Re: confidence in high register


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Posted by Mark Heter on June 25, 2003 at 21:25:22:

In Reply to: confidence in high register posted by dave on June 25, 2003 at 02:26:25:

To add to the excellent advice you're getting gratis here - and it IS excellent. I used to get tuba students, who had studied with seemingly qualified teachers for years, all with the same complaint - the "high" register. In every case, it was lack of breath support. As Herbert L. Clarke once said to a young Bill Pruyn - "I hear these fellows all talking about this horn and that horn and mouthpiece, and nobody talks about BREATH. It's WIND instrument, you know".

Also, until such time as you get it together with the breath support, you'll find triple and double tonguing are a problem, too.

Try this - tear out one page from the newspaper, and tape it to the top of an interior doorway. Take your mouthpiece, and, blowing from the diaphragm, buzz a note, and try to get the newspaper to stay straight out into the open doorway, for as long as you can from a distance of two steps back,then move three steps back, etc. We have "mouthpiece visualizers"; this is a "breath visualizer".

Read over what Arban and Clarke have written (text) in their methods - the foundation to the upper notes is a relaxed, full lower and middle register.

Good luck!


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