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I remember I had a piece in community band many years ago that had a 16th note run G minor descending scale from bottom line G down, at a fairly quick tempo. As usual, I started slowly to make sure the fingers were working, the breath support was proper, the embouchure was transitioning properly, etc. Then I gradually worked it up to tempo. It was pretty quick.

The point of this digression: if the music calls for something "fast," I will work it to proper performance standard using the pedagogy techniques we have all been taught. But do I routinely practice "fast" passages? Not on your life. Oh sure, I have a couple of favorites memorized, like the ascending runs in "The Thunderer" march, which I will occasionally rip through just to make sure everything is working properly, but the rest of it is only as necessary.

I remember hearing a prominent tuba player some 25 years ago playing Arban, Paganini, and Kreisler showpieces at full tempo flawlessly. Based on his current position and recognition, I’d say it was time well spent.

I speed practice. Most of my practice sessions are so fast, it is like they never happened.

This thread reminds me of the difference between old-fashioned pinball machines and modern computer games. If you played a pinball machine long enough, racking up enough points, it would concede with a "thunk" and give you another game, because the internal slope of the table and the power of the solenoid bumpers and other elements didn't change. By contrast, the computer games simply go up in level, mostly meaning tempo, until a person's fundamental reflex speed is reached. Beyond that, no amount of practice, training, or technique can make a player any faster, and the speed of electrons will always be faster than the fastest person.

Yep, That is my problem. Slow muscles.

CCC

Charlie C Chowder wrote:Yep, That is my problem. Slow muscles.

CCC

Mine, too.

Rick "who practices fast stuff...at reduced speed" Denney

bloke wrote:I’m pretty sure that anyone who can hear fast musical events clearly is capable of eventually executing those same events clearly, unless they have some physical drawback… OK…or mental block - such as believing that they cannot do it.

Depends on what you mean by hearing them clearly. Hearing that it's fast, or hearing the precise rhythms? Maybe I just think I'm hearing it.

That said, I can clearly see when a quarterback passes a football 50 yards, but I don't think any amount of practice and training could make it possible for me to pass a football 50 yards. I can hear Pavarotti (RIP) singing with great power and tone, but I don't think any practice and training could make it possible for me to sing with such power and tone. I can hear all the notes Rick Wakeman plays in his prog-rock performances, but I don't think any amount of practice and training could make it possible for me to do so. There are lots of people who started when he did, and played and learned with as much determination as he did, and who even drank as much as he drank while he was doing it. But they still can't do it.

Fact is, these virtuosos could do it when they were still in their teens. There is surely some particularly advantageous physiology happening with virtuosos, to which they apply their drive and determination to take to its potential. The combination of that talent and that determination makes them able to do things others simply can't. The rest of us can hear clearly what they do, but that doesn't mean we can do it.

Is that just me talking myself out of it? Could be. But I don't think so. There are things I'm as good at as anyone in the world, and I know what level of work it took to attain those skills. But I also know how much better I was at those same things than my peers, back when we were all 20 or so. Now that we are in our 60's, I'm as good as anyone and they still lag, even though some of them have worked harder at it than I had to.

Rick "everyone should work hard, but talent is still talent" Denney

In the British brass band world , this thread is difficult to understand.

50 years ago I remember the lead BBb bass in the National Youth Brass Band playing the Carnival faster than I have ever heard it - on a beaten up old 3 valver and he was only 15. We all just worked through Arban [or Salvation Army equivalent] and presumed the tuba could play just as fast as a cornet, flute or violin. The bigger mouthpiece and lower pitch I find makes the tuba more, not less responsive. Also, other instruments simply have to sightread whatever's on the menu - just watch those fiddles scrubbing away.

This interestingly shows how the US world has so many thousands and thousands of tubas that a) it is a recognised specialised instrument not merely a sort of larger baritone, b) its role as the 'brass string bass' in wind bands is universally established, c) perhaps the preponderance of BBb and sousas leans towards seeing it as a huge cumbersome instrument. Of course they are as agile as their player.

So the US players perhaps have been influenced negatively as to the tuba's fluidity and range. Yet, there are very old recordings of some fast solos by great US players - 1957 - Bill Bell. If you can play 4 notes together very rapidly then you can play 8, then 16, then etc etc. So I propose a Tubists' Liberation Society so dispel the oom-pah image.

Also the quicker you play, the sooner you can get to the bar.

This thread is blowing out of context (pun intended). It is all well and good that proficient tuba players have the ability to play Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" at tempo. If I had to, I could work up to it as well. But remember that all this technique, flash and pyrotechnics don't mean anything outside of a musical context. By itself, it is all nothing better than musical m***********. Everyone forgets that the purpose of Arban is to be a better player, not to be a better Arban-ist.

All the comments about a tuba player being the equivalent of a wind-band version of a double bassist are rather misplaced. That is the function of the composers, who generally don't take a broader view of what a proficient tuba player can do. Or for those that do, make their commission money writing pieces for grades I, II, III school bands, to encourage school tuba players. That in and of itself is a good thing, and if it doesn't press the technical challenge of the rest of us, then we must all remember when each of us didn't know which end of a tuba mouthpiece to pick up. It has nothing to do with the player. Occasionally, a composer will actually write something musical for tuba, from broad ostinato to technical fireworks; I have had the pleasure of playing both over the decades.

We need to stop this thread and go practice. I know I do, having been without a tuba gig, or any gig for that matter, for quite awhile now.

2ba4t wrote:In the British brass band world , this thread is difficult to understand.

50 years ago I remember the lead BBb bass in the National Youth Brass Band playing the Carnival faster than I have ever heard it - on a beaten up old 3 valver and he was only 15...

You don't think a 15-year-old who can play the Carnival of Venice that fast doesn't have some talent advantage going in?

What about all those tuba players who couldn't do that? Did they simply have their instruments taken from them and told to go do something else?

Music is not sport--and despite how impressed I am by the sheer technique of brass bands in the British style, the whole BBB scene with competition and so on repels me. My day job and work is competitive enough. Music is an art form, after all. I stay away from photography contests for the same reason, and even amateur radio contests only get my attendance to build competitive stations, not to sit there and see how fast I can type call signs into a computer. I do those other things as an antidote to competitiveness.

I have no complaint about what others do--whatever motivates a person to excel at anything worthwhile is nothing to be complained about.

Yes, I'd like to be able to play some of the fastest circus-march licks. I keep working at it, and I'm better at it now than I was when I was young. But that is simply experience overcoming lack of talent. No, I am NOT "talking myself out of it". But the fact that a 15-year-old can play the Carnaval fast is all the evidence I need to reinforce my point.

Rick "who practices fast actually pretty often, precisely because it's a weakness" Denney

I call my self a musician, and most people I know believe I am as well. I have learn to play a lot of different instruments. But there are a lot of people who cannot play any instrument or even sing in tune. I think talent for anything is innate. The same goes for the ability to play fast. We are all born with a ratio of fast twitch to slow twitch muscles. I was the slowest runner in school. The fastest was a kid who was my height. I played the cello for my daughters middle orchestra school as they did not have one. I practice "Fiddlers Delight" till I could not go any faster. At the concert all I could do was to hit the top and bottom note of the runs the kids were playing so fast. I just do not have the ability for speed. But I do have more endurance then most. Kind of like the tortoise, I do not go fast, but always get there.

CCC

bloke wrote:

Rick Denney wrote:Depends on what you mean by hearing them clearly. Hearing that it's fast, or hearing the precise rhythms? Maybe I just think I'm hearing it.

If someone can listen to a musical event, and hear/notice/decipher all of it's details (pitches/rhythms/articulations/dynamics/nuances) ...and they are physically able to do things "fast" with their body, I believe that person is capable of eventually duplicate that musical event. I'm not saying that it won't take years of foundational work to get there, but I believe they can do it...and sure: it requires motivation to achieve something like that - just like it requires motivation to achieve a lot of other things.

The only thing that makes some people's achievements remarkable is that they've chosen to achieve remarkable things.

I see that you're arguing the "talent/innate ability" aspect.
There is something to that, but desire/motivation can - fairly easily - overcome a minor lack thereof, again: as long as there's no actual disability.

In high school, my year-older section mate was said to be VERY "talented". Truth be told, he was VERY motivated (he LOVED the tuba...even his crappy fiberglass Holton sousaphone, and later crappy Conn fiberglass sousaphone - which were all he ever had through 12th grade), and worked on mastery SEVERAL HOURS each day.
I - in contrast - was not as "talented" on the tuba, because I spent SEVERAL HOURS each day working towards guitar technique/repertoire mastery. In the school's jazz band, I was considered "considerably talented" playing the bass, due to the crossover benefits from working so many hours to master guitar technique.
Suddenly - in the 12th grade - when I decided to devote many more hours to the tuba (*as each graduating senior in our high school's tuba section was EXPECTED to be selected as 1st chair in the Tennessee All-State Band), I suddenly became "a great deal more talented" playing the tuba.
____________________________
*I believe there were five or six of us who kept that chair occupied for about a decade, as one or two of use occupied it for more than a year.

Part of my response was in the ability to hear that stuff. Some of us might not hear the details as well as you think we do, even if we think we do.

And "actual disability" implies a binary condition--disabled or not. That doesn't fit any reasonable experience on my part. It's really a continuum of coordination and speed, through which we draw an arbitrary line to divide those who are disabled from those who aren't. That line is usually drawn to divide those who can function in life versus those who can't, but we could draw that line between those who can rip through the Clarinet Polka at 180 bpm versus those who can't, too. I don't think this perspective requires any great leap of faith.

Yes, the 15-year-old playing CofV may have been especially motivated, but perhaps what made him motivated was the early return on his time investment as a result of his talent. Self-selection is a form of confirmation bias. Rick Wakeman was winning piano competitions in his first year or two, compared to others who were working just as hard in their first year or two.

Rick "who has been working on the closing run in the second movement of the Hindemith Sonata for 40 years, and still can't connect the front half of it to the back half of it without the fingers getting tangled up" Denney

"Master, which is required to attain mastery of technique, motivation or talent?"

"Grasshopper, the answer is Yes."

In the Blokian system, "talent" may mean, at least in part, that he has the ability to hear those patterns in such extraordinarily specific detail. It may be that he hears ten aspects of the pattern for every one that I hear. The problem with this line of thinking is that it can't be tested easily, or taught easily. So, we teach what we can--drills and technique and analogues (music is story-telling, all songs are either pirate songs or love songs, etc.)--and hope that listening experience does the rest. But we know it doesn't always.

It stands to reason that if physical coordination and skill potential exists over a continuum (instead of the binary abled/disabled), that some may have conceptual understanding in greater amounts than physical coordination potential. I think I can express much more of what makes Michael Phelps a great swimmer, for example, than I can execute myself with any amount of practice. Coaches have a the role of understanding what the natural talents do without having to be taught, and then finding a way to teach some aspects of that those who don't have the same natural talent. Thus, by applying some of what I know Phelps is doing, I may cross the boundary between a person who can't swim aerobically and one who can. This is not theoretical for me, though it wasn't Phelps I was understanding when I crossed that bridge. Thing is, Phelps was a better swimmer after his first 1000 yards of swimming than I was after my first 100,000 yards of swimming, simply because he can feel how to minimize the hole he is making in the water, and I can't. But by doing what he does, perhaps as explained by an intermediate interpreter (coach), I can get better, maybe even much better, but still far short of mastery. But another champion swimmer will see things that Phelps is doing, and understand those expert interpretations from a top coach, far better than I will, coupled with his own feel for the water. That's the same concept, I think, as the detail that Joe "hears".

To some extent, one's technique improves through two processes: Understanding and practice, both of which work inside an aptitude/talent envelope. It is certainly possible for a person to shrink that envelope around themselves. But expanding it is challenging.

Another example: Rick Wakeman, who is my favorite rock keyboardist (notwithstanding some other great performers, which would work equally well in this example), played a solo with the group The Strawbs in about 1970, before he joined Yes. In that solo, he played chords repeated on the keyboard of his Hammond C3 that were incredibly fast repeats. Most people probably think the staccato machine-gun effect of these was done in a synthesizer, but of course that wasn't an option in 1970--the only synthesizer at that time couldn't play chords. He was able to bounce his hand on four or five keys at a repeat rate that I doubt most pianos could keep up with. Sure, he started young, but he was about 20 at the time. Now, I could practice that one bit of technique four hours a day for a thousand years and not be able to do it--my muscles just don't have the fast-twitch fibers to change directions that quickly. But I think Wakeman could do it right from the start. That's a physiological advantage, not just a hearing advantage.

Rick "who also can't run fast for lack of coordination and efficiency of motion, but who has run marathons" Denney

Proprioception is a real thing and it is somewhat innate. Often correlated with athleticism.

That being said, I doubt most players have the patience to find their upper “speed limit.” Especially when a significant portion of the literature is notes with holes in them.