TubeNet

I attended Carol Jantsch's recital at NU Wed. night and it was excellent. Well worth attending if you can on her current tour. She really demonstrated that you don't have to be a large physical specimen to be an excellent tuba player. I think a lot of band directors could use a video of her playing to change their mindset of picking the biggest kid to play the tuba and that their best potential tuba player might just be a slender girl.

I noticed with Carol's playing her amazing speed in taking in air while at the same time achieving what appeared to be an extremely high percentage of her air capacity. At times her upper body swelled outward in much the same way Dizzy Gillespie swelled his cheeks outward. What elasticity - (maybe she is Elastigirl from the Incredibles). I've never seen anyone else have such a visible difference after taking in air. If you weren't watching you wouldn't notice her breathing - her playing was just seamless. Big sound and very nimble. Her last piece on the program was the Carnival of Venice and she just nailed it - one of the best versions I've ever heard on any instrument and it was just flawless. I'm not one who normally listens to solo tuba, but I would put this on my workout Ipod.

It got me to thinking that maybe size of air capacity is really secondary to the agility to fill and move that capacity. Perhaps the physical reality is that a very large capacity is harder to quickly fill and expell that capacity and thus cancels some of the advantage of a larger capacity because so much of it will go unused in rapid sustained playing. Is there an optimum point between lung/body size and speed of air intake? Do some folks just have a natural physical ability to breath in/out faster?

tofu wrote: It got me to thinking that maybe size of air capacity is really secondary to the agility to fill and move that capacity. Perhaps the physical reality is that a very large capacity is harder to quickly fill and expell that capacity and thus cancels some of the advantage of a larger capacity because so much of it will go unused in rapid sustained playing. Is there an optimum point between lung/body size and speed of air intake? Do some folks just have a natural physical ability to breath in/out faster?

To add another question - with the faster intake of less air, would oxygen levels in the bloodstream be more stable?