Daily Routines Survey

[notlap]

During my graduate studies at the University of Kentucky I surveyed the daily routine habits of nearly 50 professional tuba and euphonium musicians in the United States. Results were published in the Winter 2005 ITEA Journal. In an effort to have a broad and international scope I am conducting the survey once again and will publish the results in an upcoming edition of the ITEA Journal.

I would like to ask for your participation. The survey should take less than 5 minutes: http://www.georgepalton.com/daily-routines-survey.html" target="_blank. Please feel free to pass this along to tuba and euphonium players of all ages and backgrounds. Cheers!

George Palton

[notlap]

Hello Tubenet,

Thank you to everyone who has participated so far. The response has been incredible! The survey will remain open until August 1st. Please complete the survey if you have not already done so. Thank you!

George Palton

[PaulMaybery]

Hi George. This seems like a valuable and very helpful project.
Here's my DR.
Deep Breathing/blowing trough mouthpiece to calm myself and also get the mechanism up and running.
Scales. I enjoy the Pares Scales to get going. Helps coordiate the eye, chops, fingers, tongue and breathing. Then play some without reading for careful listening - occasional use of a tuner.
Pitch Bending. Chromatic - several octaves. Bend each pitch up and down. Move to the next.
Lip slurs. In the interest of time, just upward slurs. (downward are pretty easy for me)
Low Register. Work scalewise into the pedal register to Pedal G below the Pelal C.
Then by interval.
Arban staccato exercises - start with #19. Careful with tongue placement.Occasional use of metronome.
At least one Snedecor etude.
A Blazevich or two to work on some elements of style.
This, all the above, can take about 30 minutes.
Then its time for literature and interpretive exercising.
At 69 I need to consider several things: Adequate rest between exercises.
Also I realize that my body does not always retain skill sets if I let a few days go in between the routine.
Breathing is not at easy as it used to be.
Most of all I need to keep remembering to use large muscles or muscle groups. This helps avoid fatigue and also gets around that nasty "old man quiver" that will often rear its ugly head when trying to play long tones softly. So far so good, but I can not take a lot of things for granted that I could when I was much younger. I enjoy playing much more now as a "very mature" adult, (okay I'm an old fart) as quite frankly I understand the music much better than I ever did when I was in my physical prime. I think there is a song about that.
Anyway, the routine I have developed for myself, helps to address the skill sets and habits that I need for good solid playing. I like to be on auto pilot when actually performing and that, for me, is something that takes a little prep to get in gear.