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Books have been written on this matter.

Any learning/teaching situation has to start with what you can do right now. A competent teacher sharing the room with you will be able to help you. People not knowing you will not.

Klaus

The tone is produced by a combination of the player, the mouthpiece and the tuba - So to be able to play with such a tone yourself you need the necessary playing technique and the right equipment.

As Klaus rightly says, you need a teacher to guide you towards producing a good tone, but a couple of things to keep in mind. Such a tone needs good full air support and an open mouth cavity - think of a golf ball in your mouth.

For equipment a deep mouthpiece is required to produce plenty of overtones, while that "warm blanket" of sound can only be fully produced using a 6/4 size tuba as it is for that which they are designed.

It is very good that you have such a 'model' tone in your mind towards which to work. Good luck and keep practicing!

Jonathan "who thinks far too many players work at technique, without enough thought to tone"

I'll attempt an answer.

I went back to the tuba after a twenty year break. I really need a teacher but I think my approach to the instrument is better now than when I was younger thanks to a few things that I have read on forums.

The main things that I've picked up from reading are:
To open up the throat and jaw and relax this whole area.
Slow air - instead of forcing air quickly through a small hole you make the hole as big as possible and just let the air fall out without forcing it. Also warm air - blowing the tuba is a bit like fogging up your glasses for cleaning. Use Haaaaaaa as a syllable rather than Teeee, Taaaa etc. The throat and mouth should be a big relaxed resonating chamber. I used to think it was about blowing air against the lips to make them buzz which then made the column of air in the instrument vibrate like a piano string and that air velocity was the main thing. I now realise that a lot of the sound is made well before the lips and that tuba playing is about air volume; not air velocity.

For specific exercises I feel the long tone crescendo, diminuendo exercise is very important. e.g. play a note for twelve beats at sixty beats a minute starting as soft as possible crescendoing over four beats to as loud as possible and diminuendoing back down to as soft as possible for the remaining eight beats. I do this starting in the middle of my range and alternating between going up a note and going down a note so that I work progressively higher and lower.

I think that doing a wide range of exercises works better than just one area like long tones. e.g. long tones, mixed intervals, lip slurs, multiple speed legato tonguing and technical work of every description.
It seems to me to be mainly about getting better at moving air but working the embouchure is important as well.
For the tonguing exercise play a bar of quarter notes, a bar of eight notes, a bar of eight note triplets, a bar of sixteenth's etc. on the one note. then repeat following the same higher, lower pattern.

Playing over the whole range also seems to help. When you play an etude play it as written, then up an octave and then down an octave with more emphasis on the lower octave. Also technical work over the whole range. Start on the lowest note you can play from a given scale and go up to the highest note you can reach in the same key and back down again. I find that extended range scales and playing music down an octave makes better demands on my air moving skills. I feel like it makes me a "bigger" player.

Mouthpiece buzzing is controversial. My current thoughts are that it's very beneficial. I take my mouthpiece everywhere and play it all the time when driving. (Both my cars are automatic).

A useful mental image to try is to imagine that you are playing in an enormous hall and, without playing louder, imagine your sound reaching out and touching someone right down the back of the hall on their face. This seems to trick me into opening my throat and supporting the sound from my diaphragm more (Yeah, yeah, I know it's an involuntary muscle that only works when breathing in).

Another thing I've heard a few people recommend is to play a slow melody or melodic etude and play it as beautifully but also as loudly as you can. I feel like I get a lot of benefit from exploring trying to put as much air through the thing as possible and trying to get better at it. It's like practicing scales - you do a scale over and over trying to improve everything about it - practice really blowing the guts out of your tuba and try to improve everything about what your doing.

You mentioned Arnold Jacobs. A lot of people report him saying "go by sound, not by feel". I have found this to be very useful. It means don't focus on what blowing feels like but take your ears off your head and put them a few feet away so that you are hearing what other people hear when you play - you find out what you really sound like as opposed to what you think you sound like. Recording yourself playing is good here too.

You mentioned Gene Pokorny. Buy some of his recordings and really listen to his sound. It is very important to have a really strong, clear mental picture of what you want to sound like as opposed to just trying to sound "bigger and fuller". I find every other tuba recording I listen to sounds a bit dull and ordinary compared to Gene. His sound is very vibrant with a lot of interest and colour. Also, although he sounds clear and open with no tension anywhere the tuba sounds like his airstream is just about blowing it apart. The air stream is king here - the instrument is secondary - he's not playing the tuba; he's producing this almighty air stream and the tuba just plays a relatively small role as an amplifier at the end of the process.

There will be a few people who will know a lot more than me and who will tear this post apart but these are the things that go through my head at the moment.

You and I both need a good teacher but you might find something useful in this.

I just realised that Jonathan has posted an answer. I think I've said pretty much the same thing but less efficiently..........

Regards

Gerard

There is definitely something to the singing/brass tone concept. I always could carry a tune but wasn't all that interested in singing. After I (finally) learned to get a good tone on my horn....my singing was dramatically improved, without any practice.

I really like the characterization of how to use air that someone wrote....usually people will say things about "use a thick air stream" and other descriptions that don't mean anything to a person who hasn't already figured it out. I really like the whole "let the air fall out of your mouth" description; I've seen the mirror fogging one before too, and it gives a practical exercise for someone to get the concept.

For tone...there is always an optimal combination of air and chop tension. Sometimes experimenting, on a single pitch, with variation in that combination, can turn on a light bulb. The two ends would be: 99% air with 1% chop tension, and 1% air with 99% chop tension. Having the "bookends," so to speak, can give you something to think about, and you can always try to push the envelope in the direction that seems to be sending you where you want to be.

MA

My friend had spend quite a bit of time singing in church. I believe that was his conceptual model, as he owned no tuba recordings. (We were all broke, tuba recordings just weren't known/available, and there certainly was no "internet".) [Curiously, there was also a trombone player in my high school band who was - nearly - "born" with beautiful sound - just about the prettiest...and strong...trombone sound I've still ever heard. He also grew up in a church where there was a strong emphasis on a capella singing.] The local professional tuba player turned me on to one or two (limited availability, back then) recordings (when I was a senior in high school) and I used one of those in particular to start modeling and improving my own sound.

Interestingly Arnold Jacobs was at some point a voice major (or close to becoming one).

It really is similar to singing.
Make sure you use a horn that can sound like you want it. . .not a bass trumpet.
You may have to experiment with mouthpieces?
MAINLY, however, it's just like singing. . . Open your air passages from the diaphragm up, drop your jaw, and practice long, slow tones while concentrating on the sound you want.

einahpets wrote:Hi I was wondering if anyone has tips on how to produce a big round warm tone on the tuba. A sound like Gene Pokorny or Arnold Jacobs. It doesn't have to sound like them but have the same feeling. Like the sound surrounds you in this warm blanket and it really fills up the tuba and the room but its not loud just a big sound. Does anyone have tips that I can use to get this kind of sound. Thank you.

I really think that for young tuba players, the biggest challenge is realizing that the tone is important and hearing the difference between good and bad tone. Playing fast, loud, high or low is worthless if you don't have a good tone. I guess I'm saying by asking the question, you are already on the right track.

-also, think about the environment that you practice in. I find that practicing in the smallest possible room (dead, small, low ceiling) and trying to produce a clear, warm, big, (insert any other word you want) sound, will not only strengthen your ears, but also allow you to step into a large concert hall with an even better sound than you thought you had. Beware: smaller rooms will also fool you into thinking that you are playing with more volume than you are vs. a big room or hall (I hate the term louder: any person who has been inside education knows the disasters of telling some brass players to play louder, especially trumpets). I used to love to put in time in a small room at the school of music at Oklahoma, and then sneak into the concert hall late at night, and run through whatever I was working on, paying close attention to how it compared to the practice room.

Readers digest version: Work on mimicking the sound you want, but also keep in mind your surroundings. It's pretty obvious which recordings are done in large halls, but time in a small room can help you determine more of your inaccuracies and flaws.

Just my two cents, which aren't worth two cents.

Fill the horn up with buzz.