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I have a tuba student with a big under-bite. His sound tends to be thin and he has a lot of trouble in the upper register. I'm beginning to think that some adjustments may be needed in his playing approach and perhaps his mouthpiece.

I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who has experienced this themselves or as a teacher or dentist/tubist. Any suggestions? (My usual "sound like this" schtick doesn't seem to overcome this)

We have just been talking about this on a mouthpiece thread at the trombone forum: http://forum.trombone.org/viewtopic.php ... highlight=

If you go to the 2nd page, you'll see my comments about Ray Premru, my teacher and the late, great bass trombonist of the Philharmonia orchestra and Philip Jones Brass Ensemble. Ray had a pronounced underbite.

I taught a few lessons years later to a bass trombone player who had an underbite - he had a huge low register and a very defined "cap" to his high register, at which he had to take his mouthpiece off his face and re-set, and then he could get out more high notes, but with a very thin, pinched sound. I didn't really have the teaching tools to help him very much at the time, but he obviously worked it out, as he recently won an audition with a full-time orchestra in Switzerland, and then made the finals in Atlanta.

Doug Elliott comments on this thread that players with this jaw structure typically need relatively small mouthpieces and tend towards a large sound.

My thought is that, if you haven't already done it, you should probably examine the way your student is holding the tuba, making sure that he can comfortably acheive an angle of interface between his face and the mouthpiece that makes sense for his body. You can probably figure this out by working with him on buzzing the mouthpiece and finding the best buzzing sound, then translating that angle to how his horn is held. Maybe he'll need his leadpipe or mouthpiece bent to accomodate his body.

A lot of people practice buzzing but don't take the next step to looking at how similar the physical act of the buzz is to the physical act of playing the horn.

Thanks Gabe and also, in advance, other posters.

then ask him which lip is doing the work. I would bet that he replies that the lower lip is doing the work. There is an epidemic of this out there right now. About 8 out of every 10 younger players I see at the store are victims of this. I usually tell them to mention this to their teachers for assistance. I have had a few who were studying with sax players and trumpet players and gave them some exercises that worked well for the students I inherited who were playing this way.

Buzzing the lower lip will cause a very pinched, brittle, annoying kind of sound that does not improve when you ask them to open their jaws more. It also becomes more pronounced in the low register, being really "crisp". A quick check with a visualiuzer and then locate the direction of the air stream will make this process quicker. If the air is going up, the lower lip is the one doing the work. The under bite is a little harder to work with, but once the air stream is going the right way, everything else should quickly improve as well.

Roger

I also had a tuba student with this issue and I really had to work with him on getting a proper seal on the mouthpiece. In the end we had to change the way he held his instrument where it was at a bit of an angle. The aid of a tuba stand helped.

Try rocking back for the lower register, forward for the upper. This will promote less pressure, get the person used to different angles of attact, and help you both find out more of what is going on with their sound and chops. It will also get them used to moving the lower jaw out for the lower notes.

windshieldbug wrote:Try rocking back for the lower register, forward for the upper. This will promote less pressure, get the person used to different angles of attact, and help you both find out more of what is going on with their sound and chops. It will also get them used to moving the lower jaw out for the lower notes.

But this student might need exactly the opposite. And his lower jaw is already out...