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My slurs are fine, I just want to make them extraordinary and all the slurs found in my current etude books.. (I have Grigoriev, Blazhevich, Kopprasch, Tyrell, Arban, Bordogni) don't present too much of a challenge to me. So, is there a specific book with a whole bunch of advanced slurs? Thanks! I want to improve.

At a certain point you have to recognize that you have become an expert in your field. When you get to the point where you really can't learn much more from books or studying with a teacher, the best way to continue to grow is to teach others. I find that I don't really know a topic until I can communicate and demonstrate it effectively to my students.

Perhaps you should write your own method book with the excercises you invent to teach yourself and your students how to go beyond Arban, Tyrrell, etc.?

Can't learn any more from books or teachers? This applies to nobody.

kmorgancraw wrote:Can't learn any more from books or teachers? This applies to nobody.

+1

I had a teacher that made me play all of technical etudes slurred. So, the Bousuet or Clarke. You could also work the unaccompanied Bach suites or the Snedecor book completely slurred.

To the OP, if you can play everything in the books you listed that is great. But it is certain that these methods still have much to teach you. If you feel like you aren't getting anything out of them, find a teacher to shed new light on them for you.

If you believe you have "outplayed" those books, your limitations lays elsewhere

Concentrate your slurs somewhere other than the violas. The basses are close enough to slap you, so pick the second violins for example...

kmorgancraw wrote:Can't learn any more from books or teachers? This applies to nobody.

It surely doesn't apply to me, but I've only been playing for 20 years. Arban, Bordogni, etc. all still provide plenty of challenge for me.

It is conceivable that some very talented individual after several decades of dedicated effort would become so skilled that books and formal instruction are no longer the best way forward. Arnold Jacobs may have gotten there. Does Alan Baer still have an instructor, or does he just have peers he can share ideas with?

I don't know the OP, maybe they are a new "giant" in the field of tuba playing. If the OP really, truly finds no more challenge in Arban or Bordogni, then the OP really should be teaching and writing books so the rest of us can learn from them.

Now if the OP is actually a mere mortal like me, then perhaps going back to those books and treating every étude and exercise as a slurring exercise would be beneficial?

Have you considered the quality of your slurring?

I'm not saying my slurs are perfect but I just saw this on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuYCnvalhfw" target="_blank and I was wondering how he could have gotten such good slurs if he only worked on the etudes I had.

I know for sure that the etudes are not too easy for me, and that I can't play them all perfectly at a reasonable tempo but I improve most when I tackle something that is too hard for me. That being said, I wasn't trying to pretend I was any good.

And thanks for the etude books !

The drills by the trombonist are similar in a way to material that tubaist Chris Olka presents on a n number of Youtubes designed to help built chops, flexiblity, breath control and moving from extreme ranges in a split second. I find it good to understand that Chris refers to these as 'drills'. They are not musical etudes in the traditional sense. There is nothing much musical about them. Gymnastic, calesthetics, flexibility, focus etc. The results can be applied musically to etudes and musical repertory. They do stretch you to the degree that you push yourself. They are strenuous, but the important thing is to understand what your chops are doing and to avoid building bad habits by rushing into those that you are not ready for. I had very good results with some of these in just a few days. Though no where near the level of Chris.

PaulMaybery wrote:The drills by the trombonist are similar in a way to material that tubaist Chris Olka presents on a n number of Youtubes designed to help built chops, flexiblity, breath control and moving from extreme ranges in a split second. I find it good to understand that Chris refers to these as 'drills'. They are not musical etudes in the traditional sense. There is nothing much musical about them. Gymnastic, calesthetics, flexibility, focus etc. The results can be applied musically to etudes and musical repertory. They do stretch you to the degree that you push yourself. They are strenuous, but the important thing is to understand what your chops are doing and to avoid building bad habits by rushing into those that you are not ready for. I had very good results with some of these in just a few days. Though no where near the level of Chris.

Here's a playlist of Chris' stuff. Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 5girPYYkrf" target="_blank

tuben wrote:Who needs a book....

https://youtu.be/w1uZQDhLFpw?t=20m

When I first saw that video, I wanted to throw my tuba out the window and find something more fitting to do with my time like underwater basket weaving or being on tubenet an inordinate amount of time. Now I see those videos and see a challenge in front of me. A lot of those drills do that.

As for the OP, you said the other books do not present too much of a challenge which to me says that it's still a challenge. Might I suggest going back through those books until you can play those slurs perfectly? Particularly the Bordogni as I find it wonderful in the cruel way it reveals how certain slurs don't come out evenly.

It always seems to boil down to this:
Try to meld the instrumental athlete with the instrumental musician who expresses a message in his/her performance. A player who can not get around, chopwise that is, is really no better off than the guy with freakish chops and who can not turn an intelligent and expressive phrase.

BTW: H.L. Clarke's manuscripts to The "Clarke Studies" (posted earlier in this chain) can be found in the Clarke Collection in the Sousa Library, Harding Band Building at the U of Illinois.
It is interesting that many of them are actually violin exercises. Clarke saw them as a means to stretch and discipline himself, (particularly with regard to breath control and flexibility) much the same as modern players develop exercises and drills to further extend performance possibilities.

vd8m9 wrote:My slurs are fine, I just want to make them extraordinary and all the slurs found in my current etude books.. (I have Grigoriev, Blazhevich, Kopprasch, Tyrell, Arban, Bordogni) don't present too much of a challenge to me. So, is there a specific book with a whole bunch of advanced slurs? Thanks! I want to improve.

I think you might give us a little more information so we can make appropriate suggestions. Are you asking for lip flexibility studies, similar to what is being demonstrated in the Chris Olka video, or are you interested in developing your legato style slurs, such as would be important in works like Prokoviev 5th or Mahler 1st? In other words, what do you mean by "advanced" slurs?

A book that was recently recommended to me by Rex Martin is Studies in Legato by Reginald Fink. Get the version for Tuba/Bass Trombone. They may look easy, but can be extremely challenging if you intend to make each slur perfectly smooth. Also, they do not require the same length of phrase as the Rochut's, so we do not need to worry about running out of air as we are completing the phrase.

vd8m9 wrote:I'm not saying my slurs are perfect but I just saw this on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuYCnvalhfw" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank and I was wondering how he could have gotten such good slurs if he only worked on the etudes I had.

It may not be appropriate for me to offer advice, since my slurs in Arban, Bordogni, etc. are not yet "fine." Yet your link to the Oft video leads me to think that you are not looking in the right direction. There is much, much more going on in this clip than slurs, even though the clip title happens to calls attention to the slurs. In other words, you are never going to play slurs like that simply by studying slurs.

When discussing development, players at the level of Oft almost always call attention to their teachers, not their study books. The books are just books; many of them are interchangeable. The vast majority of musicians need guidance to use them effectively, even when they are studying at very high levels of competence.

Hup

One of the things I've started to do recently, and I'll freely admit that it's a bit weird, is playing the Bordogni etudes all slurred and playing every other note an octave lower than written. Currently, It's really only working on the slower ones (in part for technical reasons, and in part because of the mental gymnastics). But it results in having to slur over two octaves in parts, and since it's Bordogni, you're also always cognizant of the musicality and tone involved. Plus, when you do it with etudes you already know, you're not note-picking, so your sole focus can be on the slurs, not learning the piece. While it's not going to win any speed competitions, it will smooth out register shifts and make your slurs fundamentally sound prior to speeding them up, as tone is always the first thing to suffer when you start working on technical exercises.

Also, if you do it in the office in the morning prior to the work day starting, it can also result in a lot of interesting looks when you get out into the hallway.

I think eventually I will try it in reverse - playing every other note up an octave, but I'm in low register mode right now.

vd8m9 wrote:I'm not saying my slurs are perfect but I just saw this on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuYCnvalhfw" target="_blank" target="_blank and I was wondering how he could have gotten such good slurs if he only worked on the etudes I had.

I know for sure that the etudes are not too easy for me, and that I can't play them all perfectly at a reasonable tempo but I improve most when I tackle something that is too hard for me. That being said, I wasn't trying to pretend I was any good.

And thanks for the etude books !

After watching the attached videos, it seems like what you are looking for are flexibility studies, which by definition, are slurred. In that case, may of the materials mentioned earlier would be helpful. Personally, I am not aware of any material specifically written for tuba that provides these kinds of studies, but one can easily gather plenty from trumpet and trombone method books. Keep in mind that Toby Oft is in the Boston Symphony and has been working on these for years. Just remember to crawl before you can walk before you can run. Start at a reasonable tempo and keep nudging the metronome a click or two faster while maintaining your finest quality of sound.

To me, this kind of flexibility is impressive, but does not make someone a fine musician (I am speaking in general terms, now. Mr. Oft is certainly a very fine musician). Whatever you use to work on your playing, always keep in mind that you are striving to be a great artist, and not just a technician.

Finally, as for only improving if you try things that are to hard for you, I would advise you to be careful. In order to improve, we have to do something right more times than we do it wrong, otherwise, we are learning to do it wrong. Arnold Jacobs is quoted as follows: If you play a thousand notes a day but 800 are mediocre and 200 are magnificent, the brain will say, "Wow! Those two hundred notes were great and I am happy.” Unfortunately, the 800 mediocre ones form the habit. Make sure you have 800 great ones! Yes, we must challenge ourselves through the use of advanced music, especially drawing from the music written for other instruments. But, we must always make sure we are striving to make each note sound as good as we possibly can at all times. If this means learning something slowly, and gradually speeding it up while we make every note great, that's the best way to go.