ITEA Journal Volume 48 Number 3 (Spring 2021)

Pro Tips:
by Øystein Baadsvik

How to Play Relaxed but Powerfully

the "Hammer Technique"

Once I was at an amusement park, in line for the High Striker. You know, the game where you try to hit a target with a heavy, wooden sledgehammer so that a puck goes all the way to the top and hits the bell, and you win a teddy bear! In front of me in the line was this huge bodybuilder type fellow with biceps like footballs! While his girlfriend was watching he lifted the heavy hammer confidently with just one hand and hit the target hard. To his surprise, and everybody else's, the puck went only halfway to the top. Clearly annoyed he grabbed the hammer once more, this time with both hands, and smashed it as hard as he could down on the pad. I thought the thing was going to break, but the puck refused to go higher than just above the middle. He only got these two attempts, so he had to leave the stage embarrassed while his girlfriend was giggling at him. Not as strong as he thought he was? Ha! Or, perhaps something else was wrong?

Anyway, it was my turn. I could barely lift the hammer so I thought to myself that there is no way I can hit anything with this. My strategy became to get it as high as possible up in the air. Then the idea was to aim and let it fall down to the target without me using any muscles. To be honest, compared to the bodybuilder I didn't have any muscles to speak of anyway. So, after some struggling, I managed to get the hammer up onto my shoulder, then balanced it straight up in the air. While trying to estimate the distance to the target I made a little jump to get the hammer even higher. I let the hammer drop recklessly. With a loud bang, the help of pure gravity and a bit of luck, the hammer hit the target straight on. The puck flew all the way to the top, rang the bell and I won a teddy bear! The following month, I married the bodybuilder's girlfriend!

OK, the part about the girlfriend wasn't entirely accurate, but the rest was! And it really got me thinking. What if I could apply this powerful principle when playing the tuba? What if I could harness the awesome power of gravity, instead of fighting it?! Around the same time, I watched a YouTube video of Annamia Eriksson playing Siegfried's horn call at the Royal Opera in Stockholm. Watch it-it's the best horn playing you'll hear! What she does in the video is exactly what I wanted to achieve. She lifts with a good breath, and then she has enough confidence to just let go. The result is simply stunning. The sound and articulation is solid and powerful, yet relaxed. It has that bedrock quality that we are all striving for.

I said to myself, that's how I want to play my fortes. Now it was only a matter of developing a method and a mindset to learn this.

It's really just a sigh

If we isolate the motion of letting the air out freely, it is really just a sigh. Try it yourself! Sit straight, inhale, then let go. We don't need to push the air out at all. We can simply breathe in and then let the air out like a sigh. If we put a couple of lips and a tuba in front of that sigh, we get a good fortissimo without using any muscle force at all. All I do is lift and then let go!

This is much easier said than done though. In the beginning, when trying this, I was afraid of missing the note, so I unconsciously held back the air on impact. Result: a careful and withheld sound. It's very similar to the terror of lifting a hammer and letting it drop down towards a nail you are holding with your own fingers. Letting go takes some faith! The consequences of missing, just a tiny bit, will hurt. A lot. It's somewhat like the mental pain we experience when we let go of the air on the tuba, and hit the wrong note.

Let's look at an exercise I have found to work well if you want to get confident using the hammer technique. Don't expect lasting results immediately. This will take at least a few months of daily training to master.

Step by step

First, let's get a feel for the principle. Sit straight upright, lift your hand up in the air and let go. Let the hand drop it recklessly onto your thigh. It should hurt a bit if done right!

It is easy to make two mistakes here:

1. Controlling the hand's motion down. That is, holding it back.
2. Using force to push the hand down at your thigh. That is, pushing.

Keep doing this until you can relax totally in your arm. When done right, it is almost like a collapse of the arm, including the shoulder.

Getting the sigh right

You have invited friends over for dinner and just came back from the store after shopping.

When unpacking the bags, you realize that you forgot to buy the most important ingredient, and you will have to go all the way back to the store to get it. The type of sigh I am looking for now is the heavy, reckless sigh that most of us would use in that situation! Let's go! Straighten up the back and let's do it again. Lift - drop. It should be an up-down motion, not in-out.

The same two mistakes are possible here as well:

1. Controlling the air's motion by holding it back.
2. Using force to push the air out.

Keep practicing until you are 100% relaxed during the sigh.

A good exercise on the instrument

Let us move on to the instrument.

Find a comfortable, open note in the low-mid register. It should be a note that you normally find easy to play. For F tuba, an F is good. A BBb tuba player might want to play an F as well. Euphonium and trombone players might want to do a Bb. Set the metronome to 69 BPM. We are doing three beats per bar.

First bar: Hold the tuba ready, breathe in through the third bar, and relax the air out, through the tuba but with no sound, on 1.

Second bar: do the same thing as in the first bar, except you let the lips come together loosely, so that a tone occurs.

Repeat these two bars 20-30 times. Important: Most players experience that they get a good sound, or even the right tone only three out of 30 times in the beginning. That is ok! Right now, we are only trying to let go of the control and see if we can get the motion right.

Just like when learning to use a hammer, the immediate wish for the perfect end result must yield to the right motion in the beginning. This is motion-oriented practicing, not goal-oriented, so allow yourself to sound crappy. When you manage to get the motion right consistently, good sound and articulation will come. When you master it, this method is perfect for the opening bars of the Hindemith Sonata and the Gregson concerto, plus a whole bunch of orchestra parts. In fact, I use it on almost every single loud entrance, especially in the mid to low range.

Pro-tip 1: Use breath articulation while practicing this. The tongue just makes it harder.

Pro-tip 2: It's sometimes easier to get the motion right when standing up with the instrument.

Pro-tip 3: Practice this motion for 10 minutes per day for a couple of months. It'll transform your playing.

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