not a poll... ie. the only way to respond is with words.

[bloke]

What percentage of your playing time do you spend playing your instrument without a book in front of your face or without playing exercises or tunes/solo pieces that you have memorized?

I just realized that I almost never see people playing instruments - which are categorized as orchestral instruments - without music stands in front of them or without playing things that they memorized. To me this means it almost everyone - who plays orchestral instruments - always plays other people's music. I'm not attempting to be quasi profound, but it's just something that occurred to me.

[bloke]

I practiced nothing but lip slurs today for about 20 minutes

[bloke]

yeah...I suppose I was thinking more in terms of tunes/songs/melodies/etc...but no answer is a wrong answer.

Lord knows: Lip slurs are beneficial. I remember when I finally decided to teach myself (notice: not "go ask someone how") to do them, and then work on really "slicking them out". I could use a good bit of "touch-up" on them, today...so @LeMark your post serves as an excellent reminder...(and there's nothing that motivates practice/striving for improvement more than a new tuba, is there?)
...PARTICULARLY since I have discovered that the Miraphone 98 (shockingly) offers easy access to them (and some tubas just do not).
two non-starters for me:
- tubas that require main slide triggers
- tubas that are too "stiff" (and some of my elephant room "tests" beyond intonation evaluation - rather than Fontane di Roma - are lip slurs...with another set of "tests" being checking how easy (in various ranges) it is to fade to absolute nothing. (re: 'fade to nothing": uber pet peeve: mouthpipe tubes which begin way too large)

[LeMark]

I wish this was a "maintenance" thing and not "holy crap, I have let my chops fall apart"

there is one piece I would love to be able to play on an upcoming recital,and the 4th movement is a slurring nightmare.

Any guesses what it is?

[bloke]

.. I guess I really don't have a clue, as I'm really not a fan nor a scholar - regarding solo literature written for the tuba...(??)

[Snake Charmer]

As long as you play from sheet music in your gigs you have to practice playing what you see in front of you in the way it is written (with all pencil marks from rehearsals).
The difference is when it comes to exercises. There are a lot of books out there which release the buyer/player from thinking as every simple pattern is written out in a lot of keys.
I love to work on Bordogni melodies, often wth the sheet in front of me. Sometimes I play the really familiar ones in a different key or begin to mix them up and create new ones. Around 1/3 of my private playing time I don't use sheet music and just play what comes to my mind. Creating exercises, melodies, trying out old or new tunes around the circle of fifths. Just keep life interesting!

[donn]

Once in a while I sit around and just let it rip with whatever comes into my head. Did that for a while yesterday evening. I guess more likely to involve my bass tuba, than the contrabass, but not exclusively.

[LeMark]

.. I guess I really don't have a clue, as I'm really not a fan nor a scholar - regarding solo literature written for the tuba...(??)

Not a solo. Actually a really fun ensemble

[gocsick]

Once a month I play in a trad Jazz jam and a few scattered gigs a year are "street jazz" or second line kind of things. So i practice from lead sheets or real books a bit. I like to put on random songs and try to improvise bass line for them. It doesn't always go well.

[BRS]

.

[bloke]

Sometimes when I'm driving, the radio gets really annoying, and I start thinking of songs that I like which I've never played. I play them in my head in an easy key and let my fingers do the valves in whatever particular length of tuba that I've chosen in my head. If I do pretty well and catch all the intervals - which are defined by the chords of course, I might try to move it to a less familiar key (like B major or G flat major or something) and see if I can make it through the song with my fingers against the steering wheel without getting confused or losing my place in the song. I usually try to pick songs that my brain knows how they sound, and things that feature unusual chord changes or unusual key changes in their bridges, or something like that.
I'm keeping my mind busy and challenging my mind at the same time. At home, I do some of the same stuff, but it's actually a lot easier when you've (I've) got a tuba in your lap to let you know that you've made all the right choices or not.

I honestly didn't intend on posting this, but after I asked the question, I realized that it's something that I do in the car.

Sometimes, I believe that I know how an entire song goes and get to a certain place and realize that I don't. That encourages me to listen to the song and teach myself the parts that were previously vague to me. A fringe benefit is that I often hear passing chords in really good rendition that I hadn't noticed in the past, and additionally enhance my card file on a new-to-me song.

[Mary Ann]

depends on the instrument -- when I rarely get out the violin, never sheet music. It is such a part of me that music just flows out, a wide variety of sounds, a form of meditation that I get lost in. The brass and double reeds, I'm not good enough to have that happen, and doubt I will be, although double reeds may get there if I live long enough.

[Jim Williams]

I do this and make my students do this:

Play simple tunes by ear, without music, then transpose them to various keys.
I find this exercise to be one of the top confidence-builders in a student and a top factor in developing overall musicality.

Last week, a sixth-grader was thrilled when she discovered she could play "Happy Birthday" in the key of E flat without music.

An advanced high-schooler was excited when he played a hymn tune he liked in four keys, including E.

Since organized education at all levels demands so little of students, almost all students I have encountered--in Finance, Statistics, brass playing, or otherwise, in 40+ years of teaching--welcome a challenge and almost always rise to meet it. Seeing a student achieve the joy of discovery is just as rewarding for me today as it was over 40 years ago.

[bloke]

I do this and make my students do this:

Play simple tunes by ear, without music, then transpose them to various keys.
I find this exercise to be one of the top confidence-builders in a student and a top factor in developing overall musicality.

Last week, a sixth-grader was thrilled when she discovered she could play "Happy Birthday" in the key of E flat without music.

An advanced high-schooler was excited when he played a hymn tune he liked in four keys, including E.

Since organized education at all levels demands so little of students, almost all students I have encountered--in Finance, Statistics, brass playing, or otherwise, in 40+ years of teaching--welcome a challenge and almost always rise to meet it. Seeing a student achieve the joy of discovery is just as rewarding for me today as it was over 40 years ago.

yes to all.
We're now into a different topic (teaching/learning), but I (and many others) believe that most all institutional education is overwhelmingly geared towards programming people to follow instructions (which is why so much of that which is taught in institutional education is simply not so) - whereby the "student" - believing that false narratives are the truth - serves the purpose of those who benefit from the children (children ages 4 - 24) being "educated".

point:
By the same token, it has occurred to me that institutional public MUSIC education has the purpose of teaching students to be able to march and play tunes between halves of football games (with additional incentives/carrots being competitions/trophies/get-out-of-school trips the theme parks/etc.) whereby the second half of the year is devoted to working towards additional "winning" at music-like endeavors: competing in executing formula-written and difficulty-graded music - resulting in paint-by-number music. ie. very little emphasis on "the pleasure of playing tunes", and primary emphasis on "outdoing".

[TheTuba]

Quite often! I find that I am better able to focus on my own tendencies and being able to actively correct when playing without music in front of me. I try to memorize as much stuff as I can just so I can get into that zone.

[Wally]

I used to do a fair amount of work with trad jazz bands on both tuba and upright bass and never used music, faking tunes I didn't know as best I could by ear and making good friends with the banjo player. These days all my playing is orchestral and concert band, and I almost always have music in my face.

[arpthark]

At home, I do a lot of improvising on the keyboard and on the tuba. When I do read music at home (on either), it's either flexing my skills as a hack pianist playing through a Mozart or Haydn sonata or some such, or on the tuba playing along with the Dallas Winds on some Holst or Grainger, or maybe a good Sousa march.

In public, 99.9% of the music I have ever performed on the tuba, including 100% of the music I have ever played for remuneration, has been with sheet music in front of my face.

[donn]

Speaking of remuneration and sheet music - I have at times played in ensembles that are closer to folk music roots, and while in some cases we learned the music from the page, it never came along to the show. (Well, almost never - I remember an occasion where a new trumpet player had a piece he hadn't learned dialed up on his cellular phone. Which timed out and went to sleep on him in the middle of the tune.) While it was partly just a matter of convenience, as the sheets would have been an encumbrance, I think having the tune in our fingers so to speak, allowed us to put more into our playing.

[Tubeast]

One of my favorite subjects to share with musical buddies...
Every practise session of mine will cover scale work and some etudes that I´ve known for ages:
When I break out the Kopprasch, I realize I may look at the notes, but don´t actually read them.

I play old tunes from memory, a lot, and might improvise 2nd voices, bass accompaniment or alternate passages / endings that I think might make sense if I can´t reproduce a melody exactly.
That´ll be songs such as "When I was Seventeen" or well-known movie themes,
German and Austrian radio tune classics...
I also switch between F and BBb horns to play the same pieces.

I consider it desirable to be able to play anything I might be able to whistle, on whichever horn that might populate my stable.

That pratice is making me suck at reading music, though...

[bloke]

When I haven't read music for quite a while, I have to get back into the habit of looking two bars ahead, so I can be an effective reader again.