Tuba quartet/ensemble performance strategies - particularly if poorly voiced

[bloke]

It's not tiny...

32.3mm

The cup and throat are pretty darn shalliw/small for a tuba mouthpiece, though.

[bone-a-phone]

At least with tubas...
(having all these different rim CONTOURS and with all these various contours available in various EMBOUCHURE OPENINGS (ie. how much of the lips are exposed) in these little plastic draws here (all: threaded/interchangeable)...
...both the rim contour and the amount of lips allowed into the mouthpiece cup (I've discovered) change the sound (as well as ease of playing) more than I ever suspected (as what I always suspected was "zero").

I play the same rim contour on all tuba/tuba-related instruments, but the donut size (amount of buzzing lips exposed) varies by a full millimeter.
It's pretty easy to put "too much signal" into an instrument. My cimbasso sounds much "cleaner" with one millimeter less lips vibrating in the cup than (as with my monstrous kaiser B-flat) one millimeter more of lips vibrating.

Long ago, I bought into the "same rim for everything" (tuba) group-think...but then it occurred to me that I would NEVER use the rim that I use on ANY tuba with a euphonium...and (well...) got past that.

cimbasso (in F)...
I also recently realized that "just because the shallowest cup and smallest throat that I offer in my tuba mouthpiece line "works" with the cimbasso, that those still may not be small enough (YET I had tried several contrabass trombone mouthpieces on that instrument, which are all - obviously - too small)...so I came up with something shallower than anything else (I offer) with a smaller throat than anything else (I offer). re: cimbasso, that mouthpiece allows me to gain quite a bit (including being able to pick it up and play it, after leaving it in its case for a month or two) and it takes away nothing. To be specific, it cleaned up the sound, it sounds much more like a low-F trombone (vs. so many of these homemades) and (well...) my range (on that particular instrument, with a "real-and-not-squeal" sound) clicked up from middle-treble-clef B-flat up to upper-treble-clef D. OK...I don't NEED to play D's on that instrument, but the B-flats (which I DO encounter) are far more secure/clear/easy. low-to-stupid-low range: no sacrifices

The reason I went with the DE system was that I was having trouble moving between small tenor and large tenor. It would take me a week to transition between a 5g and a 6.5am. In DE, I use a single rim for all of those, about a 2.5g rim. For all tenors 500 bore to 547 bore. I tried to use the same for bass, but it didn't work at all, so I use a 112 (instead of 104) for bass. Plus, I use a slightly larger rim for euph, I think 106 or 108.

The larger rim just fit my face better. High tenor embouchure aperture doesn't take up the entire rim ID. It's just about 1 cm or so, depending on the range. The lower you go, the bigger the aperture gets.

For some people, there are sweet spots for rim diameter. A lot of tenor players use 104 and 106. Bass players tend to go around 112 and 116.

Doug makes pretty much a single rim contour, I think, although he has narrow to wide rims. I use the narrow mostly, but when I can't find narrow, I'll use a MW or whatever. For whatever weird reason, I'm kind of immune to rim contour and width issues. I can use the narrow 1G rims or the weird 2g rim. I even used a super wide 24aw when I played tuba for a while. Doesn't seem to bother me. Other people are much more picky about it, and get other rims put on DE underparts, or the other way around. The DE contour is pretty basic.

I get it that tuba mouthpieces have a wide range of rims and widths. I really can't comment on that. My experiment with tuba failed. It just required too much time and money to figure out what I needed to know. I keep up with the euph, though, and might cover some tuba parts on euph as appropriate.

Tying back to the topic at hand, I look at chamber ensembles as small vocal choirs. Choirs are made up of people with different voices, and they come together to form a particular sound. I don't think a quartet should have 4 perfectly matched sounds. They should each have personality (within a range of course). It's just more interesting to be able to distinguish one voice from another. If each part plays the melody once, you should be able to tell one player from another. All players on uniformly large instruments I think makes for a uniformly bland sound.

If you've ever heard the Capitol Bones play, you can tell how each player's personal style influences their individual equipment choice, which influences their sound.



This is a very tame tune for them, but you can hear that 5 instruments of the same basic length work together (I think) because they cover such a wide range, and don't get bogged down in the low parts.

Barbershop quartet. Close harmony of voices in the tenor and bass range, but the harmony isn't low, the "close" part of it is up high.

[bloke]

I have a trombone player friend who makes the same claim about "large rim fitting his face".

I tend to wonder if (rather) it's "I'm accustomed to a large rim"...
(By "large", their rim{s} seem to allow for a great deal of exposed vibrating lips (in the wide cups).
They also seem to be attracted to deeper V (euphonium-ish?) cups, and really large throats.

I truly believe their sound (even with their .547") would benefit with less exposed vibrating lips.
...It's difficult to hear them (including playing 1st parts)...very (overly?) mellow and (though I can see that they're working) just not that much sound...enough for a quintet, but hard to hear them in a large ensemble when everyone is forte or fortissimo...and a high trombone shouldn't encounter any of that sort of problem.

Rim sensitivity (likely) varies from player-to-player.
I keep most of my equipment out of its cases, and try to play the 33.2mm rim (deep-but-not-stupid-deep cup, and not stupid-large throat) on its instrument, the medium-shallow cup (with its 32.9mm rim - also conservative throat opening) on the shorter instrument, and I also pull out (F cimbasso) the quite shallow cup with the 32.3mm rim and the remarkably small (I'd call it "B-flat bass trombone mouthpiece-sized") throat.
If I MOSTLY play one of those three instruments, I try to carve out (at least) a few minutes to play the other two. I also try to grab the euphonium (two very different mouthpieces, both of which I use with it) and mess around with it, just a bit. Admittedly, I don't pull down the E-flat (same rim as the largest rim, but different cup) and play it very often.

Those instruments (at least, via my own judgement...admittedly no one's else) sound best with those amounts of lips exposed in the cups.
The rim CONTOURS (curvatures and widths of metal) are all the SAME.

I'm not really trying to be didactic or preachy...but (only) am relaying my own experiences. I'm really glad that I no longer do the "precisely one rim for everything" thing.

[bone-a-phone]

I have a trombone player friend who makes the same claim about "large rim fitting his face".

I tend to wonder if (rather) it's "I'm accustomed to a large rim"...
(By "large", their rim{s} seem to allow for a great deal of exposed vibrating lips (in the wide cups).
They also seem to be attracted to deeper V (euphonium-ish?) cups, and really large throats.

I grew up on a 5g mouthpiece and moved to a 104 rim actually after I stopped playing pro. So I was accustomed to something smaller. I kept cracking notes. In a lesson with DE he pointed out several things and asked me to just try a 104 rim. I was very skeptical because I didn't want to fall into that "bigger is better" trend that was active then. I stopped cracking notes, and was still able to get a great sound on my 88h and smaller horns.

I'm not using deep cups. The DE stuff I use is about as deep as 6.5 or 7 or 9. Maybe 11. I never get down to the 12c range. I just can't do that. I get so backed up when I play something that small.

And I'm definitely not a fan of large throats. There IS a (fading) trend toward outsized large mouthpieces for trombone players in general, but I think a lot of people are starting to get it about the nebulous sound lacking interest. I have a naturally dark sound, so I'm trying to use equipment to brighten the sound somewhat. The small cups help with that.

I truly believe their sound (even with their .547") would benefit with less exposed vibrating lips.
...It's difficult to hear them (including playing 1st parts)...very (overly?) mellow and (though I can see that they're working) just not that much sound...enough for a quintet, but hard to hear them in a large ensemble when everyone is forte or fortissimo...and a high trombone shouldn't encounter any of that sort of problem.

Yeah, I get that, and agree, except about the rim bit. On trombone, you've got a different embouchure that isolates the aperture more than the tuba (or even bass bone) embouchure. When I buzz without a mouthpiece, the buzz is limited to an area about 3/8"-1/4" wide. The rim doesn't define my embouchure. I think a lot of more successful high tenor bone players learned to play like that. To me, playing tuba feels like flapping your whole lip.

On tenor, I use DE's 2 shank for a C cup (on 500 bore), 3 for D cup (508), and 4 shank for E-G (522-547), so the shank (and throat) are all pretty conservatively sized. Even on bass I only use the 8 shank (9 on euph).

I'm not really trying to be didactic or preachy...but (only) am relaying my own experiences. I'm really glad that I no longer do the "precisely one rim for everything" thing.

Yeah, I get that. But to be clear, the "one rim for everything" for me only applies to tenors, not bass, not euph, and not tuba.

[bloke]

, , &

I don't know if you play any alto trombone, but would it apply to that?

Most of my trombone buddies play alto, tenor, and bass, other than my jazz buddies, who play something like 500 or 508 and have a 547 in the closet just in case... pun intended.

I appreciate you taking all the time you've taken to respond. You're offering me some insights.

[bone-a-phone]

I don't know if you play any alto trombone, but would it apply to that?

I played alto for a short time, and realized that (like tuba) it was going to take too much time (and money) to get good enough at it to be of any use to anyone. If it doesn't have a different sound than a tenor, there's no use in playing it. A lot, maybe most, people who play it just get a tenor kind of sound. To get that real alto sound (like a mournful trumpet if that makes any sense), you've got to have a very small mouthpiece, like a 15. And I just wasn't prepared to do that. I tried to play the same DE 104C2 that I use for my 48h, but it didn't sound alto-y to me. Some people go to the 12c for alto, and some try the bigger stuff. In my mind, anything bigger than a 15 just sounds like a tenor, especially on the bigger bore altos. If it doesn't sound different, there's no point, at least to me.

Altos used to be sub-500, like 465 or that range. In that size, they really have or should have a different sound. But they keep trying to make altos bigger and bigger. There were some for a while that were 547 (still Eb length). I can play just as high on my tenors as you ever need to on any alto part, and the alto is really a whole different set of positions and tuning characteristics, lip slur obsession, so I just didn't think I could do it justice and sold it.

Also, I find that most people who get altos get the Bb attachment. Some use that as a cheat. Just hold down the trigger, and play everything in tenor positions, so you never learn alto positions. What's the sense of playing an alto like that?

There are a lot of altos made, but I think the best were probably the Laetsch. Yamaha gets a lot of press, and of course Shires. Christian Lindberg did a lot for the Conn alto.

There's Michael Lake who specializes in jazz on the alto. Not a particularly characteristic alto sound, but jazz on an alto is a great gimmick.


This guy also plays some jazz. He's hard to watch on video, but he actually describes the sound concept very well.


Here's the tbone lick from Beethoven 5 on alto. I've performed this on tenor, and it's brutal (high F cold after 3 tacet movements). This is also a good alto sound, although it doesn't sound right with a modern orchestra, which seems to want that big 547 sound.


This appears to be a Conn 35h. I can't make out the mouthpiece, but it's a great alto sound. You can hear some trumpet in there, and some flugelhorn as well as a little tenor bone.


I did discover one thing about alto, though. If you show up to a trombone group with an alto, they'll never ask you to mess around with those pesky low parts.

I appreciate you taking all the time you've taken to respond. You're offering me some insights.

Oh, yeah, any chance I get to derail a perfectly good tuba quartet thread

[bloke]

My friend Ed is mostly a tenor player, but has taken on the tuba and funny little European rotary Alto E flat instruments, the double horn, and in one of the orchestras in which I play he mostly plays bass trombone and has played first/alto. He doesn't shy away from small mouthpieces, and I actually turned him on to the Bronx era Bach 22SC - which actually makes an amazing bass trumpet mouthpiece, though made on a trombone mouthpiece blank. Also has both a compensating euphonium and a European kaiser bariton, as well as an old style German tenor trombone large bore made by Miraphone... I'm thinking he also has a Miraphone bass trumpet, but decided - like me - that a King flugabone makes a better base trumpet than do expensive bass trumpets.

Here are some outtakes that he recorded via his tablet microphones (a couple of years ago) of a first rehearsal for a performance of Schubert 9. He was playing a Conn alto, the second player was playing a Thein large bore tenor with a crazy large kranz on the bell, and I was playing the F rotary contrabass that I built... basically what would have been used in original performances of this work - as far as lengths of instruments are concerned but - just like all the other instruments are today - larger and louder, though Ed does a very good job of getting a bright light sound on his alto, by not shying away from small mouthpieces.



If you think this is nuts, I also used the same instrument to play 3rd on Dvorak 7 recently, and - even more recently - the entire Mozart Requiem. I was pretty proud of myself re: the Requiem, because I was sitting next to a really fine bassoonist with probably a $75,000 bassoon, the overwhelming majority of what we played was in unison, and our unisons were really tight.
When I post stuff like this, bass trombonists typically get pissed off, because they are thinking about money that some trombone player didn't make.

[bloke]

Oh, yeah, any chance I get to derail a perfectly good tuba quartet thread