Embouchure-booster ?

[tubeast]

The other day, during a practise session, I tried out a basstrombone for maybe ten minutes.
I just fooled around a little, having fun with real loud blatting (nothing to be proud of) and the tingling feeling it produced in my lips.
As it fit in the receiver, I used my tuba MP on it, and had lots of fun.

When I returned to the tuba the notes had a smoother beginning, a warmer, fuller tone and slurring was easier.
This just may have been a short term effect of abused lips being glad about a somewhat kinder treatment, so I was curious if any of you cimbasso players and bass-trombone-doublers experience the same or similar effects.
Do you purposefully warm up on a trombone-related instrument before working on the tuba ?

[corbasse]

On french horn fff "blatting" (nice new word I learned here! ) in the low register is often prescribed to get a better pitch control and sound. I don't really understand the mechanics, but it does help.
I find it impossible to reproduce the same feeling/effect on tuba, but doing it on a smaller bore instrument in the same register instead probably helps as well.

[Chuck Jackson]

This going to sound crazy, but it works. Don Lucas subscribed to blasting out low F# or E(below the staff 2-4 combination on CC and BBb respectively) quarter notes with a PRACTICE MUTE in. After about 2 minutes of this you used the same air to play with the mute out. Man, did it make things smooth. A thought.

When I was playing alot of cimbasso, I noticed that my big horn playing was better(smoother slurs, more focused sound). I don't know if that is attributable to the cimbasso or the smaller mouthpiece. I always warmed up on the biggest horn and then played the smaller ones in succession: CC/BBb for warm-up, F, then Cimbasso.

[tubaaron]

A lot of teachers subscribe to this type of exercise. Jeff Funderburk would have us play the 1st 2 Balzehvich etudes as loud as humanly possible.

If i were to do this, i'll practically have to breathe almost after every note. Would that be the right way to do it? Or play as loud as you can, providing you can sustain at least half a phrase or something...?

[Tubaman485]

You know my tuba professor has the same method with me. He will have me belt out a blazevich or Kopprasch as loud and nasty as possible then when I am done he says, "do it again but this time shave some of the "junk" off." And he does that as a three part process and what it does is it smoothes out some lyrical playing but helps me really belt out a loud section with less effort and less "sousaphone" sound.


Josh

[TubaTodd]

Come to think of it....my tuba teacher in college did the same sort of thing. When I first started at IC, my tone was good, but my volume was small. After a mental , I figured out how to project. One of the things I remember my teacher having me do was a VERY loud scale as described in the other posts. It sounds like this is a common exercise. I wonder if this technique goes back to the likes of Arnold Jacobs or someone like that.

[Jaks]

Sorry to dig up such old topic. But few question here.

1. How exactly is this 'popping' exercise done?

2. How do i know if i'm 'blatting' ?

[swillafew]

Look at the William Bell warmups, and there are a couple of things that speak to the point. One is the long tone crescendo-diminuendo (to achieve the loud as possible part), and the other is the accents in the scale routine; those are to be played with a breath between each note to achieve the loudest sound possible.

As for the back pressure, using a cup mute on a trombone has a lot of recommend it. For some reason I don't know, it yields a sudden improvement after a few minutes. If there was such a thing for a tuba, I might buy one just for that purpose.

[ppalan]

WWBW Tuba Cup mute:
http://www.wwbw.com/Tuba-Mutes-Mutes.wwbw" target="_blank" target="_blank

about half way down the page

Pete

[swillafew]

I never knew!