Page 32 - Embou-Sure Book Series

REMEDY: Instruct the student to “loosen the grip on the tube in the cen- ter of the lips.” Also, reiterate the concept of taking a deep breath with the “yawn” type of feeling in the throat and then expelling the air as rapidly as possible. A relaxed diaphragm is especially important to allow maximum expulsion of air.
#4-GARGLED TONE This “split” tone is a result of:
a. Lips not “gripping the tube” tightly enough to center the pitch. b. Lips folding over the teeth causing a double vibration.
SOUND EXAMPLE #4
REMEDY: If gripping the tube more firmly does not solve this problem, have the student re-form the embouchure using the mouthpiece ring and check to see if the lips are staying even with the edges of the teeth, not curling over the top. (When the “OH-OO-SQUEEZE” embouchure is formed correctly, the lips will not curl over the teeth.)
#5-STOPPED OR INTENSE AIR ONLY This less frequently heard sound:
SOUND EXAMPLE #5
is a severe exaggeration of #3 (THIN, PINCHED TONE). The lips have been pinched completely together and only extreme force of air causes any sound whatsoever.
REMEDY: Instruct the student to “loosen the grip on the tube in the center of the lips.” Stress only “OH-OO” in this instance.
GENERAL EMBOUCHURE PROBLEMS
• Make sure the corners of the mouth are not drawn back into a smile type of set. The corners should be very firm but held in the natural, lateral position.
• The angle of the mouthpiece to the lips is very important. Prob- lems here can be spotted quite easily and very simply corrected. The mouthpiece should be placed against the mouth while holding the jaw in a very natural position. The angle will vary greatly from
student to student, depending on the degree of over- or under-bite
of the teeth. Don’t let the student jut his jaw forward to meet the mouthpiece. Have him lean slightly forward or backward with the tuba to the point where the mouthpiece sits at a natural, comfort- able angle.
• Don’t allow the student to puff out the cheeks. When the cheeks are puffed, the corners of the mouth can not set firmly and the basic embouchure set and control are lost. With emphasis on gripping the tube, the cheeks will not puff.
• Using the mouthpiece ring, check to make sure that the lips do not go into a radical pucker. Sometimes, if there is too much emphasis put on the “OO” sound in formation of the embouchure, there will be a tendency to push the lips too far forward into an exaggerated pucker. This will result in loss of control and “bracky” tone quality.
CHANGING PITCHES
If the embouchure appears to be formed correctly and the student is having good success in producing the first tone on the tuba, move immediately to a note other than the one which was most natural at first.
If the first note produced was F below the bass clef staff, ask the student to now try second line B-flat. To accomplish this, tell him merely to tighten more on the tube and blow more air. Remember: Don’t tell the student to push the air, as this will bring the tight diaphragm into the picture, a condition we do not want!
Once he has produced the second tone, ask him to play back and forth be tween F and B-flat, remembering what each feels like. This will begin trans- ference of the feeling into the memory bank so that it may be recalled when- ever a particular pitch is needed. Jack Nicklaus once said that when he steps up to the ball to hit a golf shot, he does not try to concentrate on all the minor details which go into hitting the shot correctly; he simply tries to recreate the overall physical sensation of what it feels like to hit a good shot.
The correlation to tuba playing is obvious: Once we have gone through all of the processes which form the embouchure and produce the sound, we should then concentrate on the overall physical feeling which produced that sound. Then we should attempt to recreate that feeling each time we wish to play a certain note.
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