Posted by Steve Dedman on March 02, 2001 at 01:38:10:
In the ever-increasing pursuit of tuba knowledge, a thread occured to me. What, if any, mental imagery do you use to translate what you see on the page into the correct notes coming out of the bell? Of course, in a nice, slow, espressivo passage, you have time to think about which button to mash. But what about in times of extreme duress, like the Czardas or some of the Kopprasch etudes that go like the wind? Do you just learn each measure as a pattern, then string the patterns together? Or do you just practice it until it's instinctive? But at some point, your brain has to say "push down middle finger for B". What's the most efficient way of making that leap to the point of not thinking it?
Steve "who slogged through some Arban tonight" Dedman