A Question About Tone

[JTJ]

If I had to say one thing that has benefited putting all the elements together, it would be the extremely deep and relaxed approach to breathing with a wide open throat and a comfortably use of the face muscles. Tension and 'tight' embouchure seemed counter productive. Steve Mead mentioned one thing that help to achieve that beautiful ringing sweet sound and for me - that was 'not scrooching the nose.' I never realized how much the sinus area affects the color of the sound.

What Paul says! Also pay attention to your mouth and how it colors the sound -- I believe Highams once wrote he had students play as if there were a hot potato in their mouth.

[paulmaybery]

It has been a while since this thread was begun, and there are a lot of issues to touch upon. The forum seemed a little quite lately so I thought I would stick out my neck and see if anyone is there.

These days, many of my personal playing issues come from being somewhat along in years and while I feel my artistic level is very high at this point, my physical body finds many things considerably more difficult than when I was in my earlier years. Not impossible just not as easy. Hence, my goal: "Play smart, play efficient."

I will address the issue of some of the physical elements involved in producing a gorgeous sound that I had not mentioned earlier. Bear in mind that I am working this out on a tuba, but the principles are pretty much the same for low brass in general.

The mouth is indeed a very critical factor in all of this concern over having a gorgeous and elegant sound. In several articles on mouthpieces and matching them to the player, Phyllis Stork of Stork Custom Mouthpieces has hit the mark on one particular concept. (You can google Stork Custom Mouthpieces - and navigate to the Library area where there are a series of articles) Phyllis draws attention to a player's tendency to "crush" the mouth. That is the tongue tends to move up and close off or squeeze off the air at the roof of the mouth. Yes, we talk about keeping the throat open, and that is truly part of the equation, but there is yet one more obstacle before the wind finally exits through the embouchure, the mouth itself. I've often heard players who use the syllable "tee" when ascending. Yes, it does help a bit when doing lip slurs, going from a "tah" to a "tee". Yes the "ee" syllable narrows the air passage and accelerates the air speed and helps the upward slur achieve a bit more thrust and "grace." (A good tool when used wisely.)

This past year I have had the time to systematically analyze and do remedial work on my own playing. One of my goals was to achieve an altissimo register to C above piano middle C and above, without effort or strain. When I was able to keep the air moving across my chops, they would vibrate a nice buzz. When the mouth closed up, nothing, nada, zip. Keeping the tongue from ascending to the roof of the mouth was the issue. Rather that trying to order it to move, it was simple to just form the syllable "toh","too" or even "tay" and then it went to the right spot and remained in the lower portion of the mouth where it would not 'crush' the air stream. I have to say that not only did the super high C come nicely and without any physical strain, but the mouth cavity enjoyed its new openness and I am truly excited at how beautiful my tone has opened up and has a golden shimmer to it... something I always wanted and could not quite figure how to attain. (I like what JTJ posted about thinking you have a hot potato in your mouth.) Very good imagery to achieve the open mouth.

It seems as human beings we are prone to work harder than necessary. We tend to involve 'isometrics' and pit muscle group against muscle group. In the lower abdominal area we push in the lower muscles as we expire, but I have seen so many folks who push against that with the diaphragm and negate their efforts to a large extent. (They do quite comically achieve a nice hard 'gut' ) How to overcome that. Practice blowing with the old plastic water pipe can simplify the process of learning to avoid this isometric obstacle. The effect that I worked on and I believe that I achieved is to have a free blowing supply of wind, coming without any interference, from the depth of my lungs, and supported by those lower abdominal muscles - passing through the throat over the tongue (which is nicely out of the way in the nether regions of the oral cavity) and then through the embouchure. The only body resistance that I feel that is necessary is that created by the embouchure as it tightens and loosens to control pitch. That is coupled with the resistance or atmospheric pressure inside the mouthpiece. When this balance of resistance issues is attained, the sound will be open and resonant and you will find that playing winds up taking so much less effort. Of course practice your buzz. Practicing on a practice mute helps as well in developing the core and focus to your sound. The aura or corona of you sound will be enhanced by the nice open wind way from the bottom of your lungs to the buzzing flesh on your chops.

TIP: One simple thing that did help get the ball rolling was to start the airstream, make sure it is blowing really clear and strong and then slowly set the lips to vibrate on some really nice high note. At first it almost seems like a 'whistle" Often times we choke off the air before we buzz the chops and then wonder why not much happens. Having a continuous air stream ahead of the note will give the note a nice healthy place to ride on.

The altissimo playing can only be achieved with an open mouth, which has benefits for all the registers.

I practice these concepts on the CC 6/4 BAT, the F tuba and the Euphonium.
I find though that each day the ol' body wants to go back to doing it the old way. Old habits are hard to break.
A very careful warm up starting with relaxed and directed breathing starts the day. Then the buzz, and then scales and intervals in a solfege manner similar to a singer. Never forcing. It goes without saying that this all depends on dead accurate pitch centering.

I've taught for almost 40 years and have had many brilliant young men and women in my studio. What I have always emphasized is that 'yes, they are smart young people,' but their bodies are untrained and uniformed when it comes to the physical aspects of playing a musical instrument. One must train one's own body, in the same manner as a trainer would train any animal. Doing things over and over, with minimal mistakes, will eventually build the desired habits. If you train smart and efficient, your playing will reflect that.

OMG - this is one long article. :-)

Hope someone gets something from it.

Paul

[carbogast]

Yes, I most definitely got something from it. Thank you Paul!

[Davidus1]

Thanks Paul. I appreciate the thoughts. Definitely something that I've noticed since turning 50 is the diminished lung capacity. I don't have the lung capacity that I used to and I have to play smarter. I'm not always doing that though! I like the concepts that you discussed about the relaxed playing. That is something that has definitely helped my upper register. I don't have a Super C though! Thanks for the thoughts. Very helpful.

[tampaworth]

Always enjoy your posts

[Gallenod]

I will concur with the previous opinions about sounding more like a vocalist. When I'm playing, the sound in my head isn't a euphonium, it's Luciano Pavarotti.

I've heard that sound is 10% instrument, 15% mouthpiece, and 75% player. In my experience, that's reasonable. A good player will sound better on a Yamaha 201 with it's stock 48 mouthpiece than a poor player will sound on a Besson Prestige with any mouthpiece. Eliminating tension between the diaphragm and embouchure aperture (whether with the Alexander technique or some other method) is probably the hardest thing for most brass players, along with proper embouchure development over time. There are no silver bullets for building a good embouchure; it takes persistent effort over time plus avoidance of bad habits.

The most common problem with sound production I see in the high school students (and many of the adults I play with) is too much extraneous muscle tension, mostly in the throat, neck, and shoulders. I believe most players left largely to their own devices for the first four or five years (through early high school) develop a number of bad habits with posture, "brute-forcing" their way to a high range, and little or no serious work on the low register to provide balance to their sound.

Here's an example for posture. I'm 5'7". If I sit up properly straight and rest my euphonium on my left thigh, the lead pipe places the mouthpiece just under my chin. That gives me two choices: hold the horn up so the mouthpiece centers on my embouchure or slouch so my embouchure meets the mouthpiece. I pick the horn up and hold it so my posture is good. I actually practice standing up all the time unless I'm in an ensemble rehearsal to maintain the strength to do that. Almost every student I've seen, however, slouches once they've grown tall enough, and that only gets worse at they get taller. So once my students are big enough, unless they're injured they stand for all their lessons and I recommend they do the same at home.

As to forcing the high range, young brass players seem to think it must take great effort to play high. Forcing is the Dark Side of learning high range. Yeah, it will get you to high Bb, but only at high volumes and energy levels. I teach high range development by having students start on the 2nd partial and playing slow long slurs pianissimo up the overtone series. I don't want them to try playing loud in the high range until they can get there without shifting to a high-pressure, forcing embouchure set and with appropriate control. I've found it takes at least several months to more than a year of steady practice to build new habits for a high school or college student if they're practicing this consistently. On the other hand, the only pure beginner I've ever started and managed to avoid a lot of bad habits is now 11 years old and has a solid, playable range up to Bb5, including being able to hit the high Bb entrance in the upper part of Pearl Fishers duet. Yeah, a sample size of one is very small, but she has the best sound and high (and low) range of all five of my euphonium students, all of whom are older than she is, and the oldest of which is a high school senior who was just accepted to his first All-State festival.

And in my experience, low range practice, and particularly pedal tones, can help open up the other registers somewhat, if only because to play down there successfully requires relaxation. And learning how to relax is, counter-intuitively, the true secret to playing both higher and faster, both of which become much easier when we're not working against our own success by pitting muscles we don't actually need to play the horn against the ones we do use. Much of the improvement I see in my students is when they start letting go of bad habits they used to correct other bad habits and reduce the physical act of playing their instrument to only the amount of energy they actually need to produced the sound they're going for. At that point, they improve much more rapidly.

Now if only I could figure out how to do that with my golf swing, my shots might not have that crippling banana slice.

One last personal observation, which I would welcome feedback from other members on, relates to air. I find there are two dimensions to air support: volume and speed.

First, I submit that there is a direct relationship between the volume of air we put through the horn per slice of time and the volume of sound we produce. So, to get a bigger sound we need to work on getting more air through the horn.

Second, the pitch we produce with that air is dependent on the speed of the air at the point of production, i.e. the turbulence generating the initial vibration at the embouchure aperture. Therefore, to play higher we don't necessarily need to blow more air through the horn, but just make that air move faster. A way of illustrating this is by whistling two notes: any note followed by a note a 4th or 5th above. What do your tongue and lips to to achieve this? There may be a small adjustment of the lips to make the aperture smaller, but it is possible to have the tongue do virtually all of the work of raising the pitch by closing up the oral cavity so the same volume of air moves faster through the lips. No clenching of the throat, no hunching of the shoulders, no need to blast air through the horn at high volumes. It takes a while to retrain the embouchure to support that lessening of effort, but it does, in my experience, pay off quite handsomely in the end.

Hope that helps.

Dale