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My instructor recommends a really cheap metronome, so when you get frustrated and throw it against the wall, you're not out much money.

Low end breath support for sustained passages at higher dynamic levels. It was there 20-25 years ago, it's just not there now.

Articulation. Always a work in progress...

Terribly slow tonguing and a tendency to hang behind the beat.

Double and triple tonguing, and remembering to breathe deeply.

Double and triple tonging have also been a challenge for me. I have an unusually large tongue, and it has never been easy to get it moving REAL fast, but with lots of practice, and a very fast single tongue, it is usually proficient.

Dylan King wrote:Double and triple tonging have also been a challenge for me. I have an unusually large tongue, and it has never been easy to get it moving REAL fast, but with lots of practice, and a very fast single tongue, it is usually proficient.

For reasons of discretion I don’t pilfer private photos, but I know of a truck-driving tubist from Yellowtown, who has a bigger tongue.

Klaus

Sight reading rhythms I consider my Achilles heel, although think I am improving. I can of course work them out, but sometimes not straight off sight reading. For that reason I try to familiarise myself with pieces I am playing through recordings before performing with the orchestra/band whenever I can.

I know this is an "Achilles heel" thread, but after seeing all the above I have to post. I love to sight read. Both in chorus and in high school band, after passing the requisite number of units in the Rubank Advanced to show the teacher relative proficiency, seating was determined by the score on the Watkins-Farnum standardized sight reading test. Let's put it this way: while still playing trumpet, I was one of the few to reach over 100 on that test, and I still was not 1st chair. I was 2nd. The two major problems that have appeared thus far are sight reading and playing on the beat.

So...to sight read...it is a skill, just like any other fundamental skill. Do some every day. Start with simple quarter note passages, like the bass lines in hymn books (that's what we used in choir -- old hymnals sight reading obscure hymns), then start working on rhythms and dynamics. Learn music theory inside out. For example, in community band, when we thought we had the final concert worked out, the conductor pulls out this incredibly difficult 3-movement piece for the final concert to the music teacher's convention. One place had a descending run from bottom line G down to low G in 16ths at a pretty quick tempo. As the rest of the guys literally panicked, I took one look, said "Gm descending melodic," and nailed it first run.

Learn to identify motifs, repeating phrases, common intervals, and especially since we live in the trenches, common chord progressions in all keys, especially cadential patterns, so, for example, you can do ii V I in all keys, as if you were learning sight singing all over again in college Theory I. If you can hum it, you can play it.

Learn basic song and other formats. For example, everyone knows the trio of a march usually adds one flat, and the dogfight is in the relative minor.

After all these basics are learned, then we can discuss such advanced theory concepts such as learning how to hear altered 6th chords, inverted chords as a function of voice leading with the bass line proceeding linearly and not by tonic, hemiola, augmentation of a chorale line, three different kinds of modulation to help establish a new key center (common note, common chord, and direct), etc., at another time.

Regarding playing on the beat, a lot of problems with staying on or anticipating the beat to lock in with the bass drum can actually be traced to reading deficiencies and the insecurity causing hesitation, and to a lesser extent insuffient breath support to get the embouchure, and therefore the tone, moving properly.

Another way to stay on the beat is to watch the conductor's baton carefully. As the stick comes down, that is the articulation, and as it "hits bottom," that is when tone should be sounding. It's hard to describe, but let's use the symbol "|" for a downbeat. As tuba players, we should be going "t|ah" to make sure we are perceived as being on time and on the beat, which is counter intuitive, from "|tah," which is by definition, both visually and aurally, behind. It's hard to learn, and since a standard articulation is pretty constant irrespective of tempo, learning how much to anticipate the articulation to make sure tone is on the beat is difficult. But it becomes automatic when practiced. Likewise, the bass drum player, depending on the piece, should be choked up on the handle and doing the same thing with the tubas to lock in.

The ability to do this does more to cement a band or other ensemble together than anything else: more than tuning, more than intonation, more than hitting the right notes, to make the ensemble "solid." This is because the average non-musically trained ear's perception of timing is accurate to a few hundredths of a second, but pitch can be as much as 20 cents off with not much sensation of "out of tune." For example, even to trained ears, a "just" major third is 14 cents narrower than an equally tempered major third, and nobody in the 21st century has a problem with that; quite the contrary, the amount of sharpness of the major third is manipulated to control how "bright" the chord sounds. But that is also for another day.

The key to sight reading is to learn your intervals: what they look like in any possible combination (i.e. E## to Cbb) and learn what each sounds like. Sing them, play them on your horn and play them on the piano - but this is the key. I remember when I was "forced" to do this at Mannes, AND the result it had when Wallingford Rieger's Nonet for Brass was put in front of me and I nailed it.

All sight reading is, is getting from one note to the very next note in the right pitches, tambour, rhythm, tone color, dynamic and articulation. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, etc. etc.

There's another great trick - but I'm going to hang on to that one for a while. Most people don't believe it can be done.

Think simple - it Ain't Hard.

All the best to everyone.

Roger

mine would be rhythm, sight reading, and breathing. Although I am getting better at each, they still need work. I bought a metronome that subdivides and its a great help.

My Achilles' heel doesn’t play tuba at all.

K