Posted by K on December 07, 2003 at 12:54:25:
In Reply to: Eb mouthpieces posted by turbod on December 07, 2003 at 09:50:40:
As far as I can recognise the different mouthpieces mentioned by the other posters, everything they have said makes perfect sense. Jay Bertolet's posting of course gains in weight by its thoroughness and by the implicit fact, that Jay does all of his high level pro bass tuba playing on Eb tubas in contrast to the more common F tubas usually preferred for such tasks.
Being strictly an ensemble player with no solo ambitions, I use a PT-50 with an opened up backbore for my fairly large Eb tuba, the Besson 981. The same mouthpiece, which I use with my also pretty large BBb basses.
If ones embouchure is thoroughly trained and maintained, the upper range sound should not suffer from the use of a large mouthpiece. Certainly playing elements like soft dynamics and elegance in phrasing will be much harder to do well. But the sound in itself should not suffer.
A major inspiration in my developing myself towards the attitude, that I should play my instruments and not the other way round, has been the ideas of the trumpet wizard Claude Gordon.
After the last Army tuba/euph conference of January 2003 a video clip was put on the web. It showed Steven Mead and Pat Sheridan exchanged stratospheric flageolets. Not of any great musical value, but extremely funny. These virtuosos of course are several lifetimes ahead of my way more modest playing, but exactly their playing of these high notes is not terribly difficult, if one has grasped the idea. And I am convinced, that their showing off didn't hurt their embouchures at all.
Klaus