Originally Posted by
paulmaybery
... but more so I believe the success I was experiencing was due much more to the modifications of my physical approach to playing. One thing in particular I thought would have little or no effect was sitting with the hips apart and the legs and feet equally spaced and directly in front. When the pelvic cavity opened a bit more, breathing and resonance took on a whole new dimension. The other aspect of not craning the neck forward, but keeping the head, directly over the spine also made a huge difference in the way that I breathed, particularly on expiration.
This same approach is encouraged and supported by the use of a tuba stand -- if it is of the appropriate sort -- since it allows you to orient the horn to facilitate such posture without having to wrestle with the instrument or to exert muscle pressure (from arms/shoulders/legs) to hold it in the correct orientation.
My tuba stand is a self-made "sit on" type that fits on any chair and has an adjustable 'T' support (made from PVC) that is at the very edge of the chair and between my legs. See photo below. Muscle fatigue is reduced to next to nothing, it is easy to sit with both feet on the floor as described, and it's also easy to shift your feet and legs around a bit at times to relieve tension -- without it affecting the position of the horn. I use my seat stand even with my quite small old Eb horn because, even though I can easily hold it, using the stand makes things so much easier and relieve all of those problems.
Once you've used an effective stand, you realize how much of your energy used to go into just holding and orienting that large instrument, shifting it on your lap, keeping it in position, preventing it from sliding, etc. And it allows you more easily to determine your posture and focus on your breathing.
With a number of commercial stands (those that sit on the floor), this is more difficult because the support area for the tuba sits a bit too far in front of you and it's more of "You have to go to the tuba" rather than "You bring the tuba to you" -- so you can't get the "Head directly over the spine" orientation. But if you get (or make) the right stand, it can really enhance exactly the sort of posture, reduction of neck craning and tension, and improved control and breathing that's being described here.
Gary Merrill
Wessex EEb Bass tuba (DW 3XL or 2XL)
Mack Brass Compensating Euph (DE N106, Euph J, J9 euph)
Amati Oval Euph (DE 104, Euph J, J6 euph)
1924 Buescher 3-valve Eb tuba (with std US receiver), Kelly 25
Schiller American Heritage 7B clone bass trombone (DE LB K/K10/112/14 Lexan, Brass Ark MV50R)
1947 Olds "Standard" trombone (Olds #3)