Tuba lesson

("First Suite in E-Flat for Military Band" by Gustav Holst) - I grew listening to recordings of this band, all throughout middle school and high school and I then saw that there was an opening in my final year of grad school and I knew that I had to take the audition. ("First Suite in E-Flat for Military Band" by Gustav Holst) Usually my warmup begins inside of my lovely D.C. commute with my mouthpiece in my car and usually, hopefully, if the traffic is good, it's no longer than 15 minutes. If it's really bad then I give myself in a nice 30 minute mouthpiece buzzing routine in the morning and I don't really do very, I don't do anything necessarily, descript inside of my buzzing. I usually just go for creating a nice relaxed sound and ease of breath. (buzzing) I do lots of sirens like that, just glisses up and down and then I'll go to maybe a few arpeggios. (buzzing) Still with a gliss and then inside of my car trying to be as relaxed as I can, taking in the breath, letting the breath come back out. Again, with ease and creating a nice resonant sound. In the mouth piece there are many different schools of thought, of how you should buzz your mouthpiece. I think at the end of the day it should always be the most easy and best sound you can create. And then when I come into work and I pick up my tuba, I usually start in the middle to low register and I'll probably liken this to stretching for a dance, or you know, any other athlete. And I just do, kind of again, very similar to what I was doing in the mouthpiece. (soft tuba music) And I'll do that a few times. (soft tuba music) And the point of doing that is going through, and I slur, I try to do it across all the registers of my instrument so I can feel where the tightness is in my playing. Again, in the same way that if I were an athlete. In another way I try to, okay great, this part of my body is feelin' a little bit of tightness and I need to actually work on getting that out before I go to play my instrument. I'll do that a few more times and expand the range. (soft tuba music) And then after I do that, usually, depending on the morning, it can take me more time than I would like just to get that feeling of looseness and relaxation inside both my body and my embouchure. I'll go on to probably a few more exercises but the same idea. (soft tuba music) I repeat a lot of things over and over again. So my warmup for me is usually pretty basic because I like repeating things so I can, I guess, use that as a metric for whether or not I'm actually loose or too tight, or, on tour for example, my warmup changes from how it is now. This time of the year I'm not always playing band concerts, whereas on tour it's a concert every night so my face usually is a little bit tighter, so I change it. I play lots more things in the pedal register. I guess, my overall point is I think that warmups are a very personal thing and they should depend and change based on what your playing is and where you are. ("First Suite in E-Flat for Military Band" by Gustav Holst) I've actually had concerts where after the concert someone comes up and goes, "What are you doing with your slide so much, I didn't know, "you're not playing the trombone, "why are you moving your slide so much?" When I was in high school I didn't move my slides very much then as I got into undergrad and grad school, my teachers pointed out that technically trumpet players they always are manipulating the third slide. We kind of don't have to do that because we have a fourth valve, and tuba players know this but when it comes to the first valve. (soft tuba music) You can manipulate that quite a bit. And depending on the register and the range, say for example, on this instrument, it will be always dependent on the instrument, this note here. (soft tuba music) I have to pull it out of the note and be very sharp. (soft tuba music) I have to pull it out quite a bit. ("Masquerade" by Vincent Persichetti)