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I'm giving private lessons at my high school to another student, and I've found that he sounds a little bright instead of a dark tone that tubas typically have. I've tried breathing techniques (like breathe to the stomach and push out using the diaphragm), I've told him how to sit properly and play, and I've also tried helping him with listening to pitches, but nothing seems to be working with his sound. He also seems to have trouble in the middle register (like the C in the staff) when i can hit a Bb an octave above the Bb above the staff. I believe that there is a study about bottom lip vs. top lip for best sound, would any of those help him with his sound? Any other advice that you guys could give me would help out tremendously, especially since I have to give out private lessons to my section as a section leader next year. Again, thank you for any advice you have.

As for home brew, don’t do fermented cane:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF7rUVBEosc

Play your practice material with your student on your mouthpieces alone. If you hear a good clear buzz you should hear an acceptable sound on the horn, too. Your own sound will improve while you do it.

Should there be an issue, blow warm air on the hand, and imitate this on the mouthpiece. When you blow warm air, your face is well positioned. You will not have issues with your cheeks, your tongue, anything inside or outside the mouth.

I had four teachers, 3 of which were William Bell students. The first one had me do this, and the other three were not faulting the embouchure for the other faults I had. I'm still working on those.

Could the mouthpiece have something to do with it?
Bigger, deeper cup = darker tone. (Kelly 18, for example)
Shallow cup (Conn, for example) = brighter tone.

A good tuba player can get the sound he or she wants with any mouthpiece,
but the choice can have much more influence on a beginner's sound.

The oral cavity also has a lot of influence. I play one middle-register note for a student with my teeth clenched, and continue it while opening my mouth to demonstrate how that affects my sound. I ask my student to imagine opening up enough space inside his or her mouth to hold an easter egg while playing, especially in the low register. (Shape your tongue and mouth as you would when singing the vowel "Oh".)

Also experiment with moving the lower jaw forward and backward; that also influences the tone.

gnrguitar64 wrote:I'm giving private lessons at my high school to another student, and I've found that he sounds a little bright instead of a dark tone that tubas typically have. I've tried breathing techniques (like breathe to the stomach and push out using the diaphragm), I've told him how to sit properly and play, and I've also tried helping him with listening to pitches, but nothing seems to be working with his sound. He also seems to have trouble in the middle register (like the C in the staff) when i can hit a Bb an octave above the Bb above the staff. I believe that there is a study about bottom lip vs. top lip for best sound, would any of those help him with his sound? Any other advice that you guys could give me would help out tremendously, especially since I have to give out private lessons to my section as a section leader next year. Again, thank you for any advice you have.

Okay, don't take this the wrong way. I'm guessing that you are a high school student. Junior in high school maybe? My advice for a young player trying to fix another is don't. Instead, you yourself go and study with people and become better yourself. Share what you have learned but don't try to "fix" other people until you have a firm grip on playing yourself. Just from your post I know that your knowledge of breathing is not there yet. (can't "push out using the diaphragm" that's impossible) You are young and still learning how to do it yourself. There are plenty of online resources but the best resource is a good teacher. I thought I could fix peoples playing at that age and boy was I wrong. Just from the little you have said, this kid is a young guy and is having the typical problems that young players have. More practice time is what he needs. Go learn from great players and share with him what you have learned. That will help way more than anything we can say here.

I think the best thing you can do is gather a whole bunch of recordings and have your friend listen to them.

Use this list:

http://www.dwerden.com/music-videos/tub ... videos.cfm" target="_blank

Enjoy listening to goo music and hopefully your sound (and your friend's) will improve.

I wonder how this fad of turning fellow students into teachers got started. Two of my kids are section heads and have to do the same thing. I just hope they don't do any harm. This is only one of the many, many things I dislike about their band director's approach, and not by a long shot the one I'm most exercised by, so it's not a hill I'm going to die on. This is only annoying, rather than infuriating. But it is annoying.

Note to inexperienced teachers: You cannot take a beginning student where you have not gone yourself. An advanced student can be pushed to explore, but a beginner must be led.

And more specifically: Any tuba teacher demonstrating any point to a beginner by playing a double-high Bb does not have a student, but rather a victim.

Teaching is a way to cement what you have learned, but you have to have learned it first.

Rick "believing a teacher should know 10 things for every one they teach" Denney

bloke wrote:There are a few exceptions.

I grew up with an extraordinary tuba player who was completely self-taught...

Not an exception. Your friend might not have done so well had he been taught by someone who apparently does not grasp the fundamentals of tone production. He apparently did--somehow. But could he have explained it?

I also did not take lessons until adulthood.

Rick "who had an idiot for a teacher in high school" Denney

If you are the section leader in your high school band and your teacher has asked you to give lessons to the other tuba players, my guess is that you are worrying about stuff that your teacher does not intend for you to teach. I am thinking that mainly you are being asked to help specifically with the band music. Notes, rhythms, dynamics, articulations, etc. While I am sure your teacher would love it if all the tuba players had a world class sound, this is not something you are ready to teach. Focus on what you CAN teach. You are section leader for a reason. Usually, at the high school level, that means you can generally play the notes with the markings with an acceptable sound. So, focus on what you already know.

Stefan

bloke wrote:Actually, he completely taught me. (I took no tuba lessons until kolij either.) He taught me by example.

In which case he fully complied with my statement: You can't take a beginning student where you have not gone yourself.

I've had this positioned challenged in various discussions with people, including high-end performers, who felt as though they had learned something important from someone with lesser performance skills than they possessed. Teaching is a matter of imparting knowledge, skills, and abilities. The knowledge requires exposition and example, the skills require demonstration and drills, and the abilities require knowing how the two connect in practice. It is not necessary for the teacher to be a better tuba player than the student, but they must have something in one or more of those categories to impart beyond what the student has learned. When (by his account) Pat Sheridan studied with Arnold Jacobs, he was not there to obtain knowledge or skills. He had those in abundance. He was there for abilities: How to take what he knew and could do and make it happen in certain performance situations. A beginner starts with skills and knowledge, each providing room for the other to grow as they increase. Abilities come a little later. Exposition can come from the internet (if one can separate the wheat from the chaff), and examples can come from recordings. But skills also require a strategy for turning that knowledge into performance, and not everything a tuba player does to achieve that example or apply that knowledge is intuitive for everyone. For some, it is. I envy them; I missed an understanding of certain fundamentals early on that still dog me, especially now that I have to undo those bad habits with very limited practice time.

What the TNFJ cannot provide is structured drills or much about putting knowledge and skills into practice so they become abilities, which have to start where the student is and build from there. An Internet forum cannot evaluate learning to assess still needs to be taught.

Rick "and example of self-teaching that was inadequate" Denney

bloke wrote: