Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this episode tuba teacher Dusty Steinle joins Alex and Darcy to talk beginner tuba.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this episode tuba teacher Dusty Steinle joins Alex and Darcy to talk beginner tuba.
Hi Stiles Band Directors!
While listening to your tuba podcast, I had this realization that I struggle with making a characteristic sound on the mouthpiece, but have no problem when playing the tuba. Do you know if other people/students have this same issue? What do/would you guys do? Should I be concerned that I can’t [yet] make this characteristic buzz?
Thanks for everything you guys do!! Big fan 🙂
I most definitely cannot get a characteristic buzz either (and BTW if you haven’t seen my super terrible tuba lesson yet where I also discover I can only go for 3 beats… you can find it on our After Sectionals FB page in the video section).
Dusty suggests having the kids put their pinky over half of the mouthpiece shank if you don’t have a BERP. We bought a class set of BERPs that stay on our tubas so that everyone has one at all times, but Dusty swears by the fact that once you can get the quality of the buzz to open up, the tone on the tuba is infinitely different. I discovered in my mini-lesson with Dusty that my bottom lip wants to go into the mouthpiece, and once I fixed that problem we discovered that I was allowing my top lip to extend beyond my bottom creating an uneven buzz surface. I can play pretty darn good trumpet and pretty good trombone, but tuba is THE ABYSS(!!!) for me. I’ll talk to Dusty tomorrow when he’s at Stiles and see if he has some suggestions.