the elephant wrote:You need to be fascinated by this sort of stuff if you really want to get better.
This is the secret of excellence in any topic.
When I was training for triathlons, people would ask how I managed the boredom of doing long runs and rides. I told them that you get into a rhythm of introspection, where with each step you consider your place in the environment you are running through. I know that sounds like mystical claptrap, but any endurance athlete will know what I mean. I could not achieve that level of detached interest until I'd run at least four miles, and so it took a good long time to build my distance to the point where I could really enjoy it. Step 1 was to spend a year running enough so that I could routinely run five miles. After that, it got easier. Miles 5-12 were always my favorites on runs. But in the end I could not sustain it more than a few years, and now I'm fat and unfit again. That sort of pursuit is demanding, and sustaining it in the long run takes inner drive that is what really separates those who succeed from those who don't.
Getting to the point where you enjoy and are motivated by seemingly mundane work on fundamentals is an achievement. I have never reached that point as a tuba player.
When Gene Pokorny gave his master class at the Army Conference, he explained that long tones are the foundation for everything we do. Want to improve your vibrato? You can't have a good vibrato until you have good long tones. Want to improve your dynamic range? Yup, long tones.
Bloke once provoked the Tubenet crowd by describing an exercise that sounds trivial. His exercise was playing a long tone 16 beats at 60 beats/min. Increase from pp to ff in the first 8 beats, and from ff to pp in the last 8 beats.
If you think it's easy or that you can do it perfectly, listen harder. The sound character will change as you start to run out of air (that's bad). The pitch will wander (that's bad). The tone will lose its core (that's bad). Top pros listen with their measurement tools set to maximum precision, and that's what Wade is talking about. He suggests keeping it interesting by turning the screws of precision a little tighter than what we can play--always. As Greg Lemond said of becoming a top cyclist, "It doesn't hurt any less, you just go faster". If we can't do that, then it's time to think of tuba playing as a fun hobby and not a professional pursuit.
It's not a test for beginners or bonehead amateurs. You have to work hard to get to the point where you can even take the test, let alone pass it. And the key to its value is that you keep upping your standards so that you never pass it. Don't believe me? Try it.
Rick "for whom excellence at anything is remarkably elusive" Denney
