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Posted: **Mon May 18, 2026 3:12 pm**

https://tonyclem.blogspot.com/2026/05/i ... sings.html

Feel free to comment after!

Posted: **Mon May 18, 2026 5:21 pm**

tclements wrote: Mon May 18, 2026 3:12 pm hi
https://tonyclem.blogspot.com/2026/05/i ... sings.html

Feel free to comment after!

“…I played one (and only one) gig with Floyd Cooley in the SF, after which he informed me that I couldn’t work with him because I sounded ‘too much like Roger Bobo.’”

I thought that would be a plus.

Re: the focal dystonia after using a 6/4 York-type tuba:
What causes that? Do people just tend to over-blow because the horn is so big, and it stresses their muscles?
I’ve known people with focal dystonia, but the people I knew with it really didn’t want to talk about it, so I only generally know what it is.
Did Mr. Jacobs ever address focal dystonia, especially with the bigger horns? He didn’t get focal dystonia, and he’s the godfather of that kind of tuba. I would be very interested to know what he would have to say about something like that. He seemed to know the body so well that I can’t help but think he would have an answer.

Posted: **Fri May 22, 2026 6:01 am**

I think the 6/4 dystonia correlation is fascinating. The term seemed to come into being while I was in college, at the turn of the century.

Posted: **Fri May 22, 2026 12:30 pm**

My best friend has dystonia and he told me he can definitely see how a 6/4 York style CC can trigger it. Essentially, overworking and inefficiency can this.

Posted: **Fri May 22, 2026 12:56 pm**

Question -- how prevalent is FD in Europe? Surely, there's a whole lot more tuba playing happening there, and a whole lot less 6/4 BAT playing happening too.

Posted: **Fri May 22, 2026 2:37 pm**

russiantuba wrote: Fri May 22, 2026 12:30 pm My best friend has dystonia and he told me he can definitely see how a 6/4 York style CC can trigger it. Essentially, overworking and inefficiency can this.

I study with a prominent teacher who studied with a prominent teacher and performer of 6/4 tubas. He's told me his teacher would call 6/4 tubas "old man tubas"

"Chamber music in, big sound out" is mentioned every few lessons

One of my other teachers was not a 6/4 player, and happened to develop FD. This was the 90s when research into the condition was just taking off. A fabulous musician based on the recordings, but not someone I think people would consider a power player. I never heard him with with large orchestra to know for sure

Posted: **Fri May 22, 2026 3:11 pm**

There were several prominent tubists that played smaller horns (to my knowledge) that didn’t get FD—Toby Hanks, Sam Green, and Richard Watson come to mind.

Posted: **Fri May 22, 2026 3:13 pm**

russiantuba wrote: Fri May 22, 2026 3:11 pm There were several prominent tubists that played smaller horns (to my knowledge) that didn’t get FD—Toby Hanks, Sam Green, and Richard Watson come to mind.

Toby 100% had FD.

Posted: **Fri May 22, 2026 4:22 pm**

Focal dystonia, for me, was caused by chronic overbreathing, which can put you in a state of constant fight or flight and mess with the autonomic nervous system. That’s if I’m remembering my ten year old conversation with Jan Kagarice correctly.

That’s why I can absolutely see the correlation between 6/4 horns and dystonia. There are other factors, but I don’t have time or the expertise to put it all here.

Posted: **Fri May 22, 2026 4:30 pm**

bort2.0 wrote: Fri May 22, 2026 3:13 pm
russiantuba wrote: Fri May 22, 2026 3:11 pm There were several prominent tubists that played smaller horns (to my knowledge) that didn’t get FD—Toby Hanks, Sam Green, and Richard Watson come to mind.
Toby 100% had FD.

He didn’t play on larger tubas did he? I did study with Roger Rocco who didn’t, but he claimed his was due to paralysis by analysis and focusing on mechanics.

I guess I could trigger it to some people and injuries. Some people can do everything wrong in a sport and never get injured, and some do everything right and are always injured and just are more prone. As someone who runs, especially in older ripped shoes at times because good runners are expensive, I do a lot of things wrong. I’ve had one major fall a couple years back and a couple of hip and IT band tightness issues, I seem less prone, but I have seen others that doing 800 meters slow destroys their back.

Posted: **Fri May 22, 2026 4:40 pm**

russiantuba wrote: Fri May 22, 2026 4:30 pm
bort2.0 wrote: Fri May 22, 2026 3:13 pm
russiantuba wrote: Fri May 22, 2026 3:11 pm There were several prominent tubists that played smaller horns (to my knowledge) that didn’t get FD—Toby Hanks, Sam Green, and Richard Watson come to mind.
Toby 100% had FD.
He didn’t play on larger tubas did he? I did study with Roger Rocco who didn’t, but he claimed his was due to paralysis by analysis and focusing on mechanics.

I guess I could trigger it to some people and injuries. Some people can do everything wrong in a sport and never get injured, and some do everything right and are always injured and just are more prone. As someone who runs, especially in older ripped shoes at times because good runners are expensive, I do a lot of things wrong. I’ve had one major fall a couple years back and a couple of hip and IT band tightness issues, I seem less prone, but I have seen others that doing 800 meters slow destroys their back.

It’s not always about the horn size, it’s about inefficient playing, mental health conditions, and lord knows what else. The largest horn I ever played on was a 1291 CC. I also had a couple of really bad horns that caused me to over breathe and develop bad habits for them to work.

The one thing about dystonia, there doesn’t seem to be a silver bullet cure. I’ll wager to say the same goes for the onset. I could point out some severely inefficient players who don’t have it. I think some folks are make predisposed to it.

Posted: **Fri May 22, 2026 5:06 pm**

I'm not a teacher (and only report what I personally do), but I concentrate on the sound (as concentrating on "the proper mechanics" never seemed to get me anywhere as NOR DID "doing what so-and-so hero-player does"), as well as experimenting to discover the EASIEST (vs. necessarily the "proper") ways to accomplish the techniques and type of resonance that I've seeked to be able to achieve.
At XX years old (old), I probably can't do everything I could do 40 years ago
(Hell, I barely practice, YET - truth be told - I can do most things that I could always do),
but I've never been NOT able to play (though - early on - some of the comical things that I did in order to comply with "proper" technique cause me to smh, when I think back).
Also, I've never freaked out when - suddenly - I encountered some dysfunction in my playing.
Rather than "muscling though" a problem (ie. "bloke, if you do this thingie every day in your 'routine', you can work out that problem"), I set the instrument down for a week or two and catch up on other endeavors. When I return, the dysfunction (every single time) has disappeared.

So many mouthpiece rim designs (as our teeth gap - unlike the other brass - varies so wildly, from above the staff to our very lowest pitches) tend to pin the mouthpiece down at one place on our face, that many of us develop embouchure "shifts". (I used to have one of those, until I came up with a rim that would slide, rather than having to be picked up and relocated beyond a certain range of pitches).

My current "main" tuba features an "Amercan/York-like" shaped 6/4 bell and body, a bore significantly larger than .750" and a two-feet longer bugle than with the "American/York-style" 6/4 tubas. It produces a sound whereby I don't feel any need to push myself to any of my own total limits in order to put out the types of (top limits of what's acceptable) sounds that I'm expected to be able to produce. (ie. It's a very good instrument, and NOT JUST a "6/4" instrument.)

Something else (equipment-wise, which may lead to playing failures) may well be excessively large capillary portions of instruments (with our very large contrabass tubas) , including this (resorting to numbers) huge 8.5mm - 9mm (and occasionally even larger) mouthpiece throat diameters (reducing the advantage that a mouthpiece venturi offers to us) as well as excessively large mouthpipe origin bore sizes (such as 5/8ths of an inch

, as opposed to - perhaps - only approximately 1/32nd of an inch larger than a half inch...whereby a beginning mouthpipe bore of something around .535" or so seems - and feels - reasonable, and - again - offers a helpful amount of resistance, rather than the player - without that helpful level of resistance in the instrument - beating themselves to death).

' nuff said by me on this.
Having never been totally debilitated, I'm not going to go into this further, but YES - there HAVE BEEN tubas that I've played (and owned - tubas which I immediately altered) whereby it was obvious to me that "leaving them as they were" would (again) end up beating me to death...and (again) the same with mouthpiece throat openings...but the problems with those instruments (I do not believe) had anything to do with any dimensions of those instruments past their valve sections.

LASTLY, I'm NOT going to try to tell someone "It's all in your head."

Posted: **Fri May 22, 2026 5:16 pm**

bloke wrote: Fri May 22, 2026 5:06 pm I'm not a teacher (and only report what I personally do), but I concentrate on the sound (as concentrating on "the proper mechanics" never seemed to get me anywhere as NOR DID "doing what so-and-so hero-player does"), as well as experimenting to discover the EASIEST (vs. necessarily the "proper") ways to accomplish the techniques and type of resonance that I've seeked to be able to achieve.
At XX years old (old), I probably can't do everything I could do 40 years ago
(Hell, I barely practice, YET - truth be told - I can do most things that I could always do),
but I've never been NOT able to play (though - early on - some of the comical things that I did in order to comply with "proper" technique cause me to smh, when I think back).
Also, I've never freaked out when - suddenly - I encountered some dysfunction in my playing.
Rather than "muscling though" a problem (ie. "bloke, if you do this thingie every day in your 'routine', you can work out that problem"), I set the instrument down for a week or two and catch up on other endeavors. When I return, the dysfunction (every single time) has disappeared.

So many mouthpiece rim designs (as our teeth gap - unlike the other brass - varies so wildly, from above the staff to our very lowest pitches) tend to pin the mouthpiece down at one place on our face, that many of us develop embouchure "shifts". (I used to have one of those, until I came up with a rim that would slide, rather than having to be picked up and relocated beyond a certain range of pitches).

My current "main" tuba features an "Amercan/York-like" shaped 6/4 bell and body, a bore significantly larger than .750" and a two-feet longer bugle than with the "American/York-style" 6/4 tubas. It produces a sound whereby I don't feel any need to push myself to any of my own total limits in order to put out the types of (top limits of what's acceptable) sounds that I'm expected to be able to produce. (ie. It's a very good instrument, and NOT JUST a "6/4" instrument.)

Something else (equipment-wise, which may lead to playing failures) may well be excessively large capillary portions of instruments (with our very large contrabass tubas) , including this (resorting to numbers) huge 8.5mm - 9mm (and occasionally even larger) mouthpiece throat diameters (reducing the advantage that a mouthpiece venturi offers to us) as well as excessively large mouthpipe origin bore sizes (such as 5/8ths of an inch , as opposed to - perhaps - only approximately 1/32nd of an inch larger than a half inch...whereby a beginning mouthpipe bore of something around .535" or so seems - and feels - reasonable, and - again - offers a helpful amount of resistance, rather than the player - without that helpful level of resistance in the instrument - beating themselves to death).

' nuff said by me on this.
Having never been totally debilitated, I'm not going to go into this further, but YES - there HAVE BEEN tubas that I've played (and owned - tubas which I immediately altered) whereby it was obvious to me that "leaving them as they were" would (again) end up beating me to death...and (again) the same with mouthpiece throat openings...but the problems with those instruments (I do not believe) had anything to do with any dimensions of those instruments past their valve sections.

LASTLY, I'm NOT going to try to tell someone "It's all in your head."

Regarding your comment about horns that would beat you to death.

I owned two horns for way too long that were just brutal to play.

One was a PT-20. I remember trying to play fountains of Rome and ride of the valkyries and it just wouldn’t happen. I took so many lessons to just focus on those excerpts, practiced them for hours, used more air, less air etc.

I finally ordered a Miraphone 1291 CC. The second I pulled it out, I tried Fountains. I played it with ease and was just so livid I didn’t try another horn sooner.

I’d bet money these two horns had a lot to do with why I’m dealing with dystonia now.

Posted: **Fri May 22, 2026 5:30 pm**

russiantuba wrote: Fri May 22, 2026 4:30 pm
bort2.0 wrote: Fri May 22, 2026 3:13 pm
russiantuba wrote: Fri May 22, 2026 3:11 pm There were several prominent tubists that played smaller horns (to my knowledge) that didn’t get FD—Toby Hanks, Sam Green, and Richard Watson come to mind.
Toby 100% had FD.
He didn’t play on larger tubas did he? I did study with Roger Rocco who didn’t, but he claimed his was due to paralysis by analysis and focusing on mechanics.

When I studied with Toby he had a 4/4 Holton cut and Yamaha 822 F. I have on my practice room wall an old ad from Mirafone with him and his 184. I'm told he had a B&S F in the early 80s.

What he played his year in Minneapolis I don't know. But I do know he referred to big tubas as "pillow-phones".

Being an Eastman student of Don Knaub and around Roger Bobo in the studio probably influenced his concepts and clarity was a regular focus of our lessons. In conversations after he started getting answers for his playing issues I do think he was in his head a bit. He was able to do incredible and musical things easily and as we get older, do those things remain easy? That was one of the points of releasing his Sonata CD, to prove to himself he could still play.

Spoiler, yeah he could

Posted: **Fri May 22, 2026 6:11 pm**

I always associate Toby with Miraphone 184. Beyond that, I don't really know.

Posted: **Fri May 22, 2026 11:02 pm**

I enjoyed reading the blog, and I have a great deal of respect for Tony, both for what he advocates and for his sense of humor.

The focal dystonia topic is complicated, and I’m not sure it is fully valid to suggest that 6/4 tubas or similar large instruments directly contribute to it. I do think York-style copies are extremely effective and efficient instruments. One potential pitfall, though, is that they can be overblown fairly easily, which may lead to inefficiencies in overall production.

In my opinion, focal dystonia is likely the result of several factors working together. One of the biggest factors may be playing without proper form, but that is going to look different for every player because everyone has a different facial structure, teeth, jaw alignment, and overall setup.

Bloke brings up some strong points that I agree with, especially regarding large-throated mouthpieces potentially causing issues for some players. At the same time, there are many players who have had long, successful careers using large equipment. That is why I don’t think the comment Jan made with Tony is necessarily valid.

Arnold Jacobs played those kinds of instruments throughout his career and did not develop it. Mike Sanders played an Alexander 163 and later a Yorkbrunner, and he did not develop it. Chester Schmitz plays a Yorkbrunner with a Monette 98, and he is still playing very well into his mid 80s. Don Harry is another example of someone who played a variety of equipment and did not develop it either. I’m sure there are many others I’m leaving out, but those are the names that immediately come to mind.

So, personally, I don’t think the gear itself is the main issue. I think it has more to do with the player’s approach, overall setup, and how they use the air. Tuba players aren’t the only ones getting this so it has to more than just being related to gear.

Posted: **Sat May 23, 2026 7:23 am**

Just throwing it out there, Mike did have a severe playing injury towards the latter part of his career. Whether or not it was dystonia is unknown, at least to me. The assertion is Jacobs was dealing with some issues, which can be heard in recordings where he has shakiness than can be passed off as a wild vibrato.

But he first time I heard the 6/4 assertion was from Jan Kagarice, a well known and well respected dystonia practitioner. She and her team have met with, and helped rehab, hundreds of people with dystonia and playing injuries. Unfortunately she doesn’t come to these forums to weigh in since she’s out in the field doing the work. But I’m inclined to trust her since she has yet to lead me astray in my own recovery.

I also believe there is a genetic component to it. Some folks seem to be predisposed and others can go their whole careers doing everything ‘incorrect’ and never get it. That is a big wild card factor in this issue.

Posted: **Sat May 23, 2026 9:40 am**

adsteve wrote: Sat May 23, 2026 7:23 am Just throwing it out there, Mike did have a severe playing injury towards the latter part of his career. Whether or not it was dystonia is unknown, at least to me. The assertion is Jacobs was dealing with some issues, which can be heard in recordings where he has shakiness than can be passed off as a wild vibrato.

But he first time I heard the 6/4 assertion was from Jan Kagarice, a well known and well respected dystonia practitioner. She and her team have met with, and helped rehab, hundreds of people with dystonia and playing injuries. Unfortunately she doesn’t come to these forums to weigh in since she’s out in the field doing the work. But I’m inclined to trust her since she has yet to lead me astray in my own recovery.

I also believe there is a genetic component to it. Some folks seem to be predisposed and others can go their whole careers doing everything ‘incorrect’ and never get it. That is a big wild card factor in this issue.

Playing issues and injuries are not always the same thing as focal dystonia, just to be clear. A lot of playing-related problems can improve with rest, retraining, better setup, or improved overall chop health. Focal dystonia is different because it is generally understood as a neurological, task-specific motor disorder, not simply “weak chops” or a normal playing injury. In brass players, embouchure dystonia can involve the lips, face, jaw, tongue, air leaks, tremor, or loss of normal control while playing.

The players mentioned did have issues, but I would be careful about putting all of that under the FD umbrella. With Jacobs, for example, there are a lot of variables. His playing changed as he aged, and his health history may have played a role, but I would not automatically call that focal dystonia. His vibrato was also part of his playing for a long time, not just something that appeared at the end of his career. You can hear elements of that earlier in his career as well, including from his Pittsburgh years before Chicago. Jacobs played in Pittsburgh Symphony under Fritz Reiner from 1939 to 1944 before joining the Chicago Symphony.

Bill Bell also had a playing style on his Album that some people might describe as rough around the edges compared to modern standards, but that does not mean he had focal dystonia either. That is really the point I am trying to make: there is still a lot of gray area around this topic, and I do not think it is fair to generalize that a certain size tuba, a certain setup, or shaky chops automatically causes or equals FD.

Toby Hanks is a good example of why I think we have to be careful with broad claims. He was not known for playing huge equipment in the same way people talk about 6/4 York-style tubas, and yet he did deal with focal dystonia. Focal dystonia eventually took away his ability to play tuba.

So I absolutely respect the work being done in this area, and I am aware of Jan contributions. I just think the conversation needs nuance. Equipment can certainly affect efficiency, tension, and playing habits, but saying one type of tuba or mouthpiece “causes” focal dystonia feels like too broad of a conclusion. Again this just my humble opinion/observation. I’m not an authority on the subject matter but I do question it.

Posted: **Sat May 23, 2026 9:57 am**

For many years I played a 5/8 bore Eb. Often. I never had embrachure problems. When the old Eb valves wore out, I bought a BBb Martin Mammoth. I immediately developed a double buzz. But only on the Mammoth. I have intermittently had double buzz problems on the Mammoth since and now it seems to be spilling over to the Willson, which is also a big bore horn. I use the same C3 mouthpiece on all three horns. But now sometimes the Martin 33 that came with the Mammoth. (It sounds great on the Willson)

Could I be developing the apparently incurable malady of which you speak? If so what should I do to stop it? I play regularly. I'm 77. Was athletic. I have big lungs ~7 liters, and also have played trumpet for 20 years, so I would think my chops would be in good shape. I really don't like this double buzz development and it seems to be related to both a BAT and too many gigs.

Posted: **Sat May 23, 2026 10:06 am**

Porky wrote: Sat May 23, 2026 9:40 am So I absolutely respect the work being done in this area, and I am aware of Jan contributions. I just think the conversation needs nuance. Equipment can certainly affect efficiency, tension, and playing habits, but saying one type of tuba or mouthpiece “causes” focal dystonia feels like too broad of a conclusion. Again this just my humble opinion/observation. I’m not an authority on the subject matter but I do question it.

I don't think anyone is necessarily saying this. Think of a red sports car where the driver always goes 15-20 mph over the speedlimit and they don't slow down even when a cop is nearby. They may never get a ticket or pulled over ever in their life. Or you could have someone (happened to me in August), driving to teach a new student, taking a road I have never taken and the speedlimit sign is blocked by a tree and I get pulled over for going 35 (road before was 35mph and did a Y interchange), and when the officer asked how fast I was going, I said the speedlimit which is 35mph (which I was informed was 25mph).

I do agree these horns can cause trigger symptoms of FD

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