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I am a college student and I have been taking tuba lessons off of one adjunct professor, who plays trombone, for a little over 2 years now. The College recently has started giving me a chance to take lessons of a local high school teacher who got his Dr. in tuba performance a few years ago.

My questions pertain to these new lessons. Working with this tuba guy he has me breathing a lot more than I feel is necessary, every 2 notes in some places. I was wondering how often all of you breath? Do you breath as often as possible to keep your lungs full or do you only breath when you find it necessary? How do you breath in the middle of phrases, do you do it or so you wait as to not disrupt the musical flow of the piece?

Thanks for your input.

I breath as often and as deep as I can, as the music and my lungs can handle.

Gotta keep that tank filled up. Breathing is an especially important habit when you pick up orchestral 5/4 horns.

My breathing frequency greatly depends on the kind of music I play.
Some times in Band, I need to completely fill and empty my lungs more than once on ONE single note. That´s when teamwork with Your section mates comes in.

Why don't you ask your new teacher the same question?

Perhaps they're way off base, or perhaps they don't think you're moving enough air and supporting your playing.

Either way, it's VERY HARD to diagnose anything over the net.

If you don't understand something, ask.

That's why you're taking lessons, to learn the why, and not just to get an "atta boy"

windshieldbug wrote:Perhaps they're way off base, or perhaps they don't thik you're moving enough air and supporting your playing.

Exactly what I was thinking windshield.

"Take more breaths/breathe more often..."

Is a lot of times subtle speak saying, "I don't think you support very well and you need to use more air to activate the buzz".

It s all about moving air thru the horn, think of your lungs as a bag pipe- mouth, tongue , embouchure as the carburator that regulates the air flow. Keep the lungs filled , breath when you can, and you'll have greater capability thru long passages - jamsav- I am not a pro, but I slept at a Holiday Inn last night....js

G'day Yoink

I'm a terrible amateur player who plays in a number of community bands.
The guys around me tend to go much further in one breath than I do but they don't make anything like the sound I do - basically they need to open their jaws and throat more and put a lot more air through the instrument.
I've heard a respected orchestral tubist with a big lung capacity discussing orchestral passages with his students where you breath after every note - I think he was talking about crotchets (quarter notes).

I get the feeling no tuba player breathes enough and opens their throat enough unless they've studied with a profesional orchestral player.

Regards

Gerard

If you wanted to learn how to hit a baseball, you might ask Babe Ruth were he still available. To learn how to breath you should probably ask Mr. Jacobs. He is still available, sort of.

http://www.windsongpress.com/almost%20l ... ng%201.htm" target="_blank

In the interview on this page:

http://www.cso.org/main.taf?p=15,1,1,4

Gene Pokorny talks about moving as much as 140 liters of air a minute in loud low sections. That's a lot of breaths. If you are only moving 120 liters a minute, with a 6 liter capacity you still need to average a breath every 3 seconds. (120 liters/min = 2 liters/sec x 3sec = 6 liters)

The secret is to make the breaths as much a part of the musical thought as the ink on the page.

The "music" is the most important thing and breathing to get the true passion out of the phrase is what helps me. I learned a great lesson from Jeannie Little, a fantastic trombonist who used to teach low brass at interlochen, about breathing FOR the phrase.

She played the choral from the end of Brahms 1st Symphony and took a delicate, gentle inhalation and the beautiful sounds began, then she took a forceful breath and played Darth Vader's theme from Star Wars. Her philosophy was to breathe for the meaning of the phrase. Reverseing these breaths for these two examples would not work any where near as effectively in my opinion.

My personal philosophy is always fill up. If there's no gas in the tank the car ain't goin' no where. Mr. Jacobs taught that you should breathe between 80% and 20% of your capacity. Below 20% and you add too much tension to the exhalation and will have trouble keeping this tension out of the sound. Over 80% and the attack can become uncontrolled and explosive. I tend to try to follow this rule.

Breate big and blow big - these are MY main ideas. There is a symbiotic relationship between the air and the embouchure - neither one by itself can create the sound. They have to work together BUT THEY ARE NOT EQUAL. It is air OVER embouchure. I equate it to lessons learned in my race car building days. I could put a crappy motor in a car and put great fuel in the tank and it would be competitive. In the reverse I could put a great motor in a car and crappy fuel and it wouldn't get out of it's own way. The fuel is more important than the engine.

Breathe bigger than you normally would but don't get hung up in the mechanics of "how". Your body knows how to breathe already. Don't try to teach it something that it all ready knows - it will cripple you. You breathe when you're asleep or unconscious - you don't need to teach yourself how to do this. Just breathe to capacity and in the style of the phrase and everything will be fine.

Look over your music and see where the breaths belong - the phrasing will tell you where you need to breathe. Listen to great singers and string players - they can help you learn how to handle a phrase.

Just my $0.02.

Roger

something to consider is that the bell of the tuba is up. most rooms resonate. Breathing often does not disrupt the sound or phrase as you may perceive because the sound is still going while you are taking short breaths. On a front facing horn like trombone, the breathing is more perceptible. In short, breath often. It is great to study with non-tubists to learn musicianship. but studying with a real tubist is important for learning to master the tuba specific issues. It sometimes takes me months to convince young tubists that making the same phrase lengths as an oboist is not nearly as important as sounding good. Bordogni (rochut) phrase markings really are a great way to study where to breathe. better yet are those down an octave or using snedecor low etudes. The extreme low register is a great place to learn air control.

don't interrupt any written or "implied" phrasing. other than that, breathe as deep and often as you can, this is pretty redundant when compared to the rest of this thread's posts, so sorry, but it's the best advice I've ever received on the subject. good hunting.