. That's quite enough... without being burdened with trying to teach other people how to fix horns or trying to teach other people how to blow into horns...
...and it's time to go fix sousaphone # 4 of 6 for this school, rather than debate whether or not the lip vibration actually stops when a mouthpiece attached to a brass instrument is taken away from the mouth.

[Mary Ann]

What I noticed with buzzing on a horn mouthpiece, and this was documented also by Fred Fox in is book, is that if you are buzzing, for example, F at the top of the staff, and you change nothing and put the mouthpiece in the horn, the pitch that comes out is a minor third lower than what you were free buzzing, because you need more air flow to have the horn produce that pitch.

I haven't free buzzed on tuba because that's what I'm doing in the cup anyway. I do of course note the increased air needed to get those higher notes out, despite the buzz pitch. You need to blow much harder to get Bb on top of the staff out of a Hagen than out of a Norwegian Star. Tube length matters, but I think that's pretty obvious to multi-brass players.

As someone that has been teaching for 35 years, I am going to have to disagree with literally everything you just said. In my book, free buzzing is without the mouthpiece at all. I don't use it a lot, but there is a place for it from time to time.

As far as pitch, tone, and evaluating air stream goes, buzzing on the mouthpiece is very valuable as a tool for improvement. If it was good enough for Jake, it's good enough for me

Probably I'm using a looser definition of free buzzing than you are -- since my corners are almost inside the cup, I'm not getting any support from the rim, until I switch to my horn embouchure, in which I pin my lower lip. As far as air flow, I think even a tuba cup restricts it more than total free buzzing. You're the tuba expert and maybe I should take a zoom lesson from you.

However, horn is different than tuba, and since I agree with Fred Fox and he's a well known-from way back horn technique guru, I'll stick with what I said about mouthpiece buzzing with and without the horn.

[LeMark]

If your approach to Buzzing is different than the way you approach the mouthpiece when it isn't in the horn, there's your problem


It should be exactly the same, that's the point


I'd be so very happy to have a zoom/Facebook call with you

[bloke]

[LeMark]

I don't think you have any concept of how much you just proved my point for me

He taught buzzing as a way of getting AWAY from the mechanical process of playing the instrument, allowing people to make pure music with their minds and their air.

Wind and song

if it sounds good on the mouthpiece it will sound amazing on the horn, or as I say with my students, the tuba doesn't correct your problems, it amplifies them