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Since I have never, ever, overblown a note in my entire tuba playing life, I have no personal knowledge on this subject.

OK. Seriously, no. It is true that some horns are easier to overblow than others. Generally, the smaller the horn is, the easier it is to overblow. I won't attempt to get into all the science involved. I'm not sure I know all of it, anyway. But generally, a player is going to have some limitations placed on just how loud it is possible to play without losing control. In the most general of terms, the main factors are horn, mouthpiece, and player ability. I believe these interact.

I guess I haven't really said very much. Since all three of the above factors play a part, one would need to try to figure out which of them is most affecting the sound in such a negative way.

I believe you have probably already taken the first and most important step to solving the problem--awareness of the problem. If you don't have the proper concept of sound, you simply have no way of knowing there is a problem. It sounds as if you have at least some idea of what you want. Assuming you have good embouchure and breath control, the next place(at least the cheaper) is to look at the mouthpiece. TubeNet is covered with ideas about these. If the solution is not possible with a mouthpiece change, that only leaves the horn.

As for the horn. If you are trying to get a 6/4 sound with a 3/4 horn, your math is a little messed up, and so probably is your sound.

I'm sure others will chime in on this topic.

Many of the tuba players I know... especially the younger ones who are involved in marching band... tend to overblow their horns. Many times I think there is waaay too much emphasis put on playing loud. Learn control first. A well played horn should NEVER crack tones. FFF does not mean blast!

I've been thinking about the impedance concept lately. One way to look at it is a combination, or product, of intensity and quantity, which is usually what we call power. Go with me on this. When you buy an air compressor, you are interested in providing enough pressure, and also providing enough air flow. Nobody cares if their compressor moves 10 cubic feet per minute at 5 psi, and nobody has much use for these little cigarette lighter tire inflaters that will easily make 150 psi but that will only move .3 cubic feet per minute. What makes high pressure and high flow at the same time is horsepower.

And in the electrical world, voltage is intensity--the force electricity can exert. Amperage is the quantity--the flow of electricity. The ability to do work with electricity requires both enough intensity and enough flow. In fact, any reduction in one requires an increase in the other, because volts X amps = watts, and watts is a unit of power.

When we try to produce a sound wave, we have to create a whole wave form. If we can't produce the amplitude of the wave because of a lack of power, then the wave clips, creating a distorted sound. This is the same as when we overdrive an amplifier. If we can't produce the width of the wave form, we produce no note or, again, we clip the height in order to make the width.

The area under that wave curve interests me, because a wider wave (lower note) requires more area, and more amplitude (a louder note) requires more area. So, being able to play low and loud requires having the power to fill up that wave form, like having a powerful air compressor that will move lots of air without losing pressure.

We need our lips to part, and when they part, they have to send a big pressure pulse down the instrument. By "big", I mean that the lips are held apart with enough air to keep them apart long enough, and to earn the size of the opening they make.

That takes a lot of air.

I thought I could overblow my old Sanders tuba when I took my first lesson with Mike Sanders. Then he played a few notes on it. His sound was easily three times as loud as mine, but without any distortion at all.

What does that say?

It says I wasn't overblowing the tuba. It says I was running out of air movement power, and I could not support the resonance of the low, loud note I was trying to make. I was overblowing me. I had to narrow my aperture to make the long wave possible, or my embouchure wasn't well-developed enough to open and close properly with the amount of air I was using. At that point, the waveform was no longer being filled up and it fell apart, creating the distortion that we call "spreading" or "blatting".

The edge put on the sound by a guy with real air power doesn't sound at all like my blatting caused by an improperly filled out waveform. He's running into a characteristic of the instrument, while I'm running into a characteristic of my weak ability to move air.

Another story: Lee Hipp stopped by the house for a visit in the summer a year ago. We fooled around with horns, mine and the nice little Dalyan that he'd brought. Out of professed curiosity, he asked to play my Yamaha 621 F, which he had play-tested for me years ago when I bought, and which was like one that he had owned at that time. After playing it a while, he said that he remembered why he had replaced his with a bigger F: It backed up on him when he tried to let too much air fall into it. Yes, he'd played mighty loud, but I didn't hear ANY distortion in his sound. He'd run into the limits of the horn without "overblowing".

So, before you decide your 4/4 horn is easy to overblow, take some lessons from a pro and let him find the limits of your instrument. And consider that 99% of the overblowing done by those who DON'T have a "world-class sound" is not overblowing the instrument, but overblowing the player.

Rick "chewing on this concept for a while now" Denney

Wow....Rick, that was one of the best posts I've read in my short TubeNet experience. This makes sense why, when my students "overblow" a note on their horn, they can't even buzz the same note on their mouthpiece. Aperture was too wide and "uncentered" for the large quantity but poor quality air stream. Thanks Rick!

Great article Rick. I bet if AJ was still alive (bless his soul) you'd have a great conversation with him.

Rick Denney wrote:It says I wasn't overblowing the tuba. It says I was running out of air movement power, and I could not support the resonance of the low, loud note I was trying to make. I was overblowing me. I had to narrow my aperture to make the long wave possible, or my embouchure wasn't well-developed enough to open and close properly with the amount of air I was using. At that point, the waveform was no longer being filled up and it fell apart, creating the distortion that we call "spreading" or "blatting".

Hurrah for your for your perceptiveness, and for your descriptive talent!

My two cents.

I'll venture that blatting happens when the embouchure closes completely; that is, when the lips cut off the air stream.

In a normal situation, the embouchure is always partially open; the stream is modulated but never cut off except at the end of a note or just before the beginning.

As the amplitude of the sound increases, the large amplitude vibrations eventually push the lips completely closed. When they open again, you get a sudden shockwave--a "blat".

That's why the more practiced folks can create larger amplitude sounds without blatting--they're able to hold their lips apart even at high amplitudes.

Clearly, the more energy fed back to the lips, the more pronounced the closing-off effect is. But this is also the same resonant energy that keeps your lips vibrating at a given pitch.

I'm going to venture that it's easier to blat a horn with a high Q--that is, if the horn "slots" very tightly, it'll be easier to blat than a horn with a fuzzier center of pitch.

Open a waterkey, and the blatting should decrease or vanish.

Strictly back-of-the-envelope here.

Chuck(G) wrote:My two cents.

Good to see your post about over-blowing. I was afraid you were getting 'blown away' out there on the West coast!

I like to think of the difference between a tuba embouchure that gives a big sound and a tuba embouchure that gives a thin sound as the same difference as there is between a french horn embouchure and a trumpet embouchure. Have a trumpet player toot a french horn and chances are even though the individual is used to that range and size of mouthpiece, the tone will be god-awful. Thin, nasal, and blatty would be the description. Trumpet players set their lips to favor the production of high frequencies, meaning the opening and closing happens rapidly. Horn players use a much tighter embouchure that opens and closes more gradually, favoring the production of low frequencies. That simple difference on a french horn causes an extreme change of tone from thin and blatty to full and resonant, and although tuba isn't quite as extreme a case, it is similar. A friend of mine has the peculiar ability to play any size tuba and produce almost no bass. He can make a 6/4 Holton sound like a bass trombone, and he does it purely with embouchure. The difference is particularly noticeable on large bore, free blowing horns and less so on older, smaller bore, more resistive horns.

Impressions of overblowing and blattiness are most likely due to note shape than anything else. An inexperienced player when attempting to play as loud as possible will likely hammer the attack of a note and let the remainder taper off. The air flow during that massive attack is more than their lips can handle, and the tapering off is just plain irritating to the ears. If they lose control during the attack they might not regain control in time to save the rest of the note even though it should have been controllable at that volume. A good player will keep the attack within their range of control and maintain the duration of the note at a loud volume. The peak loudness might be lower, but the average is much higher, and he average loudness is what people interpret as power. All tubas have that blasty tone quality if you push them hard enough, but I'll argue that the difference between a blast and a blat is in the shape of the note.

-Eric

When I was young and foolish (and now I'm not quite so young) I found it rather easy to overblow the King souzys I marched with. I don't know if it was the smaller bore, or that I actually had some lung capacity then.

But then about a year ago I borrowed a King souzy for a couple of months, and it tended to overblow just like the older ones did. Hmmm.

Then I found the Conn/Cavalier souzy I play now for some things, and even though it has the smaller 14k sized throat and 24 inch bell, overblowing is not an issue. I don't know if it's because of the .734 bore, the thicker metal in the bugle, or what, but it'll take what you can give it.

My Besson is quite a different animal. Just like the wire rim wheels and slightly softer Michelin sidewalls on my E-type, as you get close to its limit, you start to feel a little bit of edginess without immediate full breakup. It can be overblown, but it really takes it to do so. Since it starts to let you know before you've completely overdone it, you can back off slightly while in the middle of what you're doing and keep going without feeling like you have to totally stop to regain your bearings.