Getting back to TUBA mouthpieces...(not even the topic of the thread, which is typical and just fine
)...and any time someone starts boasting about their playing prowess, it's a pretty sure bet that they're full of it. I'll say this about myself:
I play well enough to be called first (when someone wants the best they can get locally, rather than their best friend's friend) in a modest size market of less than two million people. I know a lot of players nationally and internationally who play better than I do, and I've paid some of them to help me with insights on how to improve my own playing. I've played better than I do now in the past. I just don't practice very much anymore and I'm approaching 70, but I still seem to be called first and I live at least 50 minutes away from where most of the musicians around here live, and I'm too old to be a close buddy a very many of them at all.
To summarize, I'm competent, I know I'm slipping, but my services still seem to be in demand (such as tonight, where I'm playing a John Williams pops concert two hours from home, parked under the shade of a tree on a residential street - turning the air conditioner on every once in awhile with the seat back, with the radio on, falling asleep and waking back up, because I'm too cheap to rent a crappy hotel room - with traces of all sorts of disgusting things therein - for over $200.)
something else:
As I enter my '70s, I'm hearing some younger middle-aged local players who are pulling themselves up from playing "pretty well" to "quite well" in this area, and I'm sure that - pretty soon - those players are going to play better than I do, as they currently nearly (or perhaps: already) do.
All I'm going to say about my own playing is that - with the typical (as far as trends in boutique mouthpieces) TUBA mouthpiece throat sizes - which have crept up in the mid 8mm size (such as 8.5 and even up to 9) my playing, endurance, beauty of sound and ability to actually produce what I would describe as "exciting volume levels yet with a pleasing sound" is noticeably reduced.
8.2mm throats (with tuba mouthpieces) seems to have been quite common for a long time with popular mass-produced models, but (bucking trends) I'm creeping back towards below average throat sizes for tuba - 8.1mm 8mm, down in the sevens and so on and so forth.
I'm willing to admit that it might be because - as I'm aging and practicing less - I'm becoming more serious about discovering ways to play better with more ease and with the equipment making it easier. I'm no longer 20 years old and don't feel the need to brag about how large my mouthpieces are or how far I can throw a football or any of that sort of thing, (but if slightly smaller aspects here and there in regards to equipment define themselves as making it easier for me to play, why in the heck wouldn't it be easier for a 20-year-old to play as well. Just because they aren't old and decrepit doesn't mean that they need to work harder than is necessary, yes?)
What got me thinking more about this was the success that I have with the mouthpiece that I've developed for cimbasso playing.
That mouthpiece's throat size is really not much larger than any bass trombone mouthpiece throat size, yet I use it on a contra alto instrument in F, and that already excellent instrument is now so easy to play that I'm not thinking about playing it. I'm just making music with it (the goal of the design of any instrument).
The success of that mouthpiece for that specific purpose sent me down the rabbit hole of less is more (less metal on the face, less feel of metal against the face, less throat size, no cavernous cup depths - with only "regular deep" cup depths)....A more pronounced venturi is more. More available built-in resistance is more sound, more resonance, and more pleasing resonance towards more vibration and away from a "fog horn" vague type of sound. Using words to describe sounds, I'm not talking about "bright" verses "dark", I'm referring to sounds that are more easily interpreted by patrons' / consumers' ears (as - after all - I'm in the business of selling sound), and more easy to discern as sounds produced by individual instruments, yet pleasingly blending with other instruments.
(back to bass trombone for a moment)
I like the 59 pretty well, but (ignoring what's "average") I would still like to try a 59 on a bass trombone with a little bit smaller throat size, due to the success I've had in my own ease of playing and (again) ease of generating exciting/pleasing/easily-interpreted sounds with a more pronounced venturi (oh yeah: and with less practice time to play at the same or even higher proficiency level - even though well into the aging process).
Nothing is magic, but undeniably some things are eventually found by most (N?never by "all", whether it's because some people are anomalies, or because some people never get it) to function better than others (though the easier thing might feel wrong at first, because it's "just too easy"...??). I view the 1980s as having done a lot of damage and created several detours in regards to a lot of wind playing via giganticizing of various characteristics of all the wind instruments... Most features of which weren't helpful and simply demanded more practice time and more work for players to achieve about the same results as before.
That said, there's no doubt that there's better playing going on than ever in all aspects, but that's going to happen with anything. Look at sports and speeds of race cars and all those sorts of things, but what if the natural tendency to exceed what was done before is actually being made more difficult than it would otherwise be via detours in design of instruments and their mouthpieces that simply aren't helpful...?? (...or what if hundreds of copies of a one-off tuba - factory-shortened to C, yet extremely large, made in Michigan in the 1930s, and - very soon after receiving it new - it's first owner sold it to a student, because they wanted nothing to do with it - really isn't the best idea after all??)
