Re: Please school- mouthpieces and high range
Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2022 9:28 am
I agree with that at which I believe (??) royjohn is hinting…
A shallower mouthpiece and a smaller throat might slightly clarify the resonance of the highest pitches in your range, but would only likely add either no pitches to the top of your range or only one or so.
If really interested/motivated in playing higher than middle C or D or so, working on this stuff can be a bit embarrassing, because it doesn’t sound very good at first…so it’s probably best to do it in private, play out of some trombone book that creeps up into the middle part of the treble clef range, and see what happens. Failure can be expected, but - later - bad sounds begin to sound pretty good - and then really good.
I might wager that you can already buzz your lips at those higher-than-your-range pitch levels with no tuba in front of your lips; the high range of the tuba just isn’t really very high.
I have never bothered to solidify my range higher than c above middle C, and probably the only reason that I have bothered to develop it to that pitch level is so that pitches - that are several steps lower - are very solid. Some very old music – where we are actually covering parts not written for contrabass tuba – were written with a couple of pitches “way up there”, and when I rarely encounter modern era music with a few notes “way up there“, I assume that the composer/arranger is either an ignoramus or a doofus. Recently – in an orchestra pops concert (Christmas), I encountered an arrangement where some doofus arranger gave the tuba the solo line in the bridge to “The Christmas Song“… I can’t remember for sure, but I believe the top note may have been a G-flat or something… As I chose to not sound like a doofus (as playing it well would have sounded just about as odd as playing it poorly - on a big tuba), I just picked up my euphonium and played that phrase. The following paragraph is everything that the music director had to say about that:
A shallower mouthpiece and a smaller throat might slightly clarify the resonance of the highest pitches in your range, but would only likely add either no pitches to the top of your range or only one or so.
If really interested/motivated in playing higher than middle C or D or so, working on this stuff can be a bit embarrassing, because it doesn’t sound very good at first…so it’s probably best to do it in private, play out of some trombone book that creeps up into the middle part of the treble clef range, and see what happens. Failure can be expected, but - later - bad sounds begin to sound pretty good - and then really good.
I might wager that you can already buzz your lips at those higher-than-your-range pitch levels with no tuba in front of your lips; the high range of the tuba just isn’t really very high.
I have never bothered to solidify my range higher than c above middle C, and probably the only reason that I have bothered to develop it to that pitch level is so that pitches - that are several steps lower - are very solid. Some very old music – where we are actually covering parts not written for contrabass tuba – were written with a couple of pitches “way up there”, and when I rarely encounter modern era music with a few notes “way up there“, I assume that the composer/arranger is either an ignoramus or a doofus. Recently – in an orchestra pops concert (Christmas), I encountered an arrangement where some doofus arranger gave the tuba the solo line in the bridge to “The Christmas Song“… I can’t remember for sure, but I believe the top note may have been a G-flat or something… As I chose to not sound like a doofus (as playing it well would have sounded just about as odd as playing it poorly - on a big tuba), I just picked up my euphonium and played that phrase. The following paragraph is everything that the music director had to say about that: