Please Help! Unable to play flexibility excercises

[ubq]

One of my students-a musicaly very gifted girl - has a problem in the last three weeks. Maybe she practiced to much, i dont know but she needs too much effort on the F-tuba to change between partials, open notes. So flexibility excercises are very difficult to her, the sound gets smaller and noisy. She makes to much movement with the lips and sometimes the tounge blocks the the airstream.

Do you have some advices to help her? Any ideas would be much appreciated! Thanks

[Chuck(G)]

This is going to sound a little silly, but it might be worth a try.

There's a little book that's published by Warner Brothers/Belwin Mills called "Embouchure Builder".

Basically, it's a book of lip slurs, mostly done on a single valve combination. While intended for beginner to intermediate students, there's some heavy lifting in it.

For F tuba, I'd probably get the trumpet version and play them with trumpet fingerings. The tuba version is written for BBb tuba, so the range might not be right.

Another thing is to get your student to understand that range shifts are accomplished by a shift in the direction of the airstream (just like a flute).

Failing that, you could buy a nice bottle or two of single-malt scotch and use the cork to inhibit "chewing" of notes, the way Bill Bell did with his students...

The contents of the bottles, of course, are for your consumption...

[Dennis K.]

Isolate the problem.
Have her play on the mouthpiece alone. Slow slur, a glissando. Watch closely. Watch her throat, as well - make sure she is not closing anything down. Also, have her watch herslf in a mirror.

[Rick Denney]

One of my students-a musicaly very gifted girl - has a problem in the last three weeks. Maybe she practiced to much, i dont know but she needs too much effort on the F-tuba to change between partials, open notes. So flexibility excercises are very difficult to her, the sound gets smaller and noisy. She makes to much movement with the lips and sometimes the tounge blocks the the airstream.

Do you have some advices to help her? Any ideas would be much appreciated! Thanks

I can relate to this from your student's perspective.

In my case, it's a combination of lack of air flow and embouchure strength. The facial movement, tongue metering, and mouthpiece pressure are all crutches to try to make up for weak embouchure muscles and poor air support. They fall into the same category as tensing the shoulder muscles.

I have been working on fundamentals, thinking about my embouchure during exercises to determine if the buzz is formed by strong mouth muscles or by pressure. I don't do this while playing music, of course, but while doing exercises. It has helped tremendously.

My teachers have also recommended that I use a mirror so that I can see when I'm using unhelpful facial muscles instead of important embouchure muscles.

The sound is the telltale. When I'm using pressure to attain the buzz, the sound spreads and loses focus.

Buzzing on the mouthpiece will expose this instantly for me. Mike Sanders suggested that my mouthpiece buzz should come to a point a few inches downstream from the end of the mouthpiece. Thinking about that has helped me focus my airstream, and I am compelled to use a stronger embouchure to do that. Of course, he told me that 21 years ago, but some of us are slow learners.

Rick "who finds that more practice does not help, if it's practice with that tolerates a weak embouchure" Denney

[Dean E]

Isolate the problem.
Have her play on the mouthpiece alone. Slow slur, a glissando. Watch closely. Watch her throat, as well - make sure she is not closing anything down. Also, have her watch herslf in a mirror.

Still using the mouthpiece alone, clip on a pickup microphone and use a tuner to buzz the correct frequencies.

[Chuck(G)]

Still using the mouthpiece alone, clip on a pickup microphone and use a tuner to buzz the correct frequencies.

You might get a more realistic feeling and better-defined sound by attaching a kazoo to the mouthpiece with a bit of plasticl tubing (no, this is not a joke).

[iiipopes]

Still using the mouthpiece alone, clip on a pickup microphone and use a tuner to buzz the correct frequencies.

You might get a more realistic feeling and better-defined sound by attaching a kazoo to the mouthpiece with a bit of plasticl tubing (no, this is not a joke).

It's been done. It's called a BERP:

[Dennis K.]

Still using the mouthpiece alone, clip on a pickup microphone and use a tuner to buzz the correct frequencies.

You might get a more realistic feeling and better-defined sound by attaching a kazoo to the mouthpiece with a bit of plasticl tubing (no, this is not a joke).

It's been done. It's called a BERP:

I thought that thing was a Forced Air Resistance Tube...

[Chuck(G)]

Still using the mouthpiece alone, clip on a pickup microphone and use a tuner to buzz the correct frequencies.

You might get a more realistic feeling and better-defined sound by attaching a kazoo to the mouthpiece with a bit of plasticl tubing (no, this is not a joke).

It's been done. It's called a BERP:

Not at all the same thing. A "buzzoo" will be loud enough to irritate anyone living in the same house. A BERP simply adds resistance, not amplification. The amplification aspect makes it very easy to hear articulation nuances.

[Bob Sadler]

at the risk of eliciting a picture of steak from The Jury...

what your student is doing sounds very much like what I used to do - all sorts of lip/tongue/throat tricks to compensate for a weak airstream. Several months of long tones through the cash register and down below the fundamental with cresc. or dim. for 1 measure at 60bpm (see Bobo mastering the tuba) and cresc-dim for 4 measures (see JoeS on old tubenet) fixed that for me. I actually felt the muscles at the corners of my embouchure strengthen as lips/throat relaxed. Takes a little diligence but the rewards come pretty quick in flexibility and especially sound.

Bob Sadler
stay calm, be brave, wait for the sign

[Rick Denney]

what your student is doing sounds very much like what I used to do - all sorts of lip/tongue/throat tricks to compensate for a weak airstream. Several months of long tones through the cash register and down below the fundamental with cresc. or dim. for 1 measure at 60bpm (see Bobo mastering the tuba) and cresc-dim for 4 measures (see JoeS on old tubenet) fixed that for me. I actually felt the muscles at the corners of my embouchure strengthen as lips/throat relaxed. Takes a little diligence but the rewards come pretty quick in flexibility and especially sound.

No picture of a steak needed--this post is all beef near as I can tell. I'm going to pull these fundamentals into my routine even more than I have already.

But the key to the success of the long tones is to listen for the focused, open sound, not to just blow with the same flabby embouchure that was encouraging the extra facial muscle recruitment in the first place. It's the sound that guarantees (and indicates) the air stream and embouchure strength, not just enduring the exercise. Identifying when that sound is being produced is partly the teacher's job.

Rick "thinking that practicing a bad sound produces a bad sound" Denney

[SplatterTone]

Starting notes without tonguing is the single best thing I have found for my embouchure. I think this might work some of the same stuff as lip slurs.

Another thing that has worked for me in the past (and probably in the future!) is, when it seems that my subconscious has gotten intractably stuck in a bad rut on a mouthpiece, switch to a mouthpiece sufficiently different (usually smaller, for me -- Yamaha 66D4 to be specific) so that whatever the little man in my head was doing, he can't do it anymore with this mouthpiece. Then, after a while, go back to the original mouthpiece.

[ubq]

Thank you very-very much for the advices!!!!

Best regards

[jeopardymaster]

Sorry this is so late, but have you considered pivoting? Not as a committed technique, but for temporary pedagogical purposes. As you slur up, rotate the bell of the horn out slightly, while the bottom of the mouthpiece stays in the same location - that's the pivot point. Slurring down? Reverse it - rotate the bell a bit toward you. The same effect can be achieved using your head - back for up, forward for down. Caution - this movement is very slight -- a matter of centimeters at most.

If this doesn't translate well, you should be able to find someone on Tubenet who lives near you and understands it well enough to demonstrate. I learned it from Sam Green. He learned it from Bill Bell.

I've seen folks use the pivot as part of their basic technique. I don't advocate that. But as a teaching tool, to help get a student through the kind of technique plateau you have described, it's valuable. I also use it myself to work through a passage that is giving me trouble.

[ubq]

Thanks a lot to you too!

Best wishes