Posted by Anthony on February 04, 2003 at 13:47:27:
In Reply to: which takes more air - bass bone or tuba posted by Marty Neilan on January 31, 2003 at 23:49:33:
This thread can be related to the few embouchure conversations we've had over the last few weeks:
I'll try to keep this as brief as possible..
Short answer- neither should take more or less air than the other.
Long Answer- for tubists, the bass trombone takes more air. For trombonists, the tuba takes more. Most of us with a well developed embouchure have optimized that embouchure for use on one instrument(presumably the tuba, this being the TubeNet). When we pick up a foreign instrument with a mouthpiece 25-60% smaller(or larger), everything changes... ideally. Much of the time, our embouchure does not(this is not ideal). While the embouchure that we use might be optimal for our tuba playing, it doesn't always translate well to the bass trombone.
I've played bass trombone in the same big band going on 3 years now, and have gotten a good deal of freelance gigs in my area on the bass trombone- but only in the last 2 or 3 months do I feel like I've developed a good sense of bass trombone "chops". Up until then I'd been constantly looking at ways, as I assume many of us do, for the instruments to "complement" each other. This was my biggest hindrance as, no matter how similar they may be fundamentally, they are two completely different instruments that require two completely different motor systems to play.
Once we've optimized individual embouchures for both instruments, the airflow should then be the same.
fwiw.
Anthony