Coming up towards the end of the month is Pictures... (Yes, this engagement is tied in with me trying to hurry and finish repairing all three of those very beat up early UMI Conn model 20K sousaphones, because the school that owns them and the orchestra venue are both far away from me but close to each other.)
Between my two euphoniums, it's going to be easier to play it on the $100 ugly brown 1970's Yamaha 321. The sound has been somewhat nasal (small shank receiver) but the pitch is a little bit easier to bend in tune for that modal solo, yet some pitches ride sharper than they should with the small shank and the required small shank mouthpiece.
Last night, I decided to get a little bit more serious.
I had a large shank receiver (removed from a cheap/new Chinese tuba that I sold new, whereby I substituted the receiver for a standard shank receiver prior to selling it) in my desk drawer that's been sitting in there for years. It was slightly undersized, but absolutely large shank. I put it on the lathe and bored it out to full large shank size plus a little bit, and then I reverse tapered the so-called "gap" in the back of it so that the exposed part of the receiver would taper outward towards the outward tapering mouthpipe tube, so - by reverse tapering the last 5/32 of an inch of the receiver, I - in reality - "forward tapered" it.
Now that I've put that receiver on the Yamaha, I'm able to use this old Warburton-made mouthpiece (dating back to the pre-Yamaha Canadian Brass years years) which was made for the Canadian Brass line and sold as a bass trombone mouthpiece. In reality, it's a thin rimmed bass trombone/euphonium Helleberg-shaped mouthpiece. This rim is remarkably thin and - after playing high range etudes for a half an hour or so - starts to feel like a cookie cutter... but that's not the fault of the mouthpiece. That is the fault of ME mashing the mouthpiece into my face - due to being tired.
I now feel like I've got the equipment I need to play the solo movement to my own satisfaction.
My daily practice strategy is to play three or four long (probably: Book 2) Rochut exercises on the euphonium with that mouthpiece, and then play three or four long Rochut etudes on the contrabass tuba (which I like for all the other movements, even though Unclebeer is shaking his head.
ACTUALLY, what I just said isn't quite true, because I've decided to cover all the muted passages (a couple of other movements)!with muted euphonium, as corking up a tuba mute for a tuba - which features a bell that's the same size as a Holton 345 bell - is ridiculous, and doesn't particularly sound very muted... so now Unclebeer is at least raising one eyebrow.
After playing those (multipage each) Rochut exercises, I'll probably go back and play through the Mussorgsky piece a couple of times. Maybe, I'll do that whole thing twice a day unless I'm totally exhausted from working (you know: the type of work that generates income or maintains one's property).
Already at this point, I can play through the solo movement three or four times - perhaps five or six - satisfactorily, but I think it's dangerous to go into a situation not being able to play something over and over and over and over and over and over, only being able to play it well a limited number of times.
Finally, even though the 321 carries this (unearned?) reputation for having great intonation, I'm playing the A-sharp (you know, supposedly the "tuning note") in the melody with 2-3 as well as playing the E-natural with that same fingering. Neither sounds stuffy with that alternate, and it flattens both of those pitches down to proper tuning, while leaving the main tuning slide where it needs to be for the rest of that modal melody. As known, there's also a brief accompaniment passage between the two solo passages, whereby there's a low B-natural, and I'm simply pulling the fourth slide out within a half inch of the quick in order to tune that with 2-4.
...so I believe I have all of the obstacles ironed out, and I just need to become more excellent at playing the solo passages.
probably a very controversial sidebar, which may trigger enough people to become the main topic:
There have been endless discussions about double buzzing and what causes it. I'm not willing to debate the following (LOL, other than to disagree with disagreement) because this is something that I have experimented with very extensively, found to be absolutely true, and won't be convinced otherwise...
Yes, it's related to being tired, but it's also related to allowing the lips to touch, because - when we become tired - we tend to close our lips down because it's easier to play with a less open embouchure. When we close our lips down to relieve the pain of tiredness, the lips tend to touch intermittently. When they touch randomly, it breaks the vibration and causes the vibration in the two individual lips to be interfered with and the pitch jumps down to the partial below the one attempting to be played. The lips should never touch, and vibrate as do a pair of oboe or bassoon blades on a double reed...
... so those who recommend a rest in order to eliminate a double buzz vs. those who recommend developing more strength...
BOTH of those groups of people are absolutely correct, but those who believe that the sound produced by brass instrument is produced by the lips bumping against each other - those are the people who are incorrect.
(Yes, when I'm getting tired playing the euphonium in the high range for quite a while, I start getting some intermittent double buzzes, and moving the lips away from each other ALWAYS stops it - 100% of the time.)
Yes, I'm sure that one of my colleagues would be glad to play the solo movement for me, but this might be my last time to play this piece, and I might as well play the whole thing - sink or swim.
