Posted by Tension Boy on July 14, 2001 at 11:50:01:
In Reply to: Sound Production posted by Angela on July 13, 2001 at 16:09:37:
Tension while blowing through your horn is the number one cause of a poor tone, or a tone that is harsh!!!
Great tone starts with great air!!! Great air can be affected by many things.
Posture: are you standing? Are you slouching? Are you sitting tense? Try to sit on the edge of your chair with your feet firmly planted
on the ground about shoulder width apart. You should be able to stand up without leaning forward to get out of your chair.
Next is the AIR, try a few simple exercises to get some air moving. I'm only going to explain one, but there are literaly hundreds of different
exercises one can do to get their air moving, I stroungly suggest you find/read about some of the greats of instrumental music
Exercise to try at a tempo marking of about 60 or if you don't have a metronome one beat per second. Say Toh, and this will get your
mouth open in a very uniform way that will allow you to breath with as little air noise as possible Think the Toh before you breath in.
Breath in for 4 counts and then exhaile for 4 counts fill as much of your lungs as you can without tension Do this twice
Then 3 counts in and out, as much as you can without tension, Then 2 counts in and out without tension, then 1 count in and out without
tension.
Pause to think, if you moved your entire air supply in and out in one beat, you just moved more air on one beat than any note on your horn
will ever take in one beat. You should have been able to do the one beat movement of air with no tension from the middle of your body all
the way out to your lips. Focus your thought on the air going out of your lips, and let your body do what it has done your whole life, move air in
and out very effecently. When you focus on your throught, tongue, chest, diaphragm, stomach, etc, etc, etc... you are focusing on things
your body already knows how to do, and for the most part these are parts of your body that you can't really do anything about changing,
However you can think Toh, for a nice uniformlly open orall cavity, and you can focus on the air going past the lips, when you focus here
the body will do everything else right, and you wont be tense while moving air.
Now try playing your tuba, with no tension while you breath. Play one note nice and open. Or try a piece of music you really know you can
play. The key to great sound on tuba is having no tension in your playing. This is hard because often the music is exciting, or tense, and we
tend to get tense in places where it will make our tone less than what we are capable of producing.
Good posture, NO tension lips to belt, let the body do what it knows how to do, focuse on air at the lips, and have fun playing!!!
I hope this makes sense