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Hi, 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.