How to produce a giant quantity of sound?

[one.kidney]

What are some playing and breathing exercises you can do to greatly increase the amount of volume you can put out? Also, is ability to produce a great deal of sound something that has to be developed? Thanks in advance.

[Roger Lewis]

I was "clocked" by Harvey Phillips at about 120 db in a test run in his studio on my piggy. What I did to develop this kind of power was to practice for 3 months with a practice mute. I never heard the sound of the open horn for 3 months. I worked to try to get the sound of the open horn with the practice mute in. It worked for me.


Roger

[Ken Crawford]

As a junior in high school, focus on the fundamentals, play with a good sound and in tune. If you continue down the road of tuba, look to your teacher to help you develop a "giant quantity of sound." It will take a long time to develop. Maybe develop your quiet playing instead. That ability is most impressive and uncommon.

[one.kidney]

I was "clocked" by Harvey Phillips at about 120 db in a test run in his studio on my piggy. What I did to develop this kind of power was to practice for 3 months with a practice mute. I never heard the sound of the open horn for 3 months. I worked to try to get the sound of the open horn with the practice mute in. It worked for me.


Roger

My orchestra director actually mentioned that today, and it makes sense to try and make the practice mute sound like the real thing. Makes you play with a lot more air. First, I need a practice mute.

[PaulMaybery]

So much has to do with air-wind, yes. Other factors that actually contribute substantially are the lip tissue. Does your bottom lip actually complement the upper by producing a corresponding vibration? Also, are you actually producing the pitch that you want the horn to respond to? (mouthpiece solfege: akin to sight singing) When the two lip vibrations are is sycn the sound is much much stronger. (if not there may be a double buzz) Can you feel your lower lip coming up to match the upper? Thinking of the air stream like a cello bow and being sure that air is passing over the chops (as the bow is drawn over the strings) in a consistant and contiunous manner gives a certain resonance to the tone. Each time you hesitate, the sound will diminish. Being sure, the tongue is not arching upward too much and compressing the oral cavity. Try to maintain that there is a resonating cavity both in the mouth and lower in the throat. The sound wave from the horn wants to complete itself inside your oral cavity as well as outside the bell area. A large and open throat will help a large resonant sound. Closing it is similar to using a mute in the bell. Producing the oral shape as in OO opens the area. Breathing very deeply, relaxed and keeping the throat open, almost as a dog pants, helps to eliminate a musculature isometric. Avoid any form of tension, it is counter productive. Even avoid "srooching" the face - eyes and nose and leep the face relaxed. This tightens the sound giving it a more nasal sound. Very simply, blow volumes of air, without stress, across the vibrating upper and lower lips. Avoid isometrics. Stay relaxed and trust. It will happen. One difficult concept to grasp is the differentiation of the tissues involved in the embouchure. The tissues at the surface (at the skin level) vibrate freely and actually are quite easy to control. The musculature below can be the problem. If the mouthpiece is pressed into that substrate of muscle tissue to hard and deep, the openess of sound as well as general flexibility will be hampered. These, admittedly are rather etherial concepts to grasp. But they are very real. The kicker is being able to do all this naturally without having to process it consciously. Be aware also, that your ideal embouchure may only be sustainable for a few minutes before momentary muscle failure. When you feel the mouthpiece pressing down toward your teeth. Stop. Take a few minutes off and reapproach things. With the return of blood supply the embouchure will reset its musculature and you are ready to continue.
Remember one other concept regarding "work" aka producing a large sound. Let the large body muscles work for you. Large breaths, and strong large abdominal pushes right from the beginning of the sound will drive you through the little obstacles. Try not to use small breath, or tiny buzzes. They easy trip up and your phrase winds up with a break or an "airball."

Practicing this with simple scales etc is a good way to build and reinforce new habits by focusing on the outcome, but also checking in on your procedure. Learning new tricks ain't easy.

I'm sure there are those who have other approaches and this is not to presuming to be the only way. It has been diagnosed, applied and met with success over the years. Try it and if it works for you, wonderful. Much of this I learned from Arnold Jacobs and a few of his disciples over the past 40 some years.

Good luck and keep playing smart.
PM

[swillafew]

I am no sound giant, but I did my best on this when doing the "Bell Scales" routine, during the chromatic scale with a sniff between each note and loudest available attack on each note. This was following a lot of time on the long tone routine in the same book. http://www.hickeys.com/products/087/sku087361.htm

The instructor said many times: "Rome wasn't built in a day"

[Billy M.]

I am no sound giant, but I did my best on this when doing the "Bell Scales" routine, during the chromatic scale with a sniff between each note and loudest available attack on each note. This was following a lot of time on the long tone routine in the same book. http://www.hickeys.com/products/087/sku087361.htm

The instructor said many times: "Rome wasn't built in a day"

I use the Bell Scales routine nearly every day. One of the best practice routines, I honestly believe.

[Jay Bertolet]

I agree with Billy, that method works great for me.

[happyroman]

A large volume of sound is useless if it is not beautiful. We have all heard people playing loudly that sounded like ripping sheet metal. That's definitely not what you want.

Arnold Jacobs first had his students develop their finest quality of tone in the middle register at a middle dynamic. Then, through practice and the use of their imagination, he would have them transfer that quality outward, both higher and lower in register, as well as louder and sifter, in terms of dynamics.

When playing loudly, he wanted his students to make sure they did not increase the air pressure inside the mouth, against the lips. He wanted them to blow the air faster, NOT harder. He said that, while there would be greater effort in loud playing, not to focus on the effort, but on the product. One can easily generate a lot of effort, but not increase the volume in terms of dB.

He also recommended lots of long tone studies, like Page 1, No. 1 in Arbans, holding each note as long as possible (thinking in 8 instead of 4 on each whole note). The student would start the first note of each pair as pp as possible and crescendo to their maximum ff, and then reverse the pattern on the second note by starting ff and diminuendo to pp. Very full breaths are required for each note and one must use as thick an air stream as possible, while keeping the air pressure as low as possible. There should be a great volume of air used, but under very low pressure.

During these kinds of exercises, the key is to always maintain four finest quality of tone. The volume change should be like turning the volume control on an excellent stereo system. More sound but not altered sound.

[one.kidney]

Large quantity of sound - not a good one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVlS64b_4K8" target="_blank" target="_blank

totally agreed. It's someone farting for most of it.

[Rick Denney]

As a person who does not produce a giant quantity of sound, I had decided not to respond to this thread at first. But I've been thinking about it, and I've come to some conclusions.

The guys who produce a giant quantity of sound, and do so efficiently, seem to be able to stack up harmonics so that they reinforce the sound rather than undermining it. That means resonance rather than noise. I've determined a few resonance killers in my own playing:

1. Closed aperture. This usually means teeth too close together. The limiting aperture should be the mouthpiece throat, not the mouth. We watched Carol Janstch perform the Broughton Sonata at the Army Workshop, and I've never seen anybody expand lungs faster than she does. As Jacobs said, "I have a short bow, but I change it often". One cannot possibly move that much air through the gaps between one's teeth.

2. Tension. Muscular tension in the body restricts its ability to dump (and take in) air. It also pulls the embouchure in the wrong direction, and locks the jaw where it shouldn't be. I'm guilty of wincing--screwing shut my left eye, which wanders and confuses my vision. That tightens my embouchure and restricts air flow, and robs the buzz of the air power needed to provide all the necessary frequencies to resonate the instrument. And I also try to help my embouchure with muscles four inches away from my mouth. I watched a Youtube video of Chuck Daellenbach performing in maybe 1971 (the Canadian Brass was playing with Peter Schickele), and he played a tuba solo passage that range over about three octaves. I never saw a single muscle on his face move.

3. Mouthpiece pressure. It is seductive to use mouthpiece pressure to make high notes possible instead of really training the embouchure to buzz those frequencies without all that pressure. Also, a lot of pressure forces us to back up the lips with the teeth, which exacerbates the closed-mouth problem.

4. Playing using the last one-third of lung capacity. We should breathe often enough to never let the tank get more than half empty. That will also mean we need smaller breaths, which means we can take them more quickly. I remind myself of this about every five minutes, but that isn't often enough.

The guys trained to be sitting in the orchestras are way beyond these issues, so they don't always get mentioned in threads like this, but they can still plague we lesser mortals.

Now, Arnold Jacobs would recommend against thinking about those factors above while playing the instrument. He would insist that thinking about them during music-making will reinforce them rather than eliminating them as problems. I think he's right. So, what should we do? Practice taking in and releasing air with an open aperture and a relaxed body, which our bodies already know how to do without thinking. His method (as described on the CD's of his public presentations) is to just forget the tuba, and take in a big breath. Just breathe like you normally do, but deeply. Feel the air going past your lips. When I decide a need a big breath to, say, blow out some candles on a cake (and cakes for me require a LOT of candles), I discover that the act of doing so leads to my teeth and lips being about 3/4" apart. Doing it through clenched teeth takes ten times as long. When my mouth is open, I can fill my lungs in about half a second--still not as fast as Carol Janstch. And I can empty my lungs just as quickly.

Roger Lewis demonstrated what he called the spit-valve technique to a few of us at the Army Workshop this year. He demonstrated: blow through the instrument as if trying to clear water through an open spit valve. Do it several times. Don't worry about embouchure at all--your objective after all is to expel water. Allow a buzz to form as you repeat, but keeping the same blowing properties. The point of this is to demonstrate that a huge volume of air can make a big sound without even much of an embouchure, but a good embouchure cannot make a big sound without a huge air volume.

The four issues above restrict air flow, which makes the sound unresonant, and an unresonant sound is a thin sound. Ray Grim has told me a thousand times that a resonant sound, even if loud, is less likely to get The Hand than an unresonant sound that is trying to be loud rather than big. He's going to have to repeat that another thousand times with me--when I try to play loudly, I still lose tone quality and the sound becomes wider rather than louder. That's one reason I play a big instrument--I get more amplification of my medium-loud playing where I can still hold it together. Guys like Roger can make the giant sound on a Piggy, but making a big sound on a small tuba takes real skill and development.

That may not be all that is needed to make a really loud and efficient sound, but without it, a big sound is impossible.

Rick "still working on these issues after 45 years" Denney