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Depends on how strong and well developed your chops are... then it may not matter at all!

It will cause some muscle tension which may distort your embouchure as well as possibly causing some constriction to the air passage. All depends on the degree and how much it actually affects things. Sounds like it wasn't a real problem.

Short answer - if your comfortable and getting good results - don't sweat it.

I think most important is to have head attached to body, otherwise when you blow the air escapes thru hole where it used to be connected from.
Also the angle of your head is directly proportional to musicality of your playing. In marches it should be straight and on every other genre it should be anything between 1 and 90 degrees (fahrenheit), depending on the mood. Only jazz should be played with over 90 degree head tilt. Hating stands is also good, at least if you don't like them.

lost wrote:
I tilt my head mainly because the 25j is so tall and top heavy, to tilt it means a lot of pressure on your arms and legs. Anyway, when i did take a few private lessons, i kinda remember some pointers in head position embouchure angle and suggestion to get a playing stand. I hate stands, so i declined.

Get the playing stand.

It helps me concentrate on playing instead of holding the instrument.

Keeping it raised and slightly forward has improved my consistency.

Mine is no Conn, but it is heavy!!

Three Valves wrote:

lost wrote:
I tilt my head mainly because the 25j is so tall and top heavy, to tilt it means a lot of pressure on your arms and legs. Anyway, when i did take a few private lessons, i kinda remember some pointers in head position embouchure angle and suggestion to get a playing stand. I hate stands, so i declined.

Get the playing stand.

It helps me concentrate on playing instead of holding the instrument.

Keeping it raised and slightly forward has improved my consistency.

Mine is no Conn, but it is heavy!!

+1

I play big 6/4 horns like you, and I resisted getting a stand for many years (one more thing to carry, etc. etc.)

I won't play a 6/4 horn without one now. Do yourself a favor and get one.....

apkujala wrote: Also the angle of your head is directly proportional to musicality of your playing. In marches it should be straight and on every other genre it should be anything between 1 and 90 degrees (fahrenheit), depending on the mood. Only jazz should be played with over 90 degree head tilt. Hating stands is also good, at least if you don't like them.

I think this is humor, and if so bravo! Well done!

But seriously. Most of us make some minor adjustments in mouthpiece angle and direction of pressure as we navigate different ranges. (The Reinhardt people put special attention to this, and Reinhardt tends to be anathema here in Jacobs land, but I think we all would accept there is some motion.)

Trumpets and trombones move the whole horn. Slightly! we're not talking major motion here normally. Tubas and French horn have trouble doing that, so they usually fix the horn and move the head.

If a stand frees you to do that more consistently, you're going to play better. If not, not.

bloke wrote:Strive to locate and secure zero-gravity performance venues.

I know someone one who tried to follow this advice by opening up a jazz club/restaurant on the moon.

The food was great, but the place had no atmosphere....

Maybe it is just me, but if I don't play much for any amount of, the first day or so back usually feels like I'm Arnold Jacobs. Then day 2 or 3 I'm back to earth. I always figure it is a mental thing. When I'm playing a bunch I'm more critical, but If I don't hear me for a bit I sound better than I remembered. Maybe just some fatigue on the 2nd or 3rd day, although I don't usually have too many issues with that.

I don't even know if you mean tilted to the side or tilted forward or backward! To the side, if it doesn't hurt and doesn't interfere with your air flow, whatever. But if you have to tilt forwards or backwards, that is a leapipe angle problem that may or may not be fixed with using a stand and how you put it on the stand. I have to shove the stand nearly under the chair and sit on the very edge of the chair to even approximate the leadpipe angle I need. Otherwise I have a terrible curve in my neck with my face pointing upwards to get the angle right. Since a) I never played that much anyway and b) I'm currently not able to play at all now, I may never ever either get the leadpipe moved or get a mouthpiece with a curved shank. It's easy to get the right angle with horn off the leg, trumpet, and trombone, but with euph and tuba I have a hard time because they assume everybody's facial structure will work with a straight-on angle.

The angle of the head indicates what is happening in the neck and, more importantly, what is happening in your air flow.. So, yes it is important.

Too much tilt forward or backward or to the side can restrict air flow and may also result in the tongue being unduly tensioned, thus affecting articulation. So a lot of bad stuff can happen with a tilted head. How much tilt before that happens? I'd have to watch and listen to playing to know more clearly.

MaryAnn wrote:It's easy to get the right angle with horn off the leg, trumpet, and trombone, but with euph and tuba I have a hard time because they assume everybody's facial structure will work with a straight-on angle.

Yes. And I'm sure you know this but it needs repeating. That angle cannot stay constant across low and high ranges, which as you say is easy on trumpet and trombone but requires head movement on tuba. Unless you're very very strong!

There was a music education professor in Ann Arbor, James Froseth. He had made a lot of photos of instrumentalists who posed for the photos demonstrating a wrong hand position or posture. The slides would get projected for a second or two, and we were tested by identifying what was being done wrong. We would be shown quite a few, and they went by very quickly.

It was his intention to make us able to glance around a big rehearsal room and call out any flaws in position, and also to insist on a uniform approach from the students. That was many years ago for me, but the concept has stuck. I think the photos in the book "The Art of Brass Playing" were done (a generation earlier) in the same spirit.

I am pretty sure we would have regarded the head position of the tuba player to be like the other wind instruments, and for the same reason from one type of instrument to the next.

I am a transplanted trumpet player who noodles around on tuba now. I find that the Reinhardt principles I learned on trumpet do apply to tuba also. There's a "pivot" as you go from low to high and the type of motion depends on your embouchure type. Reinhardt was later dissatisfied with the term "pivot" and instead called in an "embouchure motion" since the mpc and lips move over the teeth mainly, but the term pivot stuck. The mpc moves over the lips and the horn angle changes, too. What is most interesting to me is that the motion is mostly up and down, but in many cases, also slightly to one side or the other. When I consulted with Dave Wilken, he decided that on trumpet my motion was up and slightly to my left as I ascend the scale. When I started on tuba, I found that it is the same and my upper register above the first ledger line (in the bass clef) depends a lot on getting the embouchure motion to the left and up exactly right. It's a bigger movement on tuba than on trumpet, at least for me.

So in answer to the OP, I think you need to keep your neck and head aligned and if your head tilts, your head and neck need to be basically tilting together so your muscles are balanced. Beyond that, you have to find a way to make your embouchure motion comfortably, whether with a stand or by shifting you and the tuba around relative to each other. I play on a tuba very similar to a 186 (a Karl Zeiss) and on a Conn 20J and I have found a way to play both without a stand and still make the required embouchure motion. However, I can't say that with a stand things wouldn't be easier and better. I guess I can simulate a stand by using another chair and a pillow and see how that works...maybe that would be a good experiment for the OP, too.

Whether you are aware of it or not, you make an embouchure motion as you play. Therefore it is important to be able to move around relative to the horn. You can just do it instinctively or consciously. I've found that working on the embouchure motion consciously (getting "in the track") improves my playing.

I've also put quite a bit of time into looking into what I can find about the Reinhardt system. It has a lot of help available for someone who is struggling, and the concepts are sound. I got so damn tired in the horn world of "use more air" whenever some poor slob asked a question about range, and the amazing attacks on people who wanted to actually discuss embouchure. I remember it was either here or on Facebook someone posted a picture of, I think (?) Roger Bobo playing a pedal tone. Talk about change of angle!!! He was doing what he needed to do for his facial setup to make it work. Yet students are told to stay within a very narrow range of what is "correct," and I think many give up because what is "correct" simply does not work for them. There are videos on Youtube by Wilktone demonstrating how the mouthpiece plus lips are pushed around for playing throughout the range, and it isn't fantasy. It's just that most who succeed at playing don't realize what they are doing, and (some of them) hence deny they are doing it and tell their students to adhere to the "correct" way of playing. Hot button....oh well.

Hi MaryAnn,
Thanks for posting...I see it less in the tuba world than in the trumpet world, but it does seem that old adages like "50-50" or "2/3-1/3" on mpc placement die hard even though they are right for almost no one. And there also seems to be a lot of "don't confuse me with the facts" when you can clearly see, as you mention, what's happening on Wilktone's videos. There are some videos on his site of a tuba player who developed an embouchure problem and you can clearly see him shifting his pivot from one style to another and the attending problem. I thought that was very instructive and persuasive.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

It's just that most who succeed at playing don't realize what they are doing, and (some of them) hence deny they are doing it and tell their students to adhere to the "correct" way of playing.

In the spirit of agreement with the quote: I had more success with articulation than other aspects of my own playing. I was certain I was doing it as I was told, since the result was good. Decades later, a little time with a clear mouthpiece and a mirror revealed that I was certainly not doing what I expected to see.

As for the pivot comment, I never heard anyone dispute the benefit of the motion. I was also directed to learn to control my sound while slurring over expanding intervals. A lot of time was invested in that practice, and the instruction came from mature players in a consistent fashion.

I don't know what my face does or what angle it takes.

(not that I'm a playing god, but still...)

The direction I've heard about using less "pivot" is, if the player begins to rely on it for whatever range they can play now, they'll run out of pivot when they have to expand their range further.

Just throwing numbers at it -- let's say your "max pivot" for your top note, which is Bb on top of the staff, is 15 degrees, and if you try using more than that, you sound worse. Then you get music that goes to the D above that Bb, but you're "out of pivot", and you're kinda screwed.

lost wrote:Update!

I self-diagnosed, asked the boards, got advice, made adjustments, and am happy to report I fixed my head position with no ill effects. Three valves advice was helpful as the problem was not tilting the tuba forward enough so i was compensating with my jaw structure of giving a slight tilt of my neck/head sideways. The conn bit made it easier as well since that IS adjustable. Duh.

This head position thing also developed from being squashed in a corner in a substitute rehearsal space with barely a place to move and unable to see the conductor holding a 6/4 horn.

Anyway, i played the carnival of the animals elephant solo to much acclaim this past sunday. Think i'll continue my stubbornness and not get the playing stand. Although I appreciate the PM's suggesting stands!!

Ah, yes --

Sideways tilt is very uncomfortable for me. Whether I'm marching or sitting down, I've always done my best to position my body normally and adjust the horn's placement to me, not the other way around.

Good to see that you've made a change.

I'm a little surprised that no one has mentioned the benefits of the Alexander Technique.
We used to have a Certified Alexander Technique specialist here on campus, and after I had had a critical injury he was really helpful in getting me "straightened out" (that's an Alexander Technique joke, not to be confused with one by a chiropractor), as well as helping me with head positioning. For those of us who practice too long continuously (jeez, guys - take a break after an hour!!!) the neck muscles can get so aggravated that they get numb and the neck (especially if you've broken yours, like i did) can become extremely painful. Alexander Technique has plenty of great exercises/therapies for this stuff!

Leland wrote:I don't know what my face does or what angle it takes.

.

I know what my motion is. (probably a better term than pivot) The advantage is when things don't work, I can usually spot what I'm doing wrong.

The direction I've heard about using less "pivot" is, if the player begins to rely on it for whatever range they can play now, they'll run out of pivot when they have to expand their range further.

Some people need a lot of motion, others very little. If you force yourself to use little or none, you will inevitably do something else to get your range. Whatever that something is, it is probably a worse habit than the motion. Like pulling the mouthpiece off and resetting - we've all seen people do that.