Steve's Clinic: Solving Low Register Issues

[Dan Tuba]

Here is a simple test, start with playing a long tone on the best sounding note you have. While sustaining that pitch, close your mouth until your teeth touch and notice how the sound begins to become oinky. Now the question is why? The air hasn't stopped, the vibrations haven't stopped, the pitch hasn't stopped, so what has changed? We can all shake our heads and agree with the obvious but when analyzing the physical aspects of what's going on it's only then you can begging to understand why.

Yes, analysis. That is the true heresy that Steve is bringing to this table - that analysis does NOT always produce paralysis.

Now to your point. I have tried closing my teeth while playing quietly, and response becomes difficult instantly. Interestingly by adjusting my motion (I'm a 3A like Steve, and have also had a few lessons with Doug, not nearly enough though) I can find a place where the notes do speak. So that suggests 1) the correct angle/pressure is necessary but not sufficient and 2) closing the teeth does have an effect, exactly how it works is unknown. In my case the correct motion is primary and the oral cavity fine tuning. That may be because I haven't reached the skill levels of some of you. Steve says the size of the tuba mouthpiece makes the motion part less important for him and the oral cavity becomes primary.

"Paralysis by Analysis"

The key to understanding this concept and enjoying the "fruit" of the application of this concept to one's playing/performance is knowing when/where or time and place to "analyze." From my understanding of the original idea or concept put forth, "performances" aren't the time or place to conduct an analysis of the mechanical/physical aspects involved in creating a musical statement or experience for the listener.

In my opinion, there's absolutely nothing wrong with "analyzing" your performances, to include all of the physical and/or mental actions/activities/thoughts that happened during the performances "afterwards." Trying to "multitask" by analyzing and/or manipulating mechanical/physical aspects of playing an instrument can be too much for some people to handle while trying to create a musical product. Utilizing exercises, scales, or other fundamental "drills" in one's practice that are simple enough for the player to "analyze" the mechanics involved in production can possibly help the player develop greater efficiency, thus allowing the player when it's time to perform, to create an even better musical product/experience/statement. I think this is where "two heads are better than one," meaning, that having a "teacher" to help with the analysis "process" can be extremely beneficial. To my understanding, the person who put forth the "Paralysis by Analysis" concept in brass pedagogy tried to keep most of the analysis process to himself while he was teaching his students. That's why you don't hear the same "approach" or "experience" shared by many of this teacher's former students. Sure, there are a few ideas or concepts that seemed to be "universal" in this teacher's approach, however way different "experiences" that have been shared by this teacher's former students. "Tuba people TV" is really fun and interesting to watch. FWIW, I never had a lesson with this teacher. However, I have tried to glean whatever knowledge that I can from this teacher's approach to brass and "musical" performance. I am sure that this teacher would be extremely delighted to know that musicians have continued to develop his concepts while developing new concepts/ideas/approaches to brass playing in hopes of achieving new levels of brass performance.

Steve, thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience with us.

[peterbas]

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[peterbas]

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[timothy42b]

This is your thought train of what your doing to make a beautiful sound but that doesn't mean this is how it psychally works.

This is true. Steve's conception works for him. It may not be the real physics that is happening. He thinks of transfer functions and transmission lines while I think of three coupled systems and eigenvectors. We may both be wrong. But there is no doubt his approach works for performance.

What we need to make a note is air pressure in the mouth. Low for low notes and high pressure for high notes. this has been measured numerous times. The when need air through the lips with but keeping the pressure in the mouth constant otherwise your playing a different note.

Same objection. This is how you think of it. That may not be the real physics.

We need the throat to be open all the time to keep the same pressure we create in our lungs to be the same pressure (=note) in our mouth.

No, that's clearly wrong. Going way back to Farkas we've known the glottis is a valve to control air flow and to some extent articulation. More recently James Markey gave an excellent lecture discussing it, and the MRI evidence now proves it. However doing that consciously can be counterproductive.

By the way, the pressure in the mouth is barely above atmospheric. I don't know if you have looked at the units next to the numbers in those studies, but mouth pressure is so low that in part of the cycle air can move backwards. I've measure my own with an improvised manometer, and it's low enough I can get a seal with an aquarium tube in the corner of my mouth.

[peterbas]

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[stevennorsworthy]

Well, MRI studies have more than proven the point of tongue position and smaller space in the mouth in the high register, and more open space with lower tongue for low register. Talk to the great lead trumpet players about tongue arch. Just try to whistle high and low pitches. Case dismissed on that point. Now go back to Boyle’s gas law and fluid dynamics. PV=RT. So, since at constant temperature, then (air pressure) * (air volume) == a constant, where there is a smaller space there is higher pressure, and vice versa. At the venturi of the mouthpiece I would assume the air pressure is at the highest point in the instrument, etc. Let’s look at the issue of relation of pitch. High pitch requires high P and low V in Boyle’s equation, and vice versa at low pitch. This is intuitively obvious, of course. So, yes, at that high Eb-5, I WAS indeed making a small space in my oral cavity and I WAS using a very arched tongue to do that, it was intentional and the arching is a daily muscular exercise I practice! In the low register I practice making hoofing sounds with low pitch air pulses and practice singing in the low register. Likewise I practice singing falsetto with high tongue and ‘e’ vowels for the high register. I also practice with a flashlight and mirror raising my uvula to where it disappears up. Many great singing pedagogues know the importance of raising the uvula. It impedes air flow and causes turbulence otherwise.

Nearly every brass teacher and player I hear and read talks about their instrument as an amplifier. That is utter nonsense to an engineer. The instrument is a PASSIVE ELEMENT, like an resistor, capacitor, inductor, antenna. An amplifier is an ACTIVE ELEMENT. For example, take your audio amplifier in your home stereo system. It magnifies the small AC audio-band signal input into a larger AC audio-band signal and in the process it converts AC power at 110V/60Hz into DC power, and that DC power feeds transistor bias circuits which consume that DC bias power and set the bias point on a transistor gate or base-emitter so that the transistor can perform the amplification of the AC audio-band signal. So, the instrument itself is like a transmitter’s antenna in an RF transmission system, but the antenna is not a power amplifier. The RF power amplifier FEEDS the input of the antenna. The player is the power amplifier, and the instrument is the antenna! The instrument is a passive element that includes a waveguide and also frequency shaping properties, and propagation properties.

Too much more to discuss, perhaps another video.

[peterbas]

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[MackBrass]

Here is a simple test, start with playing a long tone on the best sounding note you have. While sustaining that pitch, close your mouth until your teeth touch and notice how the sound begins to become oinky. Now the question is why? The air hasn't stopped, the vibrations haven't stopped, the pitch hasn't stopped, so what has changed? We can all shake our heads and agree with the obvious but when analyzing the physical aspects of what's going on it's only then you can begging to understand why.

Lastly, physical and genetic makeup is the other half of what goes into a great sound. This is why, as stated earlier in this thread, Gene will always sound like Gene and Chester or Roger will always sound like Chester or Roger. Poverati and any world class singer will tell you that the cavity found in their chest and throat and in between they were genetically given at birth had a lot to do with the beauty found in their tone production.

It is obvious that if you close your teeth the sound gets worse. You then can get hardly any air through the lips to keep a good vibration going. To keep the vibration going you need to put energy in the system and that is the air. How do we get air to move? By building up airpressure in the mouth and create a hole with the lips to flow. For every note you need the right pressure and the right flow.

The 'Gene will always be...' is a cliche since it probably has never been tested and not easy to do anyhow. It speaks nice by scientific it has nothing to say.
In the audio/hifi there has been a lot myths about hearing the difference between cd/mp3, amps that sound different...
When tested with AB o ABx test almost everytime the results is 50% recognition = totally random.

Your missing the point on this as it's a lot more than just needing air. First off, you can certainly push plenty of air through the horn with the teeth closed and make a sound, my point is the sound produced will not be very good. The reason the sound is not good, oinky, is because of the lack of a proper set within the oral cavity, back of throat, placement of tongue, etc.. you need a lot more than air pressure and a hole within the lips to vibrate to create a beautiful sound.

As to the sound thing with Gene, Chester, Roger and any other tuba player for that matter, genetics does play a huge role on this and if it didn't that would mean we would all sound the same. You can put five different people on the same horn and have them play the same piece and you will get five different sounds.

[peterbas]

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[2ba4t]

Sorry to have stirred it up out there.

I do not think anyone 'dismissed' the video or Steve. The use of pseudoscientific jargon, even if it were (and I not saying it is) nonsense, can be a brilliant teaching method. This is if it gets the message across and does not create anxiety.
Comparison to singers is false because they produce the sound waves at the vocal cords so obviously everything beyond that will strongly influence the sound.
Yes, each player sounds different. BUT their production and control of the air flow creating the buzz differ because they have thousands of minute physiological differences and ways of using the controlling features - palate, throat shape and size, tongue position, speed and violence of air from lungs etc. This is the difference we hear. The incredible sweetness of Gene's sound comes from it being his body producing it and how he manipulates the air flow sustaining the buzzes. Just play a quiet passage with different amounts of vibrato and see what your body does to do this.
Thus, YES what happens pre-buzz influences the air stream and musculation around the sound wave creators - lips. We hear the results of a myriad of physiological differences and degree of relaxation. NO - it is not impedance, resonance or any effect on sound, just the effect on wind.
Yes, the terminology does not 'matter' but is inaccurate. This is important to some because it leads into that big wild wicked world of all the snake oil experts [of whom Steve is definitely and obviously not an example] who steal $$$$$$$$$$$$ off young and suggestible people who we should not allow to be misled.
Could someone please, please translate 'The horn is an impedance matching acoustic transformer which transforms the high pressure/low amplitude to low pressure/high amplitude and it also makes the sound have more directivity in the direction of the bell.(difference between tuba and sousaphone when marching outside.' I got as far as 'tubas change a little buzz into a pretty sound directed by the bell' - but then I am, I regret, neither an engineer nor a physicist.
Concerning that 'little buzz' it would be great if bloke could explain why, scientifically, difference mouthpiece characteristics make such a difference. [I looked up his site and all the links I could find etc but no one says how they create that difference. There is just yards of formulas and descriptions of the differences.] TX

[stevennorsworthy]

It's all about impedance transformation, frequency shaping, and directional steering, my friends. Go look up on google an article about how a transformer works, e.g., a coil and magnetic coupling. Go look up how an RF power amplifier couples to an RF antenna. Just about everything 'RF waves' is directly analogous to audio acoustic waves. The RF engineer and the acoustics engineer have really not effectively 'touched' the brass playing community, but the are so many PhD theses on the subject. They are really hard to read and digest without advanced degrees in science and that is the problem, few have taken the time to teach the brass playing community on layman's terms and in a manner that improves their overall approach as a result.

[stevennorsworthy]

As for peterbas latest comments and Tom McGrady's reply, I have found lots of research now on the subject of what is going on BEHIND the lips, and it is from objective and invasive pressure measuring sensors placed at points from behind the lips all the way down into the lungs. It is significant... this is NOT a buzzing exercise, friends, it is far more. I'll later send some links to the articles. They use pressure and volume sensing and plot P*V plots. Fascinating. Boyle's gas law is still TRUE! LOL.

[stevennorsworthy]

Guys, esp. peterbas, I DO have a Rhetorical Question for you, and ALL of you: Why do 'some' people (not all) who have phenomenal free buzzing ability produce such thin wonky snarly tone quality everywhere on the instrument? Also, why do some people who can barely free buzz at all have absolutely stunningly nice resonant tone quality everywhere on the instrument? Let me be CLEAR, I am NOT against fee buzzing, but it is NOT the 'be all, end all' either. The guys with great tone MUST be shaping their oral cavities, tongue position, throat opening, etc. That is the most logical conclusion.

[peterbas]

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[stevennorsworthy]

Peterbas, the velocity increases across a smaller cross sectional area. Take a garden hose. Put your finger over it and create a tiny aperture. Spray streams with great velocity and a small stream of water. So, Yes, Boyle's gas law P*V=Constant, and as a professional electrical engineer I would rather use Boyle's Law instead of Ohm's Law, since we are dealing with a 'gas' and hence, Fluid Dymanic system, and of course there are electrical analogies as you point out. The tongue arch is critical to having a high velocity narrow airstream into the aperture for high notes, and vice versa for low notes.

[MackBrass]

Person to person perhaps but I can not get a concentraded airstream through my teeth that I can feel on my hand at even 4 inches.
The open teeth is part of getting a good airflow through the hole so we agree but where are only looking at it from a different perspective0.

The point here is that there is a set position for each note and the oral cavity as well as the position of the back of the throat area all have an impact and contribute to the sound thats created. There is a lot more that contributes to making a beautiful sound than just the air passing over the lips creating a vibration.

[Doug Elliott]

Closing the teeth is not a good test because that changes a lot more that just the oral cavity, it changes the lips vs. teeth relationship.

The whole air column behind the embouchure definitely affects both the response and the sound. Full lungs with an open throat and a large mouth cavity will facilitate low notes, and less capacity with a smaller mouth cavity and higher tongue position facilitates high notes. Exactly HOW you accomplish those things can be the difference between easy, efficient and consistent playing, and having serious problems but great sound.

[2ba4t]

Thank you all for opening this up for me. It comes out that at the ‘bottom line’ - I was wrong.
Steve’s actual words may have not been scientifically accurate BUT they were right for teaching. They highlighted and described the vital importance to the sound of the “post-lungs pre-lips” environment. Steve has coined a new meaning for impedance – meaning – deep breath - ‘the effect on the sound wave produced by the lips of the flow and spatial volume of air as configured by the throat and mouth cavity and tongue position all being controlled by the degree of muscular relaxation or tension and arching or lowering of the tongue’. I am submitting this to the Oxford English Dictionary and Webster. Yet, the contribution –

‘I think the pseudo-science of the whole Jacobs school is nonsense.’

must be objectively true if you insert the word ‘scientific’ before ‘nonsense’.

BUT (there is always a ‘but’) stevennorsworthy stated that ‘

The whole chain from lungs to bell is a chain of impedance changes’

and he is a scientific dude. I did google it as suggested and I am mystified.

I read that impedance describes the degree of hindrance to an EXISTING sound wave [or other form of energy] through something. Brass instruments have very even impedance – a constant low air pressure - so that they produce the optimal transference of the sound waves through the air along their length. The impedance of the room air pressure is much higher than inside the tube. When impedance suddenly changes – at the bell – this makes the sound waves react. The effect is that some of the sound waves escape and are bounced through the air to vibrate against your ear drum. The rest reflect back down the tube to your lips –and make the next buzz.
Again, am I wrong to think that before the lips there are no sound waves, therefore – scientifically - no impedance? Does travelling air have an impedance factor?

[Matt G]

There are forward and backward travelling waves.

When you buzz your lips, there is propagation of sound into the oral cavity from the lips. Basically, the lips smacking together create a pressure front that is effectively omnidirectional. Some of the acoustic energy even gets into your face and bone structure. In fact, the compressional velocity of bone is much faster than air, so sound waves from your lips will get to your ear before those from the bell. Anyhow, keeping an open throat and oral cavity allows the backwards propagating sound to resonate better in the part of the air column that is in the human. The resonance will be then reflected back into the tuba and support the resonance there. That's part of the why different people will sound differently on the same horn. There are lots of anatomical differences of the lip, tongue, and dental structure as well as the size and shape of the oral cavity and the upper respiratory system. Sinuses differ in shape, size, and location as well.

With all of this being said, putting the system into precise mechanical/scientific terms might not really help those in need. And as we see here, the term impedance is getting misunderstood.

Characteristic specific acoustic impedance, what we have here, is simply the density of the medium times its compressional velocity. Along all parts of the person-tuba system, variation in acoustic impedance is small, and can likely be held as a constant.

The airstream to support the flapping of lips and embouchure is a different system. I haven't looked into how this is modeled, but I'm guessing a piston or dipole/quadrupole or something similar work. Air velocity gives energy to the system, but the air velocity generated by the player is small in comparison to the compressional velocity of the medium.

Lots of thinking here, but like I mentioned in the thread that was deleted for whatever reason, this stuff is way above the heads of most kids that need help. Using syllabic corrections and mental models for airstream (tube of toothpaste for low register for example) usually suffice.

[2ba4t]

Thank you, Matthew. Now I know that I was really wrong!!