TubeNet

We have a tenor sax player at our school who wants to switch to tuba for next marching season. With out band teacher not being a tuba player, and with me being the most experienced in the school, she's asked me to give her lessons and teach her tuba. I'm using the first "Standard of Excellence" book as a teaching tool and she seams to be doing very well, with some exceptions:
1. Her tome often starts out VERY sharp or VERY flat, or starting off in tune and drifting sharp or flat.
2. The sound being produced sounds thin and airy, like if you tried to play with an open spit valve. but the tubas are fine with no leaks in the tubing.
3. She can't play anything lower than the first D below the staff and cant manage to get a C, let alone a Bb out of the horn
I keep telling her to use plenty of air and use correct keep tight lip muscles but keep them relaxed in the center. I've also told her to take plenty of breaths and also to open up her mouth to get a big, 'fat' tuba sound, put the problems continue.
She hasn't had any experience on any brass instruments before, so I was just wondering if anyone had any experience dealing with woodwinds switching to tuba and how to teach them to properly buzz.
I noticed that hen tone gets fuller/louder/more in tune when she presses the mouthpiece to her face more, but I isn't it a bad habit to aver press?

I find that a switch like that doesn't always work too well. A barry sax player in the symphonic band at our school switched to tuba to march and literally learned the tuba in 2 hours during band camp 2 years ago. Within that week of band camp, he became one of our top tuba players and this year he exclusively plays tuba in the symphonic band. So that is saying that it can be done. Probably not as quickly as he did it because he did have help (a low brass clinician and our band director was a bass trombonist) so I do agree with Bloke that you should get some money to hire a college player to come out and teach this person.

SousaWarrior9 wrote: She hasn't had any experience on any brass instruments before, so I was just wondering if anyone had any experience dealing with woodwinds switching to tuba and how to teach them to properly buzz.

I wouldn't worry too much about woodwinds to brass, per se. For what it's worth, that's where I got into the tuba - been playing bass clarinet etc. I'm not going to say it was a piece of cake, in fact I got off to a pretty poor start, but I'm sure it didn't have anything to do with my woodwind history. One of the worst things I did was follow the advice from a book out of the university music library, concerning the correct embouchure. Tell your friend to adopt the following posture, as a student receiving instructions on embouchure and possibly other such matters: insert the index finger of each hand gently but firmly into her ears, and keep them there until the instructions appear to have stopped.

The Magic Dragon isn’t Puff, but Buzz.

Buzz.

Attach 12" of plastic tubing to the mouthpiece and just buzz away.

Extremely portable - available 24/7 for short practice sessions at any time.

This student is BLOWING into the instrument (as she has been taught to do on sax).
Take away the tuba and don't give it back until she can play on the mouthpiece.

As she improves, cut 1" at a time off the plastic tubing.

Dutchtown Sousa wrote:...A barry sax player in the symphonic band at our school switched to tuba...

This is interesting and illustrates that it is possible. However, I wonder if the person still plays baritone sax AND tuba or only tuba?

Donn wrote:...that's where I got into the tuba - been playing bass clarinet etc...

Donn, did you continue with the bass clarinet or stopped that when you started tuba playing?

I wonder because I did play both basson and trombone when I was younger and it sort of worked. But it was not without trouble so the basson got dropped off. All the reed making was no fun. Better to fill the drawers with shiny new mouthpieces that can be reused.

Well, I guess I should chime in on this one, since I made the switch from tenor sax to tuba when I was a junior in high school. My band director wrote out a fingering chart for me and I came in during lunch to practice on a sousphone in the back of the bandroom. So I was mainly self taught, but I was inspired by another student who had done the same thing a few months earlier. The biggest suggestion I can give is to make sure you listen and try to have a concept of a good tuba sound in your head so you can judge your progress. If can hear that your sound isn't quite right it motivates your to keep working on it and helps you experiment with your embrasure.

Now when it come to playing bass clarinet while playing tuba I have experience there too. I played clarinet before I played tenor sax, and while taking the clarinet class in college as a music major I was asked to volunteer to play the contra-bass clarinet to the third symphonic band. Since I had the time in my shedule I said OK to the idea. All was fine until both bands I played in shared a concert and I had the play the tuba right after performing Russian Christmas Music on the contra-bass clarinet. All those long sustained low notes and the vibration of that very large reed sort of puts your lower lip to sleep and makes it go numb. Needless to say, the first piece I had to play on tuba later in the concert did not not go very well. I got lots of funny looks from the conductor as I crapped out on several important notes!

Lingon wrote:did you continue with the bass clarinet

Not really, mostly switched to baritone and bass saxophones. I've played a little bassoon, too, but not enough that any potential problems would have developed.

I can't really offer myself as convincing proof that you can play both to a very high standard, but ... how about Benny Carter, early jazz trumpet and saxophone soloist? (And who knows, also consider his remarkable longevity.)

If there's anything to it, and statistically tenor saxophone players have a harder time than average beginners, I'd also want to see the statistics for string players, specifically violin/viola vs. string bass. According to my theory here, string bass players will be better suited to the tuba, and the problem with the tenor saxophone is the same as the problem with the violin - it isn't your mouth, it's your ear. Just a theory.

I played sax (originally alto and then, in high school switching to tenor which I played through college in a mostly amateur mode until I gave up playing for many years). When I returned to playing it was to acquire a tuba and teach myself how to do it (inspired by long-ago memories of my very excellent high school band director, Bob LeBlanc).

I can't say that I have anything of particular value to add in helping this student make the switch, but I would make one suggestion/observation. The problem may be not that she is having particular problems with the tuba, but that she isn't a very good saxophone player to begin with. The comments about air and the volume and tone are kind of telltale signs here. By the time I finished high school I was a pretty good saxophone player (much better than I am a tuba player) and had studied with several teachers (including a student of Sigurd Rascher's, who probably no one reading this has ever heard of). But I was regularly playing grade 5 and 6 solo stuff for juries in high school. I've also played with a number of other good sax players over the years -- and a number of poor ones. One thing that virtually all my teachers emphasized (from the "classical" ones to the jazz ones) was "fill the horn". You need a volume of air to get good tone. The problem is that a saxophone is a really easy instrument to play poorly.

I notice in playing recently in community bands and with several students that the saxophone players are getting really crappy tone (okay -- no general saxophone jokes for a minute). It's thin. No body. No "core". When they try to get more sound, they honk (the saxophone moral equivalent of the blat). They just don't have the fundamentals of producing a good sound. They never learned it. No one forced them to. So never mind intonation. They're not even close to having to worry about that. You need to make a good tone before you can worry about that. And it's not just embouchure. They are timidly blowing into the instrument and crap is coming out of it. Or they are honking into the instrument and crap is coming out of it.

So I would suspect that the fundamental problem you're dealing with may not lie in teaching a good (or decent) saxophone player how to play a brass instrument, but in trying to teach a poor saxophone player how to play a wind instrument. Good individual lessons, at this point, would be the only way to go. It should also improve her saxophone playing.

Now if this student IS a good saxophone player -- I mean playing at least grade 4 and preferably grade 5 and 6 music successfully and with good tone, control, and intonation -- then what I've said here is just wrong and misguided. But if she's not at that level, then that well could be the primary problem. It's a real easy instrument to play badly, and a pretty difficult instrument to play with excellence (if you acknowledge that it can be played with excellence).

Thanks for the feedback
I've actually taught one of our bari sax players to play tuba a year ago. He picked it up perfectly in 2 weeks and is now second chair (out of 4 tubas) in our school concert band.
I'll just focus more on buzzing without the tuba to find the core of the problem

Lingon wrote:

Dutchtown Sousa wrote:...A barry sax player in the symphonic band at our school switched to tuba...

This is interesting and illustrates that it is possible. However, I wonder if the person still plays baritone sax AND tuba or only tuba?

He did still play the barry sax at the beginning of this school year but I'm not sure now because our band director switched him to tuba because he only had one tuba in the symphonic band (scheduling errors made by the out-going band director). He is a very good tuba player though.

I realized only late in my saxophone-playing phase the true value and beauty of the baritone saxophone -- and only after I had been drafted into an emergency situation of playing that instrument (without rehearsal) in a saxophone quartet whose bari sax player had gotten sick just as they left for a competition. I recently saw a bari sax for sale at an incredibly low price and was very tempted by it. I know I could come back up to speed on it very quickly.

It is an incredibly valuable instrument in a community band (if the player is remotely competent) because it can be used as a bassoon-substitute -- and it (along with the bass clarinet) provides the bass voice of the woodwinds there. It is, I think, a great thing for a tuba player to double on. My problem is that I know if get one and play it in a band, I'll pretty much be stuck playing just that in the band. And I really like playing the tuba much more.

I started playing Tenor Sax when I was 10, I wanted to play trombone but my teacher gave me one and said play a note, of course I do what every kid does, I blow air in it and hand it back saying "It's broken" so she hands me a saxophone. I realized as a sophomore that I hated it and switched to tuba (my teacher insisted that I was a "large" enough kid to play it *fat*. So I switched and loved every second of it. Because I had the love I practiced every second I could! Along the way I learned that "okay I'm not tonguing a reed so I have to do it differently" and the valves weren't keys. I made all state in 12th grade and Cadets the next year. So I don't think just because you are a saxophone player you can't switch. Also if she has only been playing for a bit she isn't just going to pick up the tuba and sound amazing. I think it takes years of hard work to the right muscles to strengthen, especially with great teaching along the way.

So I asked the guy that switched from barry sax to tuba if he still played and saxophone and he said he didn't. Sort of unfortunate but I think he likes the tuba more anyway

Dutchtown Sousa wrote:So I asked the guy that switched from barry sax to tuba if he still played and saxophone and he said he didn't. Sort of unfortunate but I think he likes the tuba more anyway

I don't mean to sound like "that guy," but for your future reference:

It's "bari sax" (as in baritone sax")

not

"barry sax" (as in Manilow)

So a Blueberry isn’t a painted sax?

Todd S. Malicoate wrote:
It's "bari sax" (as in baritone sax")

not

"barry sax" (as in Manilow)

Barry Manilow and the saxophone in the same sentence. It doesn't get much cheesier than that, does it?

Tangential to this topic, can anyone name any saxophone/tuba doublers other than Howard Johnson? I'm not intending to encourage or discourage the OP, just wondering aloud.

Biggs wrote:Tangential to this topic, can anyone name any saxophone/tuba doublers other than Howard Johnson? I'm not intending to encourage or discourage the OP, just wondering aloud.

Bill Clinton ???

see:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/vintage-1800s-G ... 0798492762.." target="_blank.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clint ... and_career" target="_blank