Steve's Clinic: Solving Low Register Issues

[stevennorsworthy]

If you struggle getting consistent centered response in the lower register, especially on a smaller tuba, this video clinic session should help you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVxpZJw ... ABwj1sAVpo" target="_blank

[tbonesullivan]

Really love this video. Too many people underestimate the effect of the "soft machine" side of things. It's not just buzzing, you play with your whole body.

[2ba4t]

I listened to this 3 times very carefully and did not understand it at all. Yes, psychologically it works perfectly. [I taught psychology for 9 years.] But scientifically (sorry) we must be careful not to believe manufacturers' mythology with its jargon. The air comes from the lungs. It forces the lips to buzz. For a low note this is a slow buzz. This buzz makes the molecules jigger around creating the first 'sound wave'. This jolts the next neighbouring bunch of molecules within the critically shaped cup of the mouthpiece. This shape controls how the sound waves bounce around and diffuse. bloke is an expert on this.

The slow vibrating sound waves travel through the air column to the bell. The smoothness and shape of the tube is critical. At the bell, they hit the 'wall' of the outside room air pressure. This is higher than the pressure within the air column. This 'wall' actually is an inverted cone the same size as the flare of the bell. RANT WARNING This is why huge flanges create a diffused sound stripped of the vital higher vibrations which give even the lowest pitches their punch. RANT OVER.

The sound waves bounce back at millions of angles until they get back into the bell and back towards the mouthpiece. On the way back they align with the guys coming in the opposite direction from the next buzz. A good instrument is shaped, tapered and smoothly built so that the opposite directional sound waves perfectly complement each other. At concert A this is 440 times a second. Down in octaves, it reduces to 220/110/55/27.5 per second. So, even the first A below the bass clef played for one minute requires 55x60 buzzes. That 3300 buzzes.

Now, what about 'impedance resonating within your throat' before 'it' gets to the instrument? Well, 'impedance' relates to sound waves. There are none before the lips. Ergo ??? 'Resonance' refers to solid bodies - bones, flesh, metal etc - responding to sound waves. There are none before the lips. Ergo ??? So, I am confused.

Obviously, Steve is perfectly correct and must have helped hundreds or thousands of grateful pupils. It might be suggested that his advice in 'matching impedance' - opening up the throat actually results in a forced relaxation of the whole jaw and throat musculation. This forces the facial mask muscles - especially the cheeks below the eyes to relax and soften. This allows the lips muscles also really to relax and be able to vibrate 'slowly' enough.

I am not being pedantic here. It is important to be accurate about what we are doing. Using complex, misapplied concepts makes things over-complicated and makes students nervous. In the 60s we all had to have a huge - inverted 'u' shaped embouchure and needed surgery and shrinks to achieve this. Today we all must play 6/4, 7/4, 8/4, 999/4 juggernaut tubas. Just tell them to relax and let their cheek muscles drop. This forces the throat and jaw to open up and relax.

A good drop of British Scotch [not Bourbon] works even better. Speyside down to BBb; Islay down to EEEb. Only Ardbeg will help down to BBBBb.

[timothy42b]

Now, what about 'impedance resonating within your throat' before 'it' gets to the instrument? Well, 'impedance' relates to sound waves. There are none before the lips. Ergo ??? 'Resonance' refers to solid bodies - bones, flesh, metal etc - responding to sound waves. There are none before the lips. Ergo ??? So, I am confused.

Obviously, Steve is perfectly correct and must have helped hundreds or thousands of grateful pupils. It might be suggested that his advice in 'matching impedance' - opening up the throat actually results in a forced relaxation of the whole jaw and throat musculation. This forces the facial mask muscles - especially the cheeks below the eyes to relax and soften. This allows the lips muscles also really to relax and be able to vibrate 'slowly' enough.

Uh oh. This is Arnold land, so.......................

I partially agree but would characterize this much differently than you have done.

First I applaud Steve in trying to actually understand what happens, and push our pedagogical knowledge further. Also, he is clearly successful in getting that register to speak well, and apparently helping his students.

That said, his video does not support that he's really doing what he thinks he's doing, even though it works.

If I can paraphrase, Steve believes that adjusting the oral cavity through tongue position (or vowel sound, which is how most people conceptualize it) is the major factor in getting different registers to respond.

He is not alone in thinking this is important. This is a common belief with trumpet and to a slightly lesser extent trombone players. The recent MRI evidence does support it. I have not seen this discussed much on tuba before. My own experiments mostly on trombone do show that I can make a huge difference in response this way. I can set properly for a high note, and yet chip it every time by altering my cavity. (To hit a note cleanly especially in extreme range requires both: the embouchure direction set, and the tongue position. I'll come back to this.)

I don't know how exactly this works. Most trumpet and trombone players I know believe it to be a harmonic resonance thing as Steve suggests. Others think it has more to do with direction of air flow, and there are a couple of people who insist the tongue pulls on the embouchure muscles and affects them directly. I lean toward the resonance idea, partly because of that horn player Epstein and his finger breath approach, and Sam Burtis's work with overtone singing.

Now back to Steve. The video I watched did not show him playing those notes, just holding the horn. So we don't know what else he did to get down there. I know that the embouchure motion (ala the Reinhardt terminology) makes a huge difference for me in accessing registers, and even Jacobs admitted it happens though he didn't recommend it as the focus. For me in the low register the motion makes more difference than the tongue, whereas in the higher register the tongue becomes more critical. Therefore I assert without proof the following: Steve is wrong in thinking his oral cavity resonance produced the great results in the low register. In fact, his correct motion or pivot was responsible for 80%, and his oral cavity for 20%. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[stevennorsworthy]

Ok, guys, I guess I need to ‘reveal’ my ‘dual training’. In addition to being a Low Brass pro, I am an electrical engineer. That does not mean I possess all knowledge about this subject, i.e., I am not omniscient (LOL). In RF transmission systems, there is an analogy that directly applies, a fundamental principle of ‘driving point impedance’ and ‘standing wave ratios’ and ‘time domain reflectometry’. Ever notice that you can play with a dirty unsettling attack and a second later the steady state tone is just fine? In engineering science, there is (1) the transient response and (2) the steady state response. If the driving point impedance is mismatched, the transient response will look poor but the steady state response can look fairly good but inefficiently transferring power due to the mismatch. The driving point impedance looking into the instrument is more than a function of the lips, it is the impedance of the cavity behind the lips. An ever so slight raising or lowering of the tongue or jaw can/will make a major difference because it changes the driving point impedance. The Maximum Power Transfer theorem states that maximum power is delivered to the load when the driving impedance and load impedance are matched to the same impedance level. I’ll try to put together a more comprehensive explanation later.

[timothy42b]

The driving point impedance looking into the instrument is more than a function of the lips, it is the impedance of the cavity behind the lips. An ever so slight raising or lowering of the tongue or jaw can/will make a major difference because it changes the driving point impedance. I’ll try to put together a more comprehensive explanation later.

Also an engineer here (mechanical), and did all my electives in vibrations and dynamic response. I agree that the cavity behind the lips has an effect, but I'm skeptical that the effect is as major in this range. More is going on than just shaping that cavity, and consider the relative size and shape of the cavities before and after the lip aperture. Do you know your embouchure type and preferred motion? I think you really have to combine this topic with embouchure approach, like in the Wilktone posts. But again I congratulate you on thinking in this kind of detail. This is how we make progress - and brass pedagogy desperately needs that.

[stevennorsworthy]

I am very close friends with "The Current Master of Reinhardt, Doug Elliott" and studied Reinhardt method back in undergrad days in the 1970's before most of you were born! LOL! The larger the mouthpiece, the less motion because motion, as Doug Elliott explains, is a ball/socket 3-D motion in reality. A large mouthpiece like a tuba is essentially a 'flat plane' and hence little or no motion should be taking place. Type 3A is my type. If you are on a tuba, and your have good control of your bottom lip, you will not need to change the pivot angle on your face much at all. Call Doug if you like and he will tell you the same thing.

[stevennorsworthy]

Great reply, Doc. Spot on! Accurate playing vs. 'blame the instrument'. I've been playing trombone for 55 years and tuba for only a few years. If I can apply the fundamentals in a short period and make it work on what others say is a stuffy F tuba and produce an instant wall of centered tone with lots of core (hopefully that came across?) then 'point made and demonstrated'. The smallest change on jaw opening and tongue position change made the difference between that Low D being set too small from the Eb prior, right? Demonstrated.

[timothy42b]

I am very close friends with "The Current Master of Reinhardt, Doug Elliott" and studied Reinhardt method back in undergrad days in the 1970's before most of you were born!

Yeah, sorry, I knew who you were but had a brain fart.

I WISH the 1970s were before I was born, but those were my undergrad days too. And Vietnam war days, and.............can't remember anything from then actually...........

What is really striking is how low range - trigger range on a tenor trombone especially - can feel stuffy and impossible to respond, but get set just right and it pops.

[peterbas]

deleted

[stevennorsworthy]

Totally untrue, as there are 22 muscles just controlling the soft palate (uvula) alone! If the uvula is raised up the airway in the back of the throat increases. SINGERS UNDERSTOOD THE ORAL CAVITY AND THROAT THING SINCE THE BEGINNING OF VOICE PEDAGOGY.

The tongue and jaw make a massive difference to the size of the cavity optimized for the note wavelength.

[Donn]

After brief experimentation, I can possibly hear some difference, that comes out more as tone color. A little change in how much different partials are heard. In principle, I'm skeptical that it's specific per note - the airway can't plausibly have a resonant frequency, and if it did the match would be quite critical, down to C vs C+2¢. Either you're matching the frequency between horn and airway, or you aren't.

As a damping effect, like a deep mouthpiece, etc., OK, but ability to extract low notes from an uncooperative tuba? From my epically unqualified experience, I would expect practically any tuba player with more than a day's experience on the tuba would be able to produce those Huge sounds, in a quick 1/2 second toot. Where the difficulty becomes real, for me anyway, is when I have to hold a big, full, sustained tone for a while. I'd say that's about a quality of air flow that keeps those lips going steadily at the required volume without a whole lot of support from the tuba - particularly some tubas.

[peterbas]

deleted

[stevennorsworthy]

Just raise the tongue a little too much on a low note and you loose resonance. Just lower it a little too much and it gets dull. Trumpet players LIVE on the tongue arch concept and it is IMPOSSIBLE to play high notes without making a very small oral cavity with the tongue nearly touching the roof of the hard palate. So I just don't know where you are coming here, man!

[peterbas]

deleted

[stevennorsworthy]

I am a filter expert in engineering. The tuning of a filter and it's input/output match is critical. The whole chain from lungs to bell is a chain of impedance changes. I won't bother replying any more because I think the pseudo-science of the whole Jacobs school is nonsense. He was a great player, though.

[Three Valves]

Heresy!! Burn him!!

[stevennorsworthy]

Also, let us be precise, there are exactly 5 muscle pairs controlling the soft palate area:

Tensor veli palatini, which is involved in swallowing
Palatoglossus, involved in swallowing
Palatopharyngeus, involved in breathing
Levator veli palatini, involved in swallowing
Musculus uvulae, which moves the uvula

These muscles are innervated by the pharyngeal plexus via the vagus nerve, with the exception of the tensor veli palatini. The tensor veli palatini is innervated by the mandibular division of the trigeminal nerve (V3).[2]

[tbonesullivan]

From what I read, the main disagreement is over how much influence the air space on the body side of the embouchure has on the resonance of the instrument. Looking at my own embouchure, there is definitely a space that is not closed. It's not just pressing your lips together and buzzing. it's forming a controlled shape and having the edges of the lip buzz. I can whistle somewhat, but after playing trombone, my whistling is much better. I find that when I'm playing, my vocal cavity undergoes shape changes similar to when whistling. I don't know if this means that my interior cavity is resonating with the instrument, but it does suggest that.

And for those that say that the resonant space in the body cannot be controlled... oh yes it can, in incredible ways. The video below is of a singer who has pretty much mastered polyphonic overtone singing, to the point where she can change both fundamentals and harmonics and hit them on command.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC9Qh709gas" target="_blank

[stevennorsworthy]

Great reply. Of course singers totally change their tone by mastering the cavity behind their lips. Jacobs and other lowbrass teachers must somehow have missed the basics on this. Why, I have no idea! Again, all you really have to do is talk to lead trumpet players and you will get schooled on the tongue placement and shape and oral cavity control. Knowledge increases and it is time to 'evolve' past Jacobs and respect him for what he provided at the time.

By the way, go watch my Contrabass video from earlier today and try to understand why I was getting a high Eb-5. The tongue was very arched and up at the roof of my hard palate and the space was very small to get that to resonate and focus. Then down to low G-1 and it was a massive wall of sound, and why? Huge open oral cavity and throat and low tongue laying flat.