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Is it on your Kelly 18? If it is, two things - one for you and one for the mouthpiece:
1) for the mouthpiece: a) try wrapping a small piece of golfer's tape around the shank right where it meets the bowl. I did this, and centering improved greatly. b) Very slim chance of this, but since it is molded instead of milled, look it over very carefully to make sure there are no molding errors in it.
2) for you: the switch means you are trying to make more of your embouchure vibrate than you used to. It may not be synchronizing. Keep the corners firm, take a deep breath, and start with long soft tones a few notes away from the offending pitch(es) and work your way a half-step at a time into them. Once the offending pitches center, you can add more air to get more volume and/or presence in your tone. Keep your jaw down and relaxed as well.

Will buzzing help?

I'm certainly not the expert. I can only relate what has worked for me. The behavior of the mouthpiece in the tuba and out of the tuba is so different for me, that I never got any value from buzzing other than to warm up when it was absolutely impossible to warm up with the tuba. I never had a problem like yours, but I've had (and have) plenty of things to fix with sound production.

I got my best results when I stopped trying to be a tough guy using a mouthpiece that was too big for me. I went back to working on getting a correct sound on Bach/Faxx/Kelly 25 and Yamaha 65. Then moved to Yamaha 66 and 66D4. That's where I currently do my best. I do OK with Faxx (Bach copy) 24AW and the Conn 1792-2 (which is a little bigger version of the fat rim, deep cup mouthpiece).

I'll play for a while with larger mouthpieces to see if the embouchure has changed. I can play them, but I still have my best range and best sound with the 66 and 66D4. I haven't had a relapse into bad, sloppy tone for a while, but when I did, I'd drop back to the 65 size, get right with the Lord again, then go back to the bigger size. All the while wishing there was an embouchure expert in the neighborhood instead of me having to rely entirely on biofeedback.

The Canadian Brass (if I haven't mixed things up) website recommends the Yamaha 67 as the beginning student mouthpiece. The advice has been noted, but I'm making decent progress with the 66. I'll keep testing out the bigger Yamaha, Bach-ish, and Helleberg-ish mouthpieces. A year from now, things might be different. But I'm not going to push it.

Glen Wells wrote:What Bach mouthpiece size is similar to a Besson 25?

thanks!
Glen Wells

I'll wager that a Bach 25 will be the closest.

That sounds like a smartass answer, but I'm being serious. There are a few mouthpieces that are very much a standard, common size, and the Bach 18, 24AW, and 25 are three of them. If nearly any manufacturer makes a mouthpiece that's stamped simply with "25", you can be pretty sure that it's based off of the Bach 25.

It's just one of those things.

It will go away

In my limited experience as a player, I have found the culprit of the double buzz to be based in the lower lip's firmness. The double buzz occurs when the upper lip is trying to vibrate at one frequency and the lower lip is set too soft to support what the upper lip is doing. The lower lip then tends to begin to oscillate with the upper lip, but at 1/2 the speed, causing the sound you hear. Now, this may not be entirely YOUR fault. On many tubas, there are certain notes that tend to run a bit high or low pitch-wise, and the player will make adjustments for this. When you try to lip up the D in the staff on a CC tuba, since it tends to run low, you may firm up the upper lip to slightly increase the speed of the vibration and raise the pitch, but, if you don't increase the firmness of the lower lip the double buzz will appear.

I would put money on a test here. Put a tuner on the stand and then ignore it. Play around and then land on one of your problem notes and let the HORN tell you where you need to be to get the the sweet spot and resonance going - then look at the tuner. I believe that you will find that when you play to the "sweet spot" of the note it is out of tune and you are unconsciously compensating for it and adjusting. This is where slide pulling (or pushing) may be of value. When you make the sweet spot of the horn "in tune" you will no longer need to adjust and the problem should go away.

In any case, look to the firmness of the lower lip for the problem and when the double buzz occurs, just ever so slightly increase the firmness of the lower lip and the double buzz should disappear. Now, there are some mouthpieces out there that will "trap" the lower lip when slurring upwards in the mid register at louder dynamics, causing a double buzz - if this is the case, change the mouthpiece.

Good luck on this - and trust me, this change is not hard!

Happy holidays to all.

Arnold Jacobs refers to this phenomina in Brian Frederickson's book, Song and Wind. Mr. Jacobs felt that the double buzz was due to a lack of air being supplied to the lips. You want thick air to be supplied to the lips.

The cause of the lack of air is usually the tongue being too high in the oral cavity, cutting off the air stream. Control the position of the tongue by using the low vowels, oh, ooh, and ahh, without vocalizing, of course. The tongue is raised when using the vowels eee or ihh.

Practice on the mouthpiece alone is also very helpful, making sure you use plenty of air.

I experienced this problem when I did a lot of high register playing. I would tend to play closer to the bottom of the cup/rim of the mouthpiece. When looking into the cup, and drawing an imaginary line across the diameter, try to play closer to the equator than the south pole. Typical placement will be approximately one-third of the way up from the south pole toward the equator, but everyone is different.

The idea is that you want as long an embouchure as possible, so that more lip is vibrating, and you can produce a more resonant sound. The double buzzing can be due to playing too close toward the south pole, and reducing the length of the embouchure excessively.

In other words, the problem can also be attributed to trying to play in the middle register with a high register embouchure. Hope this helps.

In the scheme of things, the 25 is often used as a beginner's mouthpiece, and will usually be the smallest in diameter; the 24AW next, although it will feel larger due to the very wide rim; then the 18.

You are not the first person I have read that had intonation problems with a 24AW. I agree with Bloke. Try another mouthpiece. I can't get two hoots nor a hollar out of a 24AW. I'll stick (no pun intended) with my Kelly 18 for my souzy and a Wick 1 for my Besson, which happen to be practically identical in terms of cup diameter, cup depth, rim width and profile and throat.

Maybe one day I'll get another Kelly 18 and turn the shank down to fit the Besson receiver as an experiment. Hmm.

One of the biggest problems with encountering the dreaded double buzz is that, as soon as it occurs, the player changes something about how they "blow" at the note. This often increases and complicates the occurrence.

I see this all the time with mouthpieces. When you first pick a new mouthpiece out to test, you have about 2 to 5 seconds where your brain evaluates it. If it gives you the sound and feel that the brain is waiting for, the brain relaxes and enjoys the result. If the resulting sound is not what the brain wants to hear, the player begins what I call "chasing the mouthpiece". The player will start moving things around and modifying the air stream to TRY to get the desired result. At that point you are going to the mouthpiece instead of letting the mouthpiece come to you.

What changes when you take 2 months off? You forget how you were TRYING to play the note and go back to just playing the note, without all the changes you were trying to throw at it to get it to work. Think about it. The horn doesn't change...the mouthpiece doesn't change....the PLAYER reverts to a proper air stream and LETS the embouchure DO what is natural. This is when everything falls back into place.

Just my $0.02

Try GREATER flow, LESS pressure of your air delivery. The infamous and annoying "double buzz" occurs when your embouchure is "starved for air" on whetever setting you are using. The thought of trying to "waste air" may help. You will find that you will ultimatly use LESS air by actually trying to deliver more. Think volume of air, not force.

If nothing else works, you could subject your lip to some SEVERE trauma. It worked for Aldolf Herseth and Raphael Mendez..............