room for improvement

[passion4tuba]

HEY wassup tubenet world, i need some help...

as a highschool player (10th grade)..i'm in that plataeu period..
ive been practicing like crazy (4hrs a day) for a while...i still need to get to that next level. i'm studying out of the arbans as well as a cumlative small study book givin to me by a orchestral tuba player...but i'm still just "good" i guess...i know practice is tha answer, but there r key issues i know i need improvement on...

-darker sound
-range above double f
-range below pedal C
-I have a conn hellenberg and a conn 18...ne mouthpeices better than these?

is it a physical maturing process? answers on these questions would be MOST APPRECIATED

[iiipopes]

Whoa, dude! Lighten up before you kill yourself! Even Arthur Pryor spent only about two hours a day on his trombone!

Seriously, you're trying too hard, and you are at risk of developing fatigue-induced bad habits. Please slow down and get a teacher to at least give you a couple of spot check lessons to make sure. In the meantime:

1) Lighten up a little bit. There is more to life than tuba, although even I don't want to admit it.
2) You're so wound up about progressing, you may be tensing up as you play. This can cause all of the "deficiencies" you list.
3) At this point in your life, they are not deficiencies. They're probably more like physiological limitations, since you still have some actual physical development left to do in the next few years. This includes not only your height, but the final growth of everything, including your lungs, jaw bones and embouchure muscles.
4) There may be other favorites and the time will come later to refine your selection, but right now you do have the basic two mouthpieces on which the American tuba world is generally built.
5) Practice long low tones and lip slurs with your Helleberg, drop the back of your tongue, and consciously relax your jaw as you play. This will round out your tone. It will also relax the rest of your body so the higher notes can be played with proper embouchure development and air support, and not with forced air, pressure, or smile.
6) Study and visualize a little more, and play a little less. You're obviously relatively advanced for your age, so take some time to study some of the "outside" aspects of tuba playing -- the people, the history, other literature besides your band folder and your lesson books, this forum, other fora, etc.
7) RELAX! You started this because you enjoyed it, so give yourself a break so you don't burn out on it.

All "plateaus" are "staging grounds" for the next big leap, but if you don't slow down and take inventory of everything, you may not be ready, or worse do something, even though well-meaning, that prevents you from taking off to the next level. Congratulations on coming this far so soon. Patience, focus and proper balance will get you started towards the next level, not more raw hours with your face in the horn. Hang in there!

[circusboy]

Beautifully said, iiipopes!

We all have to remember that the best musicians are players, not workers.

[iiipopes]

Thanks. Been there, done that, wiped up the bloody mess I made with the t-shirt.

[Steve Inman]

"The room for improvement" ....

... is the biggest room in the world!






Cheers,

[MartyNeilan]

ive been practicing like crazy (4hrs a day) for a while...

I will have to go against the grain here and say that 4 hours a day is NOT too much for a high school student. Assuming you mean 4 hours of actual practice. I did that the better part of my Junior and Senior year, and that is about standard for many music majors in college. Anything less than 2 hours and IMHO you are not serious about the horn.
HOWEVER, you can practice 10 hours a day and get zero results if you do not have the proper guidance. TubeNet may be able to help with a singular issue, but is no substitute for a good teacher. If you don't know where to find one, you could contact the local symphony orchestra, maybe the AFM, as well as asking around with band directors and music shops.

[Kevin Miller]

Zach,

If you are interested in true progress, you might think about private lessons. Check out your own band's website and you will find contact info for the low brass teacher that teaches lessons at your school. That is the great thing about the Dallas suburbs. Nearly every school has a private lesson staff to provide lessons on campus. Most schools call this program the "Music Enrichment Program". Lessons in the Garland district are $15 per half hour/half class period lesson. I am sure at least one person in your section is taking lessons from the low brass teacher at your school and you could ask them what lessons are all about. Your band director could even tell you about the teacher, since he is the one who hired him to teach tuba lessons at your school.

The lesson teacher is available to you right there in your school and could provide you with ongoing guidance on improving your playing. He could actually listen to you and watch you to give you first hand info on what is needed to improve. You might get vague and general info from the board, but without hearing you one on one, no one here can help you as much as the lesson teacher at your school. Give it a try, you might like it.

[iiipopes]

BTW, just out of curiosity, you mentioned your mouthpieces, what about your tuba?

[passion4tuba]

first off may i begin by saying thank you to all that gave me advice and support.

let me answer some questions
i have a lesson teacher provided by the school district, but he is fairly subpar for an adult(as on of my band director agrees), also i play in a church orchestra(oak cliff bible fellowship) that are comprised of many band directors as well as professional players, so people do hear me play, however they do not stop to giv me one on one advice as much as one would expect. to answer iiipops, i play a miraphone186. Lastly, i do not "squeal" an f above the staff, and honestly i can comfortably play a d above the staff(and they both have tone quality). I didnt know one had to be a prodigy to play that high, because i know a proidigy i am not.

Once again thank everyone for thier advice, i truly appreciate it.

[Chuck(G)]

Time spent practicing without structure is time wasted.

Do you keep a logbook (either on paper or on computer) of your practice time, noting what you hoped to get sorted out and how you actually did?

If you set out, say, to work out a difficult passage, you should note that, what you did (sang it, buzzed it, played it backwards, played it in 4 note groups, what mm you started at and what you managed to get up to, etc.) and how well you fared.

Above all, don't practice your mistakes. Practice makes permanent.

Make it a point to play with someone a lot better than you are from time to time. There's nothing like that to raise your own expectations of yourself.

And listen to others play--a lot. A big part of performance is imitation. Sometimes you can get inspiration from the darndest places. For example, some might find the vocal command of this bass recorded in 1949 worth imitation:

http://download.sovmusic.ru/m/ussr_eng.mp3

[tubatooter1940]

passion4tuba,
We appreciate your passion for a huge, odd looking hunk of brass because we all share it. I love the posts made on your thread. Some of the real heavy hitters of tubenet have responded to you.
A teacher of the best quality can give you an accurate critique and put you on track with enough studies to keep you busy for a long time. Seek out at least one lesson with a killer player within driving distance.
Playing alone too much gets you further out of whack then you were. playing with any other instrument(s) will teach you to listen and play at the same time as well as blending your sound up with others and hearing harmonic intervals and finding them with or without sheet music.
I think 4 hours a day alone on tuba could get to be a grind. I hit a plateau where I stay the same for a while then I learn a thing or two or get inspired by someone's performance to try some new things and a step up in playing occurs. I'm an old guy and four hours of boogie basslines and solos rip skin off my lips and leave them almost too swollen to play the next night. It would help if I wasn't such a blatweasel.
www.johnreno.com/

[Chuck(G)]

Paul Robeson?! Wow... I suddenly feel... cultured. However, if I consider vocal command in the bass register, Boris Christoff and the Aria of the Viking Guest is what typically comes to mind. I'm afraid I don't have a public domain recording of it to share though, and I'm not about to risk infringing on copyright be it Soviet or Russian...

For me, it's Ivan Rebroff. I found two (very) short clips of his low range and his high range. Darned amazing.

http://home.san.rr.com/vanpelt92117/Ending.mp3
I know some tuba players who can't hit that low F nearly as well
http://home.san.rr.com/vanpelt92117/Range.mp3

[Rick Denney]

-darker sound
-range above double f
-range below pedal C
-I have a conn hellenberg and a conn 18...ne mouthpeices better than these?

I would take these objectives to a teacher. Unlike Joe, I will recommend a tuba teacher who demonstrates those characteristics, and save the general music lesson for meeting other objectives.

Joe hinted that you should focus on what's between your extremes as a means of improving what's outside those extremes. I would submit, however, that if you don't like your sound, you need to work more on sound training. That requires, in my experience, three things:

1. Fill your head with the sound you admire. Reason #1 for studying with a pro who demonstrates what you want to be.

2. Fundamentals. You need to make sure your air flow and buzz are what they need to be. If they are not, then fixing that now will help you meet your other objectives.

3. Long tones. Gene Pokorny talks about the long tones as the basis for everything else we do. They are basis for all musical expression, because if we can't hold a consistent long tone, we can't shape phrases while maintaining a consistent sound and pitch. Joe alluded to that, too. Gene also says that his long tones are the basis for techniques such as vibrato. They teach us to crawl inside our sound, so that we start to hear when we are really centering the instrument, which is the basis for playing with good intonation. Gene is among a handful of the very best orchestral tuba players on the planet, yet he complains about letting himself get distracted from long tones by doing things like fooling around with Tubenet. That tells you where long tones are on his priority list. Long tones also reinforce the air flow in item 2.

What you can do fast, high, and loud does not matter nearly as much as what you can do reliably in the standard range, with good musical expression and sound. It ain't about the mouthpiece--both your mouthpieces are classic designs that are the archetypes for nearly every other mouthpiece on the market.

Rick "who thinks now is the time to reconsider the fundamentals" Denney

[MaryAnn]

free lesson?

You will not believe this, but here is it anyway: The lyrical stuff is the most technical stuff of all. If you record yourself playing "song-like" stuff and listen to your recordings with a critical ear, you might begin to believe me.

You are sooooo kee-rect, O free-lesson-breath. Horn player I know who can multiple-tongue zillion-octave scales at warp 11, did not go anywhere because he cracks notes all over the place when trying to play lyrically. He can probably play Arban's at twice tempo standing on his head, but he cracked the horn solo in Tchaik #5.

Thass all.

MA

[MartyNeilan]

even if it means making a $30k/year Carter County teacher's salary.

That's actually a really good starting salary for teaching in Tennessee with a Bachelor's. Many other systems start 3-4K lower.