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This may not resonate with some but I will ask anyway.

What's the biggest breakthrough in your tuba playing that you regularly have to re-learn?

breath control I keep relapsing into bad habits

The "right way" to blow air through a rotary tuba, especially a rotary F tuba. It's not hard... but it takes a minute to remember what to do to make it "go."

The function of that special center portion of the lower lip: that it is prepared to match the upper in pitch (vibration). I like it to be firm but also flexible so as to offer a very rich and centered sound. At the same time I want it to be supple enough to facilitate smooth and colorful slurs. When I do not warm up carefully, this is one of the first elements to get shoved aside.

If there is another, it is the careful and consistant placement of the tongue. For me, it has a special feel (or place behind the teeth on the palette) for each pitch and again if it is not warmed up, it winds up being all over the place and the chops just wind up being sloppy. For some reason my body does not seem to have the greatest "muscle memory" hence I often will slip back to bad habits if not careful. Not sure why that is, it just is.

My systematic daily warm-up that addresses all my "issues" is very important. In some regards I am not much of a 'natural' for playing an instrument. It takes a lot of work to keep things 'on track.' But yet when running smoothly, I love playing more that anything.

Unless I pay attention, several things can creep in over a period of weeks. The placement of my mouthpiece on my embouchure slowly migrates to the right, causing my accuracy to suffer, and my sound to become less resonant. Or, I start to form an embouchure with more of my outer lips, rather than the fleshy inner part that produces a better tone. Those two are the biggies, but several other things can happen too, so I have created a check list. If things start to go south, I pull it out and walk down it until I figure out which one is the cause. Generally, it will be on the list, and I can correct it almost immediately (thank goodness!).

Tom