That rotary F low C --Woo Hoo!


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Posted by Mary Ann on May 18, 2003 at 12:44:41:

Weeellll, I took my annual tuba lesson from Mark Nelson a couple weeks ago. Now, I'm not the best student in the world, being sort of like the Winston Churchill quote of "I love to learn, but don't really like to be taught." So I tend to consternate my teachers a little in lessons, because it looks like I'm there to mess around instead of have a lesson. However, usually they manage to squeeze in a tip or two that I wonder about after I get home. In this lesson, Mark said, "You have to relax to play that low C. After I was playing my F tuba for a year, my teacher was still telling me I had to relax to play it. Now I can play a low C, and I can even play it loud." And he demonstrated.

OK. So I get home, and I think, OK, he told me to relax. Relax WHAT? My toes? My biceps? My earlobes? Hmmm. Perhaps he meant, relax my chops. He was already telling me my cheeks were too relaxed, so that can't be it.

To shorten this delightful story, I decided he meant....relax my chops. Um hmm. Last night we had a concert in a very, very live church basement. While warming up on things like jazzed-up Hall of the Mt King excepts....somehow I got that lip flappiness that you get when playing pedal tones, on the low C. Guess what? I played LOUD low C. On an F tuba. It didn't fight back!! Now, maybe it is completely my imagination that the low C was loud, and was due solely to the acoustics of said church basement, but in the light of day I don't think so. So all you people out there who would love to play a rotary F tuba but are shaking in your shoes over that low C....learn to flap on that note like you do on a pedal F. Work your way up to the C from the pedal, not down to it from a higher, tenser note. I do believe it will work.

Yours cheerfully today, because I have not yet tried to do it again!
MA


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