Fuzziness

[jaredsan]

are you talking about when spit comes out of the corners of your lips on high notes? I have that problem, supposedly becuase of braces.

If its not that, and the rooms make the difference, it's most likely a change in one or another variable in the room. Perhaps your tuba's sound resonates with some furniture or something.

[Will]

Could it be a tired embouchure?

heads

[Billy M.]

Well I would think it could be any number of factors. My guess would not be along the lines of room temperature which would have more effect on intonation and not the resonance of the notes.

My best guess is the acoustical environment of the band room compared to your room you practice in at home.

First thought, height of ceiling. This will definitely cause a change in sound at least from your distance of bell to ceiling. Secondly, the overall design of the rooms. I'm sure your house is not designed for sound waves from a large brass instrument.

Best resolution for this problem is to find an area in your house that has a tall ceiling and perhaps not very cluttered by items along the walls. Also record yourself with a tape recorder where you're at in the room and see if there is something different in your playing at home. More than likely though, it's not you or your horn but the room your in and how it reacts to your soundwaves.

[Glaucon]

One other posible problem would involve physical positioning. Next time you are practicing at home, get yourself in front of a mirror and check the angle at which the mouthpiece is coming into your face. This has not only to do with the respective heights of both you and your horn, but also with your chair. Lowere chair, you are going to have to change either how you hold you horn when you play different places or develop different embouchures for different chairs (this is my 'high' chair, this is my 'pedal' chair). Needless to say, a more consistent angle is the desirable end result. This is a very common problem with people who practice at home on loungable/padded chairs, as opposed to the chairs they will actually be performing in. Since the performance is the only thing that matters anyway, try to make your chair at home (or wherever it is that you are practicing) to be as much the same as the chairs in your rehearsal room as possible. This, however, is only a short-term fix. Only by solidifying your embouchure with lots of mouthpiece buzzing are you going to start to get a real sense of what the instrument should feel like when you pick it up, no matter where you're sitting.

[Rick Denney]

Every time Ive practiced at home, I would have problems playing notes clear and precise, but never have the same problem back in the band room. When I play upper mid-range notes, I would make a "fuzzy" sound as if there wasnt a tight seal around the mouthpeice.

I always sound better in the rehearsal space. It's a big room with lots of resonance, while my room at home is much smaller.

Room resonance is good at performance time, but we should be careful not to let it mask issues in our sound that need improvement.

For me, fuzzy sound results from a weak embouchure and inadequate air supply, which I get around by using too much mouthpiece pressure and unhelpful facial movements. Work on those fundamentals.

Rick "always working on sound" Denney

[Uncle Buck]

When I was in college, I loved to practice in a band rehearsal room or a lecture hall. The resonance of the room covered up a lot of mistakes, and I sounded much better than I did in a practice room.

My private teacher found me practicing in there once, and told me to stop because I wasn't getting much use out of the practice sessions. He was right, of course, but it still was more fun to practice in the big room.

On a related note, being a non-drinker, I've never experienced this myself, but I've been told that you always think you sound wonderful when practicing while intoxicated. I had a good friend who finally put this to the test and recorded himself playing after drinking, and was pretty shocked to hear how bad he really sounded.

[TUBAMUSICIAN87]

when I had one of my lessons with Allan Bear the Tubist from the New York Philharmonic he was helping me clean up the first movement of Sonata no.3 in a minor and it starts on a high A and I was having the same problem and he told me to focus the air into the bottom of the cup of the mouthpeice to clear up the higher ranges and if ur still having trouble try dropping ur jaw down farther so help clear it up