Daily Tuba Routine Post

[Colby Fahrenbacher]

Quoting myself, because I've already responded to this question.

You've asked an impossible question because "the effects of warming up" don't suddenly stop after a certain period of time. Their benefits fluctuate as a function time and will vary from person to person and depend entirely on the situation. Which is exactly why Bloke can be right about what works for him while simultaneously completely wrong about what is best for others.

The point is maintaining a thoughtful, adaptable, and reasonable warm-up is, for most people, important for consistent high-level playing and preventing injury.

All the the examples that you have given can be true for you, while it can also be true that your exposure to injury risk is higher. That doesn't mean you WILL experience an injury, but that you are more likely to experience an injury.

[russiantuba]

All the the examples that you have given can be true for you, while it can also be true that your exposure to injury risk is higher. That doesn't mean you WILL experience an injury, but that you are more likely to experience an injury.

So this leads on another tangent Colby that relates to the post and has me intrigued (as many of your posts do, where we disagree and seem to argue and though you won't admit it, both come out as better people more enlightened). You state injury potential. Lips are a muscle, and from what I understand (not my field, but from trends I am seeing), that dynamic stretches (with movement) are being preferred over static stretches.

You mention you use long tones first. So did I until I added the art song. I would consider long tones to be static stretches, as you are just vibrating the lips, and honestly, until you go lower than a 4th, the difference on the lips in the buzz is minimal. This brings me back to my undergrad first lessons where I said I always felt tired after doing long tones and preferred slurred intervals. I then used it later to build muscle endurance. So, wouldn't exercises with movement be preferred?

With this being said, I used the brass gym for years, even drove out to Arizona to study it directly with Sam during my MM, and the first thing that was done was the Clarke Chromatics "first studies" at pp volume. I am starting to wonder if this helped a ton without realizing it at the time. I noticed a lot of Phil Sinder's new routine has more movement in the "tone" exercises.

@Colby Fahrenbacher I do not want to totally change up the routine you have been doing for nearly 20 years, but would you consider switching the routine up from long tones and starting with the turn studies (assuming the Jacobs ones) and see if there is any difference for you? And before you do, with the newer findings in physical therapy and athletic training with dynamic stretches, do you have any opinions on this for injury prevention in brass playing?

[je]

In my experience, two activities stand out for which physical warmup is critical. One is rock climbing, which involves lots of static muscle tension in the forearms. The other is playing brass in the upper register, again with varying degrees of static muscle tension. Admittedly, tuba is the least sensitive of all brass in this regard. While injury sans warmup seems possible under extreme playing conditions, reduced endurance is a given.

The discussion of long tones is really interesting to me, and it has me considering ways to improve the first ~3 minutes of my warmups, which transition from physical to mental in under 10 minutes. In those first few minutes I've typically done ascending groups of descending long tones without giving much thought to their relative effectiveness. Incorporating intervals much sooner may allow for a shorter and/or more effective routine.

[bloke]

@russiantuba

As far as muscle strength and muscle flexibility etc., I have found that bending pitches both directions - and doing it at various volume levels - is more useful than typical long tones (and a bit less dreadfully boring as well, at least in my experience). Four, five, or six measure long tones with crescendos and diminuendos - from softest to loudest are something that I typically only do these days when trying to recover from upper respiratory infections, in order to get my lungs working as they did before being ill, and to get my lungs to execute those types of tones without triggering the cough reflex once I've recovered. Static pitch tone production really doesn't present much of a challenge - particularly once someone has taught themselves how to control the pitch through crescendos and diminuendos. It's tone production across registers - landing on pitches that are perhaps an octave or a good bit farther away than an octave away, while keeping the quality of the sound consistent - is what I find most challenging, and that's another way that I work on recovery (after being crazy busy with repairs for weeks, etc.) of my best levels of tone production. Descending scales that move pretty quickly - while controlling the resonance of every single pitch on the way down and landing on a nice sounding pitch: that's something that I have found to be of particular use in regards to tone production. Again I'm not referring to this as a "warm up" or a routine, but am referring to it as practicing the execution of things that are found in music, and not necessarily the very first thing I do when I get out my instrument. I guess we all are afraid of different things, and if someone's afraid of injury and views doing particular things will avoid it, that's what they're going to do. LOL...Mostly I've injured my lips due to my own clumsiness, such as wacking myself in the mouth with the mouthpiece when moving the instrument into position or trying to pull something loose on a damaged instrument and whacking myself in the lips with my own fist. I've just never experienced any physical lip injuries from playing, though it being none of my business, it doesn't affect me one way or the other whether others feel concerned regarding this. Again, I just don't associate playing the tuba with being an athletic thing. Rather, it's a pretty easy thing. I also don't think all that much about airflow, as the objective is not to move air through the giant funnel. Rather, the objective is to vibrate the air column inside the funnel...which I can do as long as I have taken in enough air to last through the phrase at hand.

pitch-bending:
I bend them as far away from an instrument's preferred pitch level as possible in both directions while striving to maintain a marketable sound. People talk about instruments offering wide or narrow so-called "slots", but it seems to me that an instrument that offers most all pitch centers close to where we want to play those pitches most of the time anyway, yet with wide slots, and then with our own embouchures also offering wide slots, plus the ability to comfortably move slides for additional help in resonance and centering... as long as our ears work as they should, and as long as we are paying attention to the keyboard tuning, as so much of what we play these days involves an equal temperament+stretch-tuned keyboard (which is either quite prominent or outright amplified), this sort of pitch-stretching exercise improves not just our ability to produce a marketable sound in all registers, but also to produce a marketable sound in all registers regardless of where we have to place our pitches... I even go farther with this and practice attacking different pitches (resolutely) quite flat, a bit flat, (so-called) in tune, a bit sharp, and quite sharp. I have found that this has just about eliminated misfires, as I've moved to B-flat instruments - which require more accuracy in all aspects of playing than do comparable C instruments.

[bloke]

In addition to dopamine brain secretions and who knows what else, here's another more recently discovered chemical reason why playing music makes us feel better and relieves depression:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/522565407 ... 7S9Ucbxw6v

[Colby Fahrenbacher]

So this leads on another tangent Colby that relates to the post and has me intrigued (as many of your posts do, where we disagree and seem to argue and though you won't admit it, both come out as better people more enlightened). You state injury potential. Lips are a muscle, and from what I understand (not my field, but from trends I am seeing), that dynamic stretches (with movement) are being preferred over static stretches.

You mention you use long tones first. So did I until I added the art song. I would consider long tones to be static stretches, as you are just vibrating the lips, and honestly, until you go lower than a 4th, the difference on the lips in the buzz is minimal. This brings me back to my undergrad first lessons where I said I always felt tired after doing long tones and preferred slurred intervals. I then used it later to build muscle endurance. So, wouldn't exercises with movement be preferred?

With this being said, I used the brass gym for years, even drove out to Arizona to study it directly with Sam during my MM, and the first thing that was done was the Clarke Chromatics "first studies" at pp volume. I am starting to wonder if this helped a ton without realizing it at the time. I noticed a lot of Phil Sinder's new routine has more movement in the "tone" exercises.

@Colby Fahrenbacher I do not want to totally change up the routine you have been doing for nearly 20 years, but would you consider switching the routine up from long tones and starting with the turn studies (assuming the Jacobs ones) and see if there is any difference for you? And before you do, with the newer findings in physical therapy and athletic training with dynamic stretches, do you have any opinions on this for injury prevention in brass playing?

I'm not versed in this level of nuance enough to make any kind of definitive statements, and I doubt there are few (if any) on this forum who could. My instinct is to say that we can't simply equate "static vs dynamic" to "long tone vs turn study". I don't think it's that simple, and I don't think static would apply to long tones as cleanly as you might think. Before any of us make any comments about what exercises are considered static or dynamic, I think an actual expert on the subject would need to be involved.

Regarding starting with turn studies, that's actually how Mickey's warm-up book is set up. When we did studio warm-ups, we usually alternated between long tones and turn studies to start. Since it's the two octave version (yes Jacobs ones), an F tuba warmup day usually resulted in playing high Fs and Gs in the first 30 seconds of picking up the tuba. Sure, they can be dropped an octave, but I found it more conducive to just start with long tones and then move to turn studies. Both are warm-up type exercises, but they focus on very different things and can complement each other well. Even on CC tuba, I found that starting with long tones meant I could focus on producing an easy, relaxed, beautiful sound, then moving to turn studies meant I could focus on the motion of translating that sound across the full range of the instrument.

[russiantuba]

@Colby Fahrenbacher interesting approach. I’ve personally done long tones first thing (before the recent addition of a melodic piece which has changed everything for the better) because I wanted to focus on the tone I was trying to get (I do a lot with playing around with tone color in my playing for musical effect).

Mickey never showed me his warm up book, would love to see it and see how it compares to the one my teacher did (which supposedly inspired the brass gym. My teacher was a classmate of Mickey). Maybe we can compare these at the next audition (I’m big into daily routines and concepts to use not only for myself but to give to students).

I haven’t done the turn studies in a while but they are melodic. I might add some of these and redo my routine. I did notice doing Phil Sinder’s method that started with movement was comfortable.

[bloke]

Long tones offer a couple of benefits:
One is to self-teach how to control pitch between extreme soft and loud. If just playing a static volume long tone, I don't see that accomplishing anything other than burning up time on the clock.
Another benefit is to learn how to diminuendo to nothing. I'm not sure that this technique has been mastered by the majority of brass players, and I believe it's useful. String players do it all the time. It's an amazing musical effect. I've had trombone players - who either were subbing in sections that I normally played in, or I was subbing in sections that they normally played in - ask me, "Did you just fade away to nothing?" It's a lot easier skill to master than - say - lip trills, and is something that can be used extremely often as a musical device, as opposed to almost never. As I said several posts back, if there are some people who believe that long tones prevent injury or that a 10 to 30 minute ritual of combined exercises prevents injury...obviously everyone interacts with the world based on their own beliefs. I also stated that I do things that other people incorporate into their pre-music-playing rituals, but I intermingle them in practice sessions. I also pointed out the value of being able to play well immediately, as - so often - that's what we're expected to do, and even with an instrument that's not up to operating temperature.

Micky Moore is a wonderful person and a great player. I went out of my way to hear him play when his University's quintet was touring. I offered him several highly-deserved compliments on the performances of the individual works on their program, and he mentioned a (pre-YouTube era) recording of me doing the J. Williams (LOL - with a sorely under-rehearsed orchestra, with a mixture of half and half wretched players and professionals, recorded on a drugstore cassette recorder sitting under one of the worst violinists' chairs) that was apparently being re-recorded and passed around via cassette. I was flattered that he had bothered to listen to it and - in-particular - that he thought well of it.

All sorts of musicians find different paths to success playing the same instruments. Many players' individual paths work for a lot of people, but they aren't the only paths. A path doesn't need to become a dogma, and it's probably a good idea to explore more than one path. In my 40s, I drove all over the place and studied with several prominent players whose suggested roads to success - to say the least - didn't completely overlap. Several times, I would do a crazy driving route and study with several of them over the same weekend. My mind was all jumbled with seemingly conflicting suggestions by the time I got home, but - after about rwo weeks - my mind would sort out all the things that I had remembered hearing, and - rather than the specific paths towards the necessary goals, what would remain in my head would be the goals themselves. Once the goals were clear, I was able to come up with my own paths (which probably ended up being hybrid blends of all of those suggestions as well as some of my own ideas).

I would strongly recommend studying with several successful players, and - if possible - do it at the same time like I did. I think we need to find our own way, rather than being a carbon copy of our single selected studio teacher. There's one prominent player I only studied with once, because I wasn't particularly impressed with their playing, nor their ideas, and nor their teaching methods which involved a lot of braggadocio and name dropping - as well as insisting that I stop studying with all the other players. I'm not mentioning any of those players' names, and also will not reveal the name of the one to whom I never returned - not even in a private message. Interestingly, that shall-remain-anonymous player's own teacher is someone who ended up sitting in the audience a couple of times I was involved in either regional T.U.B.A. recitals or "oktubafest" type events which occurred in the past. Seeing that person's highly respected teacher in the audience made my eyebrows go up just a bit (with hopes of playing my best), and actually both times that person chased me around to the wings and handed me some nice compliments. Needless to say, those two encounters offered me a great deal of encouragement.

Something else I would strongly encourage players (between the ages of 15 and forever) to do is to study with fine musicians who are not tuba players. I tend to believe that tuba pedagogy is just now beginning to catch up with vocal and other instrument pedagogy, and - still to this day - there is a tendency in tuba pedagogy to work on the technical and the "how to get around the thing being huge" types of problems, while tending to neglect the musical/phrasing aspects of music, which - without those aspects being Incorporated and probably number one on the list - tuba players can end up functioning as little more than "bass machine athletes" (eh?), with musical phrasing never having never become second nature, and - necessarily - with music directors having to dictate the phrasing to them whenever there's any sort of little tuba solo occurring in an orchestral work. I might suggest seeking out a principal horn player in a fine orchestra, perhaps a really gifted tenor singer (as perhaps they are more accustomed to listening to music in our octave range as opposed to sopranos...?), a principal oboist, or perhaps a principal cellist. When I've done that, my own playing begin to change, as I begin to think much more about that (ie. the music) which is the most important. I would also encourage learning to read off the treble clef both B flat transposition and concert pitch. Oboe solo music range nearly overlaps completely with the tuba range two octaves lower, and - though oboe music can become quite technical - it's not quite as gymnastic as some of the flute or violin works. Studying some oboe solo literature or even orchestral excerpts for oboe on our own and listening to fine oboe players play them on recordings, we can mimic their phrasing and learn how to play musically and how to phrase from oboists, because some of the finest musicians and some of the most artfully-phrasing musicians tend to be oboists.

Today (referring back to avoiding being dogmatic), I'm not playing any of the mouthpieces that - likely - median numbers of tuba players use, I'm continuing to look for even more player-friendly mouthpieces - rather than buying into the "choose one mouthpiece and stick with it" dogma, I've questioned the "why" of C tubas and (in this late era of my life) walked away from them simply to find out what would happen if I did that, I'm not interested in a piston F tuba - nor one that's designed to sound or play as if it's a contrabass tuba, I'm not one who dismissed the value of a cimbasso - just because I didn't own one, I'm playing quite a few things on euphonium that the overwhelming majority of tuba players probably view as F tuba excerpts, I won't allow myself to be pigeonholed as this or that type of tuba player in regards to styles, "schools of playing" (pfft), or whatever, yet I still work, and - not following anyone's else dogma - am somehow able to play.

[russiantuba]

Something else I would strongly encourage players (between the ages of 15 and forever) to do is to study with fine musicians who are not tuba players. I tend to believe that tuba pedagogy is just now beginning to catch up with vocal and other instrument pedagogy, and - still to this day - there is a tendency in tuba pedagogy to work on the technical and the "how to get around the thing being huge" types of problems, while tending to neglect the musical/phrasing aspects of music, which - without those aspects being Incorporated and probably number one on the list - tuba players can end up functioning as little more than "bass machine athletes" (eh?), with musical phrasing never having never become second nature, and - necessarily - with music directors having to dictate the phrasing to them whenever there's any sort of little tuba solo occurring in an orchestral work.

I suggest this to many who are auditioning for orchestras (and should do it myself since apparently I put myself on the circuit recently), as there isn’t going to be a tubist at your audition. I listen to trumpet and trombone colleagues. The warmup routine I use, as I mentioned, is a trombone based one.

One of the things I regret is not wanting to focus on excerpts, when I had one of the best as a teacher. However, his approach to solo repertoire and general musicality can’t be beat. I have gotten to work with some pretty good conductors, and have listened to masterclasses of great violinists, pianists, etc., and all teach similar to how he taught. After graduating with my DMA, I’ve had several string players and woodwind players tell me how lucky I was to study with him, and how much they respect him as a musician.

I guess I didn’t realize what I had when I had it and should have listened more and tripled down.

[bloke]

A whole bunch of college studio teachers have only played in youth and university orchestras, a few more play in freeway philharmonics, and even fewer play in full-time orchestras. Typically, those who play in full-time orchestras teach at institutions which ask very high tuition rates.
F tuba solos and brass quintet recitals have been - overwhelmingly - many of their performance outlets.

Some-if-not-many - I'm sure - expose their students to and assign their students orchestra (and wind band) audition excerpts.
Mine did not, just fwiw, though they played in a fairly busy professional orchestra - and even though they photocopied every single orchestral work they ever played. I had to do my own research, and check lp's out of the library (whereby very few of recording engineers - in regards to the recordings available at that time - did much to bring out nor clarify the low brass in orchestral recordings).

[russiantuba]

A whole bunch of college studio teachers have only played in youth and university orchestras, a few more play in freeway philharmonics, and even fewer play in full-time orchestras. Typically, those who play in full-time orchestras teach at institutions which ask very high tuition rates.
F tuba solos and brass quintet recitals have been - overwhelmingly - many of their performance outlets.

I guess I lucked out as I studied with one at a flagship state school that could teach and played fulltime in an ICSOM orchestra.

Many of the orchestral guys aren’t able to teach. I have a friend who studied with a top orchestral player (not known to teach) that the best teaching advice on an excerpt was “play it better”.

[bloke]

A whole bunch of college studio teachers have only played in youth and university orchestras, a few more play in freeway philharmonics, and even fewer play in full-time orchestras. Typically, those who play in full-time orchestras teach at institutions which ask very high tuition rates.
F tuba solos and brass quintet recitals have been - overwhelmingly - many of their performance outlets.

I guess I lucked out as I studied with one at a flagship state school that could teach and played fulltime in an ICSOM orchestra.

Many of the orchestral guys aren’t able to teach. I have a friend who studied with a top orchestral player (not known to teach) that the best teaching advice on an excerpt was “play it better”.

Of course, I have no idea who this is...and don't care to know (not even via messenger), but instrumental music isn't words...and IF the teacher plays during lessons (and plays REMARKABLY WELL) I'd just as soon broom the rhetoric, and have them shake their head "yes" or "no" and - if "no" - play it (again, and - if necessary - again-and-again) until the student gets it and - obviously - comes pretty close to mimicking it.
...I'm not one who believes that teaching is the most important part of learning. Rather, I'm one who views that learning is the most important part of teaching (ie. up to the student to glean the knowledge from the knower/doer). I've learned some about music from insightful teachers (particularly if they played well), but I've mostly learned about music from performances and recordings. That having been said, it's up to me to hear what I'm not doing or am doing - as opposed to relying on someone else to point those things out. Am I implying that its a bit easier to learn about playing music after already understanding a good bit about music itself? why yes...Yes, I am.

[Colby Fahrenbacher]

Well I'm glad Bloke didn't go into education because he clearly would have made a horrible teacher. His typical "it worked for me, so it must be the best way and work for everyone else" is a textbook example of bad pedagogy. Fortunately, there are very few teachers on this forum to misconstrue his comment as "good advice". To say that pedagogical practices have come a long way since Bloke was in school is a massive understatement.

Great teachers are effective communicators, musically and verbally, and teach the student in the room, not the student that they wish was in the room.

[russiantuba]

I decided to add a couple minutes of Clarke Chromatics before today's session. I don't play based on feel, but based on sound, but I knew even before playing my lips were tight along with my jaw (had an emergency dentist appointment late last week and my jaw where my last wisdom tooth is tends to lock a bit after those). However, I felt more focus and center when I got to the long tones after those than normal along with control. I think I read something pedagogical a couple years back in passing about playing soft, moving notes first thing to actually warm up the lips. These didn't go exceptionally well, as I play them soft (not a naturally soft player) and working to build control.

I am still gaining cross training muscles back in the daily routine. This could be a 1 off lucky occurrence so I will add this on and see how it does long term.

@Colby Fahrenbacher I was curious if you ever do cross training between horns in the same session (i.e. audition prepping) and how you approach that. Before you hate me more, you have provided some great discussion and given me some ideas on this, and want to continue this chat regarding 2 horn use in the same session.

[bloke]

I remember Gene talking about his first rehearsal with the CSO backstage - with all the brass player's bells glowing at ffff+ and him believing they were screwing with the newbee...

...but no, that's what they did, and that's the amount of racket that Sir Georg expected...
I remember that recollection, but don't recall any reports of injuries.

[Colby Fahrenbacher]

I remember Gene talking about his first rehearsal with the CSO backstage - with all the brass player's bells glowing at ffff+ and him believing they were screwing with the newbee...

...but no, that's what they did, and that's the amount of racket that Sir Georg expected...
I remember that recollection, but don't recall any reports of injuries.

Nice anecdote. That's not how risk works, but thanks for trying.

[Colby Fahrenbacher]

@Colby Fahrenbacher I was curious if you ever do cross training between horns in the same session (i.e. audition prepping) and how you approach that. Before you hate me more, you have provided some great discussion and given me some ideas on this, and want to continue this chat regarding 2 horn use in the same session.

I don't do too much swapping of horns in a practice session these days, mostly because I don't play too many gigs that require it. I usually try to keep things simple and only play one horn on a gig, if possible.

When it was something I was actively practicing, I would try to normalize the switch by incorporating it into my warmup/fundamentals, alternating horns each exercise. To avoid only playing certain exercises on each horn, which horn I started with would alternate each day.

When practicing excerpts for auditions, I often used a random number generator to randomize the list and circumstances leading up to each excerpt. If I was aiming for more of a run of excerpts, I would make the switch relatively quick. If I was planning on digging in and practicing an excerpt, I might play a few notes on the horn before working on it.

To tie together the mental-physical part of this conversation, all of the time spent physically playing each instrument helped me develop a tactile memory of each horn. When I first play-tested my rotary PT6, I was switching from a 1291 but had been playing my PT16 for some time. When I went to play my first note, I automatically tried to play a low F open, not because I didn't know how to play CC tuba, but because my PT6 felt like my PT16 in my hands and put me into an F tuba mindset.

So to me, part of cross training is building that internal memory of mouthpiece/horn/excerpt through the physical execution and association of each (which is in part why I don't like change equipment frequently. Although the change can keep things fresh, it also weakens that association some).

[bloke]

I make sure my students understand the difference between warming up and Exercising, and the purpose for both.