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My adult son can play extraordinary pedal tones, and has a sweet high range. Absolutely on pitch with the tuner. He can belch a Bb.
Somehow his sound falls completely apart between the F below the staff and the Bb within it. Major stuffiness and seriously mingy sound. Help?

Sally Larsen wrote:My adult son can play extraordinary pedal tones, and has a sweet high range. Absolutely on pitch with the tuner. He can belch a Bb.
Somehow his sound falls completely apart between the F below the staff and the Bb within it. Major stuffiness and seriously mingy sound. Help?

I hate to blame the horn, but just curious:

What is he playing on?

It's hard for me to diagnose when I can't see or hear the issue, but it could be that he isn't shifting his embochure correctly. When we play low, we have to open up a ton to get a big sound, and up high we have to "close off" (of sorts). He could be using one of these (probably the "high" embochure") in the mid range. It sounds like when he gets to that range, his teeth close.

Just my 2cents

I think the previous poster is on to something. We had a guy like that for a while where I went to college for my ed degree. He had his slides all pulled funny to get the pedal tones in tune. Every thing he played down one or two octaves. But he sounded like junk in the regular range and couldn't play in tune.
I am guessing that your son is using some kind of funky embouchure geared towards pedal tones. Unfortunately, that is compromising the "cash register" of the instrument. We can speculate all day long, but he probably needs to have a local tuba player take a look at him and see what he is doing. Maybe he has his mouth open too far, jaw down too much, playing all on one lip and not the other, hard to tell without looking.

Not at all being in disagreement with the previous posters:

One excellent jazz trombonist one told about the problems with more or less using two or more embouchures. The ranges where they meet will invariably cause problems, very often in form of notes not speaking consistently.

My problem was down to one note, the open 5th partial on my trombones. I took the advice from that player: play unbroken lip glissandos over your full range, but do it on the mouthpiece alone.

Where the breaks occur, you have a problem. With a sore spot in the upper range start the glissandos a bit below and work forth and back across the problem zone. With a sore spot in the low range start a bit above it.

A strong and well directed and well dimensioned air support is most important. That is what bloke’s mentioning of the lower jaw movements is about.

Klaus

In the problem range when he is playing, ask him which lip is doing the work. Often the "TJ Shift" embouchure gives a player powerful low register, and this entails the lower lip doing the buzzing against the upper lip. He is probably using this same embouchure in the mid range and this will cause an annoying, raspy sound and a loss of resonance. I have found a number of people doing this in the low range and playing with a normal embouchure (upper lip vibrating against the lower) in the mid-range. I think you will find this to be the case.

Check some of my other posts for the solution to this. It takes about 30 days to make the transition to having the upper lip do the work, but I have had one industrious student accomplish it overnight.

There is an epidemic of this type of embouchure problem out there and I see several a week come through the shop playing this way. I really wonder about the quality of the brass teaching in the methods classes that band directors go through. Often these classes are taught by grad assistants who don't quite have the experience to get the job done.

Just my $0.02

Roger

The above posters are being much too polite.

I'll try to balance that out.

Tell your son that he must (MUST) play the F at the bottom of the staff with an excellent tone before he is allowed to play any other note.

Then, he can work on the G and the E - but he must play as many F's as he does G's and E's COMBINED (so...1 E, 1 G, 2 F's).

When (and only when) EFG can be played with an excellent tone, he can move on to the D and A - but again - twice as many E's and G's as D's and A's 1 D, 2 E's, 4 F's, 2 G's, 1 A.

Continue...

It strikes me that he has been "practicing to the test". Someone has convinced him that people judge your progress by how good your tone is 2 octaves below the staff - so that's where he has spent his time.

It's a pity that not very much music is written down there. If you don't sound good on the F-C in the staff, NO ONE WILL CARE how good your double pedal notes are.

I think you guys have nailed it.
Embouchure switch.

He is currently playing my old King, so I don't think it's the horn. I can slither quite nicely through the range on it; as a matter of fact, the mid-range is sweet for me.

Now I only have to convince him to pay attention to what he is doing. Tuba playing came quite naturally to him, and he has had no professional instruction. As a matter of fact, twenty three years ago, I was voted "most pregnant"(with him) at the tuba Xmas bash in Eugene , Oregon.

You guys are a tremendous resource - Thanks!

You just opened up for another potential reason for the problem:

Recidivism to pregnancy experiences of his.

K

Ho, ho!

Good tuba players are born, not made.

imperialbari -

Yup, that's the kid. (Where did you find that photo?)
Now he's 6'2 and 190.
And still likes his ma.

With the risk of approaching the private.

Your family name is Danish (I have two Larsen cousins).

You mentioned Oregon where there are many Scandinavians around Junction City.

There was a well known US brass person named Mary Larsen(?)

This made me google for your name + tuba. The photo was in the first page popping up.

Klaus

Sally Larsen wrote:...at the tuba Xmas bash in Eugene , Oregon.

Does he still live in Eugene? If so he should try to get a lesson or two with Mike Grose at the UO. If anyone in Oregon can help his sound it is him. PM me if you want his contact information.

imperialbari wrote: I took the advice from that player: play unbroken lip glissandos over your full range, but do it on the mouthpiece alone.
Klaus

You've had mostly "whats" but Klaus's "how" is very important; when I had a huge break in my horn embouchure in the mid-low range, I spent a couple of months of my commute with a mouthpiece doing glisses down through and back up through the troublesome range. Pure "sirens," not "playing notes." It worked like gangbusters for me, but it didn't happen overnight.

MA