TromboneChat

I've seen a couple of his videos that seemed pretty good.

But in this one he demonstrates some extreme embouchure shifts. I think we should take up a collection and get him a lesson with Doug. <humor>

Good video. I do use a shift on bass trombone. I can play pedal F# and down to D with/without a shift, but lower than pedal D only with shift. I move my mouthpiece down and let the bottom lip vibrate. This player is real good and can show how to do it either way, plus he can do it without a shift too.

/Tom

Olka is a monster, but it's also good to know that he only does this crazy shift if he needs to play those notes very loud. And not everyone does it the way he does.

I only watched the first few minutes, but it's particularly interesting that seems to not even notice the extreme shift he does in the whole step going down from B to A - the second and third notes he plays in the very first "no shift" example.

Plus the reversal in the bottom few notes.

Yes he's a great player, but those are exactly the reasons why people have problems as they get older, and then call it a totally misused medical term, and you know what I mean by that.

Yes, I couldn't really make sense of when he shifted. To me it seemed like as he did a descending scale, he moved the mouthpiece lower, but when he ran out of room he popped the mouthpiece back up and continued his descending scale again with mouthpiece sliding down. I got more confused the more I watched.

From minute 14 on he plays excerpts. It's interesting to watch his constant pitch adjustments with the valve slides.

He didn't mention direction of air stream, and thinks the difference between top and bottom lip muscle construction is what makes the sound change.

For anyone not familiar with the name, Chris Olka is principal tuba with the Cincinnati Symphony.