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Summary: Sit or stand properly when playing the tuba; learn how with tips from our expert tuba player and teacher in this free tuba music education video.
Views: 533 | Tags: lessons, instrument, music, brass, parts, tuba, freevideo, tubalessons, tubamusic
About the Expert
Kevin Smith Kevin is 51 years old, and a poet and therapist as well as tubist. Kevin has played a variety of musical styles over the course of his life, as well as a vari... read more
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Questions & AnswersHi, Kevin Smith here, Tubalove, and I'm going to talk to you now about posture when playing the instrument. Posture, the way that you sit to play is another critically important part of getting the sound production. Now I play, and I'll get up in a moment, but, I play standing up a lot. I just like doing that, but for stuff, if you're doing stuff with bands and that kind of thing, obviously you cannot be standing up and playing. You have a stand, you have music in front of you, you have to sit to play. So, and let it be known right now, this couch is not an optimal seat, ok, I'm just using it to demonstrate posture. A regular chair, with a nice solid back, is really what you're looking for. You want to give yourself, have your legs spread, to some degree, you want the tuba kind of tucked down in there, you want to give your arms some flexibility to move around, you don't want to be rigid because the more rigid you are the less you're going to be able to take the deep breaths necessary. So, again, optimally, I find when I play, I think most people when they sit, their back isn't right up against the chair all the time, tend to be . . so it gives you, keep that diaphragm churning. If you're going to have your back against the chair, get a nice sort of cushiony back or something so it still gives you that soft support in the back. I like to play standing up. I play a lot to the stereo; I play a lot to music. It just, I love the breath support, I can kind of bend my back back. And, to get higher notes and stuff, you can really bend your back back and get that diaphragm screaming, but again when you're playing in groups you don't have that luxury to stand up and a lot of people just don't really like standing up anyway. So again, posture, very important.
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