Woodruff VII - Tuba Lesson

Okay, here's number 7 out of the Woodruff book, Chazondon, so it's kind of, you know, it's going to get this playful kind of thing. We're in G minor here at the beginning. I'm going to play this first little bit, maybe like 4 minutes. Here we go. 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2. Okay, there's two tricks here. One the rhythm. And a 1 and a 2 and a 1 and a 2 and a 1 and a 2. Right. One and a 2 and a 1 and a 2. Now the other thing too is this big accent. You really want to pull out these accents. It's just mezzo forte which gives you plenty of room to really play this accent nice and full. Let it really grab the attention. Kind of an awkward note there in the key of G minor, that E natural. So it's going to sound weird. So embrace that. Get it in your ear and really hone in on that note. And the other thing is the last three notes of this little bit I played, the D slurring to the E flat back to the D. I like to play that D with 1 and 2 and then slur to 1. It makes that slur in the same partial and keeps it really clean. That way you don't have to hear the little blurble between opening the first, as you change the partial there. Let's play that one more time. 1, 2, 1. Alright, let's look at this next section and see if we can get some good tips for it. 1, 1, 2. So the trick here is to kind of bring the volume down, I think. And the reason I like to do that is we have these staccatos surrounded by these occasional accents. And so what these accents do is they kind of give this little contrast, or this note that kind of jumps out of the texture. I'm going to play this again, and this time I want you to follow the accented notes and say their letter names. 1, 2. 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2. I also give a little slight accent to the F and the Eb, that last measure on the second line. I'll show you why. So if you follow the accent line, you'll see that it's just going down the scale. So you have C, Bb, A, G, then I add it to the F and the Eb. Just a little bit, barely. Because really that Eb is going to resolve on the second note, or the third note of the next line. C goes to the D. See, I'm going to play that again. See if you can follow that internal scale line in the accent. What I like to think about with those accents is like I'm throwing that note out into the room as like it's a different player, like a second player playing a descending scale. It creates this effect that's really neat. So that's the kind of thing you want to strive for right there. Let's look at the piano, the crescendo here. 1, 2, 3, 4. Oh yeah. I know there's a little marcato accent that looks like a rooftop. Make sure that's not too short. You know what I mean? People say that's a short accent, but really, I mean, depends who you ask. A lot of music that's older, that's just a bigger accent than the one that's sideways. The one that looks like a sharp T, right? This rooftop one, just bigger. There's going to be more. So make it more. Not necessarily short. Make sure you've got good tone. You want to hear the volume. Let's do that again. 1, 2, 3, 4. I went big there on the last three notes too because it's forte, right? And then it goes right back kind of to where we started with a couple extra notes. 1, 2, 3, 4. So that kind of ends us with this little diminished idea. All these. All those notes being three half steps apart gives us that diminished 7 chord right here. Like the sound of the lady getting on the railroad tracks on the old cartoons, right? Let's do this. Let's start on the third line, the second note. And let's play that far to see how I mold and meld these ideas into one thing. 1, 2, 3, 4. All right. Let's look at this next idea. It starts on this low F. And it goes up this little F Lydian sounding idea. And then it goes right back to these diminished ideas for the next line. I'm going to start right down to low F and play a little bit. Let's see if we can find a good chunk of music to work on here. 1, 2, 3, 4. We'll do that much to the F natural. So, one thing about starting low in a range is, even though it says crescendo, you're thinking, oh, we don't want to start too loud. We want to have plenty of room to crescendo. Let me tell you, when you play low notes on a tuba, especially when you get below A flat or G below B flat, you really kind of have to play them twice as loud as you really think they need to be. And if you don't, they just don't speak at all. So I would be confident in that first note. Don't play it just insanely loud, but be confident loud. And just the natural rise of the register will help that crescendo and give you the security and the confidence that first note is going to come out clean. Let's hear this again. I'll give you some more ideas. 1, 2, 3, 4. Alright. So we get that dissonation, that F natural that's resolved. It's from that F sharp diminished 7th chord down a half step. That works out good. Let us start on the F natural, on the second to last system on this page and play a little bit and see if we can get somewhere. 1, 2, 3, 4. I'll start again. 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay. So one thing here is don't play your staccato, once again, your staccato and your slurred ideas very loud. And when you get to the accents, you can pop them out. Let's try that again. 1, 2, 3, 4. Notice there's a menu window at the end. Now look at that first bit of accents. First you get the B, G, F, E flat, right? So down the scale again, right? And then for the next part when you get ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Make sure that you're not playing those, thinking about those because they're low. Don't think so short as you think full and keep the wind blowing in between the notes there to really get the good strength of the volume on those accents that are in the 16th and 8th notes. Lots of high volume the wind there to make sure you get lots of sound there. Let's do all that one A new key. So all these notes this next section it's kind of like a little mini section of the key of D flat major. Now one thing I love about a brass instrument especially the tuba it's like over exaggerated here. Different keys to me have different like tones. So like D flat to me this is kind of a longer key and it sounds really warm. It's like a really dark kind of key and because we've got this diminuendo on the F. It kind of gives us time to diminuendo instead of a warm sound. Maybe change the style something a little more connected here. Help us really give some variety to this piece. Let's start right there on the three eighth note pickups of the F. One or it says mezzo piano to crescendo. That whole thing can be kind of connected and smooth. And then the three A flats that pick up on the bass after that. This is where it kind of starts to get some more energy in here. So right there yeah. So one thing that you want to do right there is when you slur from D flat to C and going back and forth that quick between two and three to four and back and it's just too much to ask of your fingers. It's too hard. I would go D flat to C one and three. When you keep that common finger down on three and it really like makes it a lot easier. Let's hear that again. Same thing here. Play the notes that aren't accented. Way down. Bring out the accented notes. Alright now this next part has all these little leaps and I will give you a tip. The high note of every idea resolves down a half step. So like if you look at this starting on the A natural with the D flat back to the A natural crescendo. That's the trick is hearing the next note down a half step. And then that one you have the... Followed by the D. So the E flat is followed by the D. And then as far as the lower notes I'll tell you what's cool about these is the lower notes actually follow like this kind of scalar line too. So what you can do is like you can think about like each measure has a high note and a low note. One thing I like to do is just play like the high note line. Just play the top note and then play the bottom note. Then put them together like they're two different instruments. And then full force there on the D to E flat and back and forth. So watch the accuracy in the skips right there. Okay then we go back to the original idea. 1, 2, 1. Once again use that slur from D to E flat and back with 1, 2 to 1 instead of open D. Makes it a little quicker, a little smoother. And then we have the same idea after that we had before. Well I really like that. So you get like the accents that we talked about before between the quieter staccato notes almost like two different instruments and then everything comes to the front on the accents of the D's and E flat. And then once again it backs off. You really want to try to create a lot of contrast. You have these accents and non-accented notes. You want it to be like on and off like a light switch. Light and dark. Almost when the sun is shining and it's completely dark outside with no moon or nothing. The biggest contrast that you can imagine. And then you get the end of the D. So that's kind of like the end and then you have this little mini fermato at the end, this reery. you