I never did an Arnold Jacobs pilgrimage.

[russiantuba]

Ultimately, I find relying on mechanics to not be effective because everyone is different and what works for one doesn’t work for another—and many use that instead of their ears. You won’t believe how many older students don’t even listen to what comes out of the bell.

My goal as a teacher is to define what good is, or what better is. One notable thing to consider is early on in his teaching, there weren’t quality recordings of any group where the bass brass instruments were prevalent, and essentially no solo recordings. Later in his career, this was all available to the masses.

One important thing in this approach is modeling. I play a lot in lessons. I play my approach musically (even when it isn’t great, show how I work through it, sound color changes and direction, etc.). Jacobs didn’t play in lessons much from what I was told—he mainly sung it. Ultimately, I ensure that a student hear their improvement and growing off the successes, and I think that’s what Jacobs did in his “one time” lessons.

One note—last year on my teaching evaluation, my peer evaluator and Jacobs aficionado mentioned this. I thought it was funny because it was the one time I didn’t play as I had a slightly sore throat (wife was hospitalized with strep a week later, guess I had that as the last thing I wanted to do was play). He mentioned when I did model, he noticed it helped more than anything. I did a bit of pedagogical (not the physical pedagogy) and reviewed some of Roger Rocco’s writings, notably about language acquisition and further with regional accents and pronunciation and it supports this claim.

This is a video I normally show on a very early lesson that really explains the effects of paralysis by analysis and simplicity. https://youtu.be/-NRQ3wRZETA?si=MnjFeZ2mDt5Z_0NX. This shows my approach in a nutshell to a client. I’ve had some that prefer mechanics, and I intermix it both—using the approach of adjusting the teaching to the student (something I learned watching a ton of Jacobs).

Recently, as in the past couple weeks, I found some articles on the trumpeter Bill Adam and his approach, which conceptually contains a lot of similar approaches, especially with catering to imagination. Again, not for everyone, as some claimed they didn’t benefit as much from Jacobs as others they studied with (Gene Pokorny on the Tuba People TV interviews Michael Grose did is a prime example).

[bloke]

I don't see the "play by feel" type of player as being able to reliably play up in the range where partials are only a step apart.

The memory of the sound of an upper range pitch reminds my body what to do in order to produce that pitch...

The more a person practices, the more reliable this becomes because there is certainly a physical feel associated with every single pitch, but that feel is subject to a lot of things like health, rest, hunger, temperature, musical situation, and more things that won't occur to me prior to posting this.