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Since most of us somehow incorporate the hobby into our everyday lives, here is a question that perhaps is addressed especially to the amateurs among us tuba players:

How do you keep yourself fit in terms of embouchure, technique and tone stability. How much time can you invest in playing the tuba alongside your job, family and other obligations?

I've found that I can use my commute to work for mouthpiece and breathing exercises. This helped me a lot to actually use the rare time to practice for the music itself. For me it's difficult to find time for practice sessions longer than 30 minutes apart from regular orchestra rehearsal.

All suggestions and discussion ideas are welcome!

Great topic. My answer to your main question: Not enough.

I'm strictly a hobbyist, so it's all about having fun and enjoying being inside the deep tones as a sort of meditation for me. My practices are usually 30-60 minutes. They're also sporadic. I'll go through months in which I'm playing every day or nearly so, and I'll go through months in which the horn sits lonely and dejected. Sometimes my embouchure gets entirely out of shape, which makes the first week or so back that much steeper a climb.

I've tried lots of training gadgets, and the one that I'd strongly recommend is the Warburton P.E.T.E. - Personal Embouchure Training Exerciser. (I see the original is now $50. I had one of those, lost it, and bought a knockoff on Amazon for $7.99. The plating is wearing off of that, but it works.) It just really gets right to the important embouchure muscles and works them into shape (or keeps them there). When I use it regularly, it seriously improves my playing: volume/strength, intonation, endurance, stability. And it keeps me in shape if I'm not playing much.

I don't have aspirations beyond what I'm currently able to do. I'd like to get better, be more nimble with it, but I enjoy where I am. If I felt more strongly about improving, it would take discipline. For me, that would look like setting aside x amount of time for at least five days a week that was calendared in stone as my tuba time. It's how most successful writers write, how most successful painters paint. It's the work behind the play. I'd like to think I'll do that when I retire from my career work.

Thanks for replying, this sounds a lot like my current approach.

My aspiration is just to be a reliable wind orchestra player with even tones, stable intonation and not to stumble over the occasional fast runs or open high note passages. In addition I'd like to keep my F-Tuba reading fluent to use when needed.

More or less what I could do almost naturally when I was 18-20 and just played almost every day without reflecting too much. Due to studies and job I missed the time beyond my youth to improve the technical stuff and follow the things happening in the tuba world. Now, 20-25 years later, time slots seem to increase slightly, so I picked up a bit more ambitous playing 5 years ago.

As for an amateur, this is all about efficient practising (without losing having fun playing tuba). So I find it interesting and helpful to exchange about practising strategies.