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From a Univ. Prof. of Low Brass who is responding to my videos on the mouthpiece and on free buzzing as a much more effective way rather than mouthpiece buzzing, please read below.

Hopefully you have seen my two videos and you can go to my YouTube Channel and see them again, but here is the feedback on YouTube...
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjAB0p ... Bsl3O8cl6U" target="_blank
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Thanks for the video, Steve. I have two students who both have had significant problems with sound in particular, as well as range and air flow. I decided to have them both do some free buzzing this past week in their lessons. Almost immediately there was a remarkable improvement in the quality of their sound, as well as range. I have used mouthpiece buzzing with my students for years with good results, but this was the first time I have used free buzzing with younger students. It was dramatic and the students were wide-eyed with unbelief at the sound they were producing.

Over the the years I have always broken down my practice sessions into three parts; 1. Warmup, 2. Routines, and third, practicing solos, etudes and excerpts.

Many confuse a routine as part of your warmup but you really have to seperate the two. The warmup takes only about 5 to 10 minutes and you should be ready. A routine is something where you spend time working on things like flexibility, scales, slurs and articulation exercises.

At my stage of playing, I am going to add what you could consider weightlifting type of exercises to build strength. I mention this because after speaking with Steve regarding free buzzing and mpc buzzing, they have their place and value for all brass players. I have to admit, I have never done free buzzing and have only done the bare minimum when it comes to MPC buzzing.

As time goes on, I will be adding a 4th element to my practice time and that is strictly muscle and strength building exercises. My approach for the 4th stage of practice is to come up with a routine that is performed in sets, like in weightlifting. An example is holding out the Bb above middle c on the piano for as long as I can.

The weakest part of my buzzing is free buzzing, so this will be added first. MPC buzzing is extremely valuable so more of that will be added as well. To help develop more strength in the muscles I will be doing sets of long tones in the F4 to Bb4 range of the tuba. The long tones will be held as long as possible while keeping track of the time in sets of 3 with 30 seconds rest. The whole idea of this part is a weightlifting approach to build strength.

I keep my P.E.T.E. at work so I can give the embouchure a nice workout on days I don't have time to practice.

I usually go with a remington routine, which almost is a mix of warmup and routine.

I find free buzzing, as well as mouthpiece buzzing, to be quite taxing. Without the resonant support of the instrument air column, it takes a lot more effort, in my experience.

As someone who has done quite a few sets and reps with regards to powerlifting movements, I don’t think I’d qualify long tones as “weightlifting”. They approximate isometric routines more closely and isometric work doesn’t lead to much hypertrophy when compared to full range of motion work under load.

When it comes to the muscles of the embouchure, what works them through the largest range of motion is lip slurs and interval work. Loading (resistance) is mainly a function of dynamics. If I were seeking to build hypertrophy in the embouchure (and cross-sectional muscle area correlates highly with maximal force production), I’d be looking to flexibility work across a wide range of dynamics.

With that being said, long tones certainly have their place. My guess is that the isometric work does some CNS training and muscle conditioning.

The other thing I would look into is weight training in general. Basically, if you’re lifting weights and eating well (lots of protein), your body is setting itself up for muscle protein synthesis. It’s feasible that simply introducing (more) resistance training into your schedule combined with the current state of practice leads to more chop strength. Hormones basically travel everywhere.

Matthew Gilchrest wrote:As someone who has done quite a few sets and reps with regards to powerlifting movements, I don’t think I’d qualify long tones as “weightlifting”. They approximate isometric routines more closely and isometric work doesn’t lead to much hypertrophy when compared to full range of motion work under load.

When it comes to the muscles of the embouchure, what works them through the largest range of motion is lip slurs and interval work. Loading (resistance) is mainly a function of dynamics. If I were seeking to build hypertrophy in the embouchure (and cross-sectional muscle area correlates highly with maximal force production), I’d be looking to flexibility work across a wide range of dynamics.

With that being said, long tones certainly have their place. My guess is that the isometric work does some CNS training and muscle conditioning.

The other thing I would look into is weight training in general. Basically, if you’re lifting weights and eating well (lots of protein), your body is setting itself up for muscle protein synthesis. It’s feasible that simply introducing (more) resistance training into your schedule combined with the current state of practice leads to more chop strength. Hormones basically travel everywhere.

Flexibility, lip slurs, lip trills and other type of similar exercises have always been part of my regular routine. The long tones in the upper, upper register has not been part of my routine so it's something to add. I consider these type of exercises or associate them to weightlifting in the sense they will be done in sets with periods of rest between. If you really think about it, anything you do can be set up in groups of sets where the goal is to break down muscle to build it back up resulting in more strength and endurance.

MackBrass wrote:

Matthew Gilchrest wrote:As someone who has done quite a few sets and reps with regards to powerlifting movements, I don’t think I’d qualify long tones as “weightlifting”. They approximate isometric routines more closely and isometric work doesn’t lead to much hypertrophy when compared to full range of motion work under load.

When it comes to the muscles of the embouchure, what works them through the largest range of motion is lip slurs and interval work. Loading (resistance) is mainly a function of dynamics. If I were seeking to build hypertrophy in the embouchure (and cross-sectional muscle area correlates highly with maximal force production), I’d be looking to flexibility work across a wide range of dynamics.

With that being said, long tones certainly have their place. My guess is that the isometric work does some CNS training and muscle conditioning.

The other thing I would look into is weight training in general. Basically, if you’re lifting weights and eating well (lots of protein), your body is setting itself up for muscle protein synthesis. It’s feasible that simply introducing (more) resistance training into your schedule combined with the current state of practice leads to more chop strength. Hormones basically travel everywhere.

Flexibility, lip slurs, lip trills and other type of similar exercises have always been part of my regular routine. The long tones in the upper, upper register has not been part of my routine so it's something to add. I consider these type of exercises or associate them to weightlifting in the sense they will be done in sets with periods of rest between. If you really think about it, anything you do can be set up in groups of sets where the goal is to break down muscle to build it back up resulting in more strength and endurance.

Absolutely you can do those in sets x reps. I was down the rabbit hole of making the distinction between the aims of programming for lifting (and resulting volume/tonnage/etc) where you are effectively trying to induce hypertrophy.

Stealing other ideas from resistance training, there are ideas revolving around pivot blocks or emerging strategies when it comes to stagnant results. The aim of these periods is to change things up to create a period of “novice effect” with the new movement.

I’ll admit my first post likely came across as if I might have been implying that your approach won’t work. That was not my intent. Rather, consider the stimulus applied and what that is indeed training. Isometric work will make you better at isometric things, which is quite obvious. At some point the gains here will diminish (in the strength training world this window runs between 4-16 weeks depending on physiological conditions) and you’ll want to pivot the programming again. With that being said, you’ll also keep certain core/basics in the session.

With many electrons being spent now, hopefully that makes sense. Also, for transparency, the hobby that replaced tuba holding for many years was weight training and programming/coaching. So for good or bad, I see a lot of parallels in some areas and contradictory things in others.

/nerd

"Full range of motion" really has no relevance to the muscles used in playing. It's all about control and finesse which is only somewhat related to strength training.