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Kopprasch (tuba - Robert King ed.) etude #29

- upper optional pitches only
- in Bb, A, A-flat, G, G-flat, F, and E
- played on a BABBT

Miss a pitch - in any of the seven keys: Start over (in B-flat)

That's a good recipe to develop dystonia, the "miss a pitch and start over" thing. It puts FAR too much focus on the chops.

Mary Ann wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 4:22 pm That's a good recipe to develop dystonia, the "miss a pitch and start over" thing. It puts FAR too much focus on the chops.

The ONLY way that I can hit the vast majority of the pitches is to
- ABSOLUTELY/CONSTANTLY sing it in my head.
- NEITHER think about the tuba NOR my playing of it.
- CONSTANTLY read AHEAD.

so far - in my "career" as an "artiste" (such as it has been )
- no dystonia
- (more-and-more) laughing off screw-ups

Right now, I have dry eyes, a headache, and a sore throat.
I decided to play through it anyway, this morning...and without first going through a "routine" (as I neither have or am that).

I DID go back and play through it in A...but - after that - the cheesy chorizo eggs and coffee were ready...

No pain... no gain!

I'll be doing this later tonight. I like the rewards of hard work.
Amazing how some of the solo lit seems easier once you start getting more extreme stuff in the prep time. Notice I don't use the term "warm-up" as that could set off another rant 'round here

TJ

Guess I should buy the Kopprasch, since I can't read that picture.

Also, focal dystonia is only recognized as a neurological condition, and has no known causes. Overworking could be a cause, but it can also merely be an exacerbator of an already underlying condition. As far as we know, it could be hereditary and people are predisposed to get it, or not. But practicing perfectly has always been my mantra. Now, that can manifest in bleeding fingers or CTS issues when practicing bass, or dermatological issues for brass chops, but I do my best to listen to my body when I can, and hopefully can win my auditions.

That being said, this exercise is a monster and I might have to add it to my daily practice for a while. I doubt I'll want to work it out in seven keys, though.

free download...

https://pdfcoffee.com/108111941-koppras ... -free.html

"ABSOLUTELY/CONSTANTLY sing it in my head"

...isn't that the only way?

TJ

jtm wrote:Guess I should buy the Kopprasch, since I can't read that picture.

It isn’t any better for me full size.

Rick “still working on Blazhevich” Denney

Blazhevich, I'm thinking, was put together primarily to help trombonists become proficient at switching back and forth between bass and tenor clefs.

The (horn) Kopprasch method may appear to be more daunting (because the pages might look blacker), but everything on every page is absolutely predictable, and the book lays a really good foundation for >> applications << of scales and arpeggios, rather than simply practicing scales and arpeggios for their own sake. Moreover, working on Kopprasch really assists more rapid mastery of (certainly) tonal pieces and probably sight reading of them as well.

Something else sort of nice about it is that they're only 60 of them - rather than some half or three quarter inch book, as with the Arban - so it offers more of a physical appearance of something that someone can strive to get through, rather than seeming so hopeless due to its mass. Every few years or perhaps every two or three years, I pick it back up and review it. My strongest read is f tuba so it's pretty easy for me to make it through that book playing that. Right now I'm trying to teach myself the method while playing B flat, which I've never done before.

So you're basically saying it's an overall improvement of the Arban concept. Then again, Arban seems a bit more instructional where the Kopprasch is a bit more honing your skills, so to speak.

I haven't really touched the Kopprasch since I played euphonium in college, but there were some fun exercises. My favorite one in the trombone book is #14 in the Robert King book.

I have collected over 100 brass technique/study books over the years, so I've been messing with many of these (I even have a Jack Teagarden book in there?). Really dig the Bai Lin--I think I've already gone through two hard copies, the most recent one was drowned in a spilled cup of coffee.

Maybe I'll do some Kopprasch for a time.

Maybe I would say it's a truncated version of Arban, yet maybe just a little bit more exploration into the sharp keys, percentage-wise.

confession: I've never gone all the way through Arban, and only skipped around through it. I am interested in exploring - or revisiting - some of the other (non-encyclopedic) trumpet methods, as I expressed in a thread a few weeks ago.

Arban is great to pluck from, but as has been alluded, "reading through" Arban is equivalent of reading through the Oxford English Dictionary starting at A and ending at Z.

Blazhevich Vol. 2 is a tour-de-force of sharp keys, trombone clef book or not. I do like the Kopprasch as well.

Yeah, I've never gone through Arban all the way, but it's a massive part of my daily routine (which, in the last six or so months, I've actually not done, and have made etudes out of passages I'm currently working on instead). I have, however, been interested in going through the Trumpet book. It's much thicker than the Randall/Mantia trombone version, so there *has* to be more in it.

I was never a fan of the more recent editions essentially doubling the price of the Randall/Mantia one. I still tell my students to buy that because it's much more affordable, and there's no more musical or technical benefit in the new editions, since they're home practice tools, and the "mistakes" are still useful.

I just bought the Bowman / Alessi version of the Arban. Each section starts with advice from both of them on how to approach the material. If you don't have the actual Bowman or Alessi available to you, it is well worth the price.

I'll give it a try.......... as soon as I find my microscope!

...so (since - when it comes to playing/practicing) I don't like to just "talk $h!t", I'm actually working on this drill/exercise from the "open" key (I'm playing a B-flat tuba) down to the "all valves down" (E, or the 1-2-3 valve combination) key.

Mostly, I'm playing them (so called) "by ear" (scale steps/intervals, based on my fingers and mind knowing the arpeggios), but I'm also finding that (using one of the four sets of fingerings (B-flat, C, E-flat, F), one of the two clefs (bass/treble) and reading bass or treble clef as either a non-transposed or a B-flat-transposed clef, I can actually just READ most of them.

It's improving my accuracy/focus/mind/ear/familiarity-with-this-behemoth-B-flat-tuba.

bloke "Working on stuff that isn't easy is - well... - hard."

If you're into challenging your Bb reading/valve mashing I can truly recomend Verne Reynolds' 48 Studies for French Horn. I just play them in C, but I don't think it really makes a difference which key you play them in. They can be real head bangers.

pjv wrote: ↑Sat Mar 25, 2023 12:28 pm If you're into challenging your Bb reading/valve mashing I can truly recomend Verne Reynolds' 48 Studies for French Horn. I just play them in C, but I don't think it really makes a difference which key you play them in. They can be real head bangers.

I have Cherry Beauregard's old crappy manuscript version, and have been reading back through them (now: on my B-flat tuba).
...It was SO crappy, that I had to take a ruler - to each line on each staff on each page - and re-trace every single line.

As is known (yes?) the first 24 are pairs of slow-fast etudes concentrating on each of the basic intervals (ex: #'s 1 & 2 are studies on the interval of the semitone), and the subsequent 24 are mix-and-match.

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