“It Ain’t Necessarily So”
Sifting Through Brass Dogma
Randy Adams
Professor of Trumpet
Sam Houston State University
“Always take a full breath!” “Only breathe what’s needed.” “Warm-up with free buzzing.” “Never free buzz.” “Support from the gut” “Keep the gut relaxed.” “Arch the tongue.” “Keep the tongue low.” We will learn about these and other popular but conflicting methods and glean helpful techniques from each in the context of varying individual goals, embouchure mechanics, airflow, and acoustics.
Presented at the Texas Music Educators Association Convention in San Antonio Texas, February 8, 2024
“IT AIN’T NECESSARILY SO”
Sifting Through Brass Dogma
TMEA 2024 TRUMPET CLINIC
Randy Adams, Professor of Trumpet, Sam Houston State University
These are the session notes from the trumpet clinic “It Ain’t Necessarily So” presented by Randy Adams at the Texas Music Educators Association Convention February 8, 2024 in San Antonio Texas. You can also download a .pdf copy of these notes here:
Thank you for attending the TMEA trumpet clinic “It Ain’t Necessarily So”. I welcome your comments and questions, and I’m also happy for you to share these notes and/or the link to download them with your friends, colleagues and students. These notes are pretty much just that – notes I used to help keep me on track during my clinic. They kind of fizzle out toward the end as I began to focus on the main body of the talk, but there are still a few thoughts there I wanted to leave for you to chew on. I hope to blog more about this topic and pick up where these notes leave off and perhaps write a book at some point in the future. Please refer to my blog on www.RAdBrass.com for more installments of “It Ain’t…” as well as some previous offerings. If you have any questions or comments, you can reach me at RANDYADAMS@SHSU.EDU.
I’m always happy to talk trumpet or help in any way I can.
Here are the clinic notes! Thanks for your interest in them!
Thank you for your work as music educators – working in two fields notorious for low pay and long hours.
It’s a vocation that chooses us.
Doing lots of people a lot of good – teaching important life skills such as teamwork AND how to deal with tedious tasks alone for hours (practicing), giving young people a place to belong that’s safe, enriching, and fun.
Encouraging and inspiring students to reach beyond themselves, embrace the challenges of public performance (helping with job interviews, public speaking, etc.) and strive for excellence both personally and corporately.
And doing all this while sharing the gift of music. We do this because we love both the music and the kids – but especially the kids!
“It Ain’t Necessarily So”
Coming up with a better title than “Trumpet Fundamentals” (which is what I always seem to be presenting at TMEA) – “Stuff you’re not supposed to do” “Forbidden fruits” “What they don’t teach you in school” “Confessions of a Trumpet Professor”– didn’t want a dry, academic sounding title but wanted to talk about:
Conflicting Techniques
Pros and Cons of Each
My Recommendations
Paradox of playing
Our tendency to stick rigidly with a single teaching concept at the exclusion of all others
Our use of exaggeration in teaching – pros/cons
This topic is something I’ve wanted to address at TMEA for many years but kept getting cold feet when it was time to submit a proposal. However, last spring in a weak and careless moment I submitted, and here I am. As time as gotten closer I’ve become more and more convinced that this was a crazy idea that I should have just left alone! I guess it’s too late now!
This information will be on RADBRASS.COM
40+ years of teaching and playing professionally in many different genres – Classical, Jazz, Broadway Musicals, Rock, Country, Contemporary Christian, European Folk, and Polka – and teaching all age groups from beginner to high school and college to professional to retiree starting to play after laying off many years – the struggles and failures and the successes and the plain old dumb luck – have taught me many things such as:
Be flexible in my approach both to teaching and playing, to gather information from any source available – use what works and store what doesn’t because it will probably come in handy at a later date.
Never dismiss or look down on someone who teaches methodologies different from your own or what you’ve been taught.
Don’t ever write anything off as being totally useless – at least not before giving it careful thought and looking at all the angles.
And even then – store it away for use in another way on another day – it could help your understanding of a different concept or technique. Or a piece of it can be helpful at a later date –
The Caruso Method is good example for me.
The book teaches concepts and exercises as strict rules and some – many – students thrive on this.
And I’ve used these studies successfully with many students over the years.
But my own experience is much different – concepts good but sticking with book causes me injury.
Studying why injury is caused is helpful as well as studying why what works well is helpful.
There are specific applications to be made in my personal playing and others in various student issues.
Learn from other disciplines and instruments and the voice. Playing and studying other instruments like voice, guitar, piano, bass guitar, drums, accordion have added new dimensions in understanding for my trumpet playing and teaching.
Differences and similarities in how to practice along with looking at sound, rhythm, technique, harmony, and melody through different lenses and from different angles can enrich your understanding of your major instrument, and music in general, in many wonderful ways. It also makes you appreciate better what other musicians have to go through to master their instruments!
Training for and completing 8 marathons also taught me many things about trumpet playing and teaching along with practice, rest, dealing with injury, preventing injury, performance mind-set, endurance, etc.
In my younger years, riding a motorcycle – especially on Houston freeways – taught me much about trumpet playing and the safety in living dangerously and the danger in playing it safe. (Very important for trumpet players!) Being overly careful to avoid mistakes causes the body and mind to go into a defensive posture which is destructive to good trumpet playing. It actually causes more mistakes and problems. Think of the poor little old lady going 45 mph. and driving scared in the fast lane on I-10. She’s scared to death there as other drivers swerve to keep from hitting her or beep at her for going so slow, and she, in trying to be so careful, winds up being a danger both to herself and the other drivers on the road. A fearful, timid trumpet player creates a very similar scenario. I know this both from being the fearful one and from being the guy annoyed with the fearful one “going slow and scared in the fast lane”!
My life of faith has also taught me much about music, success, failure, humility, consistency, and working with people in healthy, productive ways.
Brass playing – trumpet playing in particular – is a paradox – a mix of opposing forces and contradictions that somehow come together to create that noble voice that can either signal alarm or lull a baby to sleep.
For example:
Air must flow freely, but it must also face resistance at several points in the body and the instrument to produce a resonant tone in various registers and dynamics. –
Resistance points:
Throat (as little as possible)
Mouth and tongue (varying depending on range, tone and volume)
Lips (again varying depending on…)
Mouthpiece cup (different shapes and sizes affect tone, range, intonation, etc)
Mouthpiece throat (tiny!)
Mouthpiece backbore (flared, open, tight)
Leadpipe (different bores and tapers)
The Plumbing – the shape, taper, curves, kinks and flares in the rest of the pipe we blow through. Not to mention how air waves move back and forth in the instrument creating a peculiar resistance of their own!
More paradox:
The body must be relaxed enough to allow freedom of movement and ease of tone and technique, but firm enough in just the right places to produce the sounds we strive for – especially in trumpet playing.
The embouchure must be soft enough to vibrate but firm enough in just the right places to produce notes in the trumpet register, and
a soft embouchure only works if there is muscle tone behind it –
(like a V-8 engine loping along smoothly at 60 mph as opposed to a 2-cylinder scooter) – both are capable, but one has to work much harder than the other to do it.
muscle tone is only productive if it can be used in a relaxed and balanced manner. And it’s in constant motion varying depending on frequency, volume, tone color, and articulation.
There are many ways to play and teach trumpet, and there are many things we learn and practice that must be abandoned or contradicted at times, at least temporarily, in the heat of battle –
Some of these include:
Using pressure and tension, moving the mouthpiece up or down to help range or endurance or just to survive a performance, moving your embouchure or exaggerating a pivot when you play, tonguing between the teeth, anchor tonguing, TUT tonguing, etc. (these are things we spend a lot of time trying to keep our students from doing) but then set aside and “corrected” in the practice room the next day before they become destructive and debilitating habits.
(Think of what we ask our trumpeters to do during marching season). Honestly, there are things I have to do sometimes in the orchestra pit and on stage that I would never teach my students!
It’s important to know and understand how airflow and embouchure work and how air and vibration react inside the plumbing and develop in the room. But there are times when you just have to get the job done even if the way we do it breaks a rule somewhere – this holds true both in performance and in teaching methodologies.
What really matters:
In musical performance the only rule is “it’s gotta sound good.”
[And here’s one of my favorite personal dogmas that I tend to live by – and it has gotten me in trouble when I “do whatever it takes to get the job done” over and over again for weeks on end until the “cheat” becomes the habit and damage is done. Three weeks of six-night-a-week shows after long teaching days and a long commute have done this to me many times over the years! The summer months for me have often been a time to undo bad habits gained during busy playing/teaching seasons and relearn healthy and efficient techniques.]
It’s helpful to be honest with ourselves (and our students) concerning these issues realizing that there is a lot of psychology in how we teach and the way we stress concepts in the hopes that maybe a few students will apply some of what we’re trying to get them to do.
But we also need to know that some students, often our best ones, are going to do way too much and create problems for themselves.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of teaching good concepts dogmatically applying them in the same way to everyone because they’re “right” or they “work”, stressing them over and over but there is always a danger in becoming too ridged in our approach and creating problems.
We need to stress correct concepts always with the knowledge that different people will apply what we say in different ways and in varying degrees. We definitely can’t be wishy-washy in our pedagogy, because that causes confusion, but we need to be smart and logical – striving to understand our craft as well as possible and adapting our methods to the needs and understanding of our students.
Here are some questions we should constantly be asking ourselves as we teach:
What do students really hear when we give them instruction or advice?
How much or little of it are they applying and how is it being interpreted?
How does that mix with other information they take in from friends, internet, personal experience?
How do various programs and concepts we teach conflict with each other or contradict each other?
How is what we teach influenced by our own perceptions and misconceptions of information we’ve received? How is this filtered through the emotions and understanding of our students?
How do we use dogma and hyperbole? When is it helpful? When is it not?
The trumpet has fooled me many times over the years, and I’ve changed techniques for myself and for my students to suit the needs of the times and the jobs, often contradicting myself even in the middle of a lesson.
But as teachers we are also artists and sculptors, shaping and making corrections along the way but always with a specific goal in mind and hopefully always treating our subject with the utmost care and respect.
Know your craft and gain as much knowledge and understanding of technique and how things work as you can. Use whatever means you can to convey these concepts and skills to your students, but realize that:
The things that matter most and make the most difference are things we can’t see or touch – as in life itself. Musical imagination, desire, determination, concepts of sound and phrase, confidence (and humility), focus on the right things and tuning out the distractions – these things are the most important. The nuts and bolts of pedagogy and learning to play a horn are only the means or steppingstones we use to get to these immensely more important deeper-level processes that bring music to life. Always strive to keep these deeper-level concepts at the forefront of your teaching. They are why we learn to play musical instruments in the first place.
“All in moderation” with methods and techniques – but be aware that moderation can also produce mediocrity – (another paradox) but there does need to be balance. While over-the-top unbalance and exaggeration can be highly effective for some, it is also dangerous for others – those students who actually listen to and conscientiously apply what we tell them.
Keep learning and exploring and asking questions and trying things. Hang onto what works, file away what does not (it may work at some point in the future), learn from successes AND failures.
Let your ears be your primary guide and follow with your eyes:
Listen for relaxed, resonant, colorful sounds, clean articulation, in tune, steady pitches, smooth note-connections, consistent tone, accurate intonation, and well-shaped phrasing.
Watch for relaxed arms, hands, shoulders, neck and face, without strain. Sometimes is looks a little wrong but sounds right. Caution is advised here, but go with your ears first.
ON TO NUTS AND BOLTS AND EXAMPLES
Here’s a list of some things I’ve wanted to talk about for many years as I teach, practice and perform and catch myself doing things I was told not to do at some point or purposely not doing things I was told to do.
The List:
Warm up the same every day
Don’t warm up the same…
Play soft warm-up
Play loud warm-up
Play high warm-up
Play low warm-up
Play long tones/don’t play long tones
Play lip slurs/don’t play lip slurs
Warm down/don’t warm down
Warm down on high notes
Soft lips vs. hard/strong lips
Use pressure
Use zero pressure
Hold breath with tongue
Never let tongue catch or stop the air
Smile embouchure
Pucker embouchure
Pucker vs. smile
Blow less going down
Blow more going up
Don’t raise your shoulders when you inhale /
Raise your shoulders (shew breath)
Play on a big mouthpiece for a big sound
Practice/Don’t practice breath starts
Practice/don’t practice TI or holding air behind tongue before starts
Wet lip vs. dry lip
Nuts and Bolts – Conflicting Concepts
Tongue Arch
Lip Buzz/Mpc Buzz
Relaxed Gut
Low Tongue Placement and Open Teeth
Big Breathing
Practicing Long Tones
Articulation – TUT, Anchor Tongue, TEE, TAH, TOE, TKTK, DGDG, NANGA-NANGA, TTK, TKT
Togue between teeth and lips, and the list goes on and on!
Pucker vs. Smile Embouchure
Wet vs. Dry Embouchure
High vs. Low Mouthpiece Placement
Today we just have time to touch on a couple of these.
Arch your tongue/Don’t arch your tongue
Charlie Geyer story – always insisted he played with a low tongue placement – even in the upper register – like he was taught to do. But when asked to participate in an experiment where he was filmed using an x-ray video device, he was shocked to see his tongue moving up and down for upper and lower registers.
I’m sure his thinking “OH” had a positive impact on his sound and technique, though, even if physically it did not appear that way on the scope. I often tell my students to “think” something but don’t actually “do” it. The “doing” of it causes us to often do way too much. Often just thinking it produces the wanted result much better.
Just arching tongue does nothing, and it is possible to play a high note with the tongue down low, but it does help, and it does appear that most everyone does it.
We often teach our trumpet students to use that low tongue placement to help them make a bigger, darker sound that is not thin and strident. But for many players this can turn into a major range-inhibiter. Allowing the tongue to arch as we do to whistle higher and lower pitches is a helpful part of making upper register playing and lip slurs work, but it can also be over-done and cause a thinning out of the tone. For others it can create tension and blockage in the airflow. Again, use your ears to guide your pedagogy more than the rules you’re taught.
So, we teach that low placement of the tongue figuring that most students are going to arch their tongues for higher notes anyway, but in the process hopefully they’ll make warmer sounds and not sound so bright and edgy. However, some students need to be taught to arch the tongue for the upper register or they’ll never successfully be able to play above the staff. It’s the trumpeter’s job to play the higher notes in the brass section, so we’re cheating our students if we don’t expose them to this technique. But there’s danger in letting it go too far – but perhaps an even bigger danger in not teaching about ways to experiment with upper register playing involving tongue placement.
Resistance and shape and speed of the air column are crucial aspects of trumpet playing. Arnold Jacobs taught the importance of FLOW and cautioned against anything that would impede it and cause inner air pressure. I took this as absolute law as a young trumpet player and dutifully applied it to my own technique. However, resistance has to happen somewhere, and pressure has to happen somewhere in order to move the air and vibrate the lips at the frequencies we’re asking of them. Some Lead players now are teaching a low tongue placement even in the extreme upper registers in order to get a bigger flow of air to the embouchure. However, the resistance to the air in their case happens in the mouthpiece – shallow cup, narrow rim diameter, tight and flaring back-bore. Students using more standard classical equipment will usually need to shape that air in the mouth. Think of how we spray air through a garden hose. Jacobs was not wrong! My perception and application was wrong, AND the trumpet is just a different animal than the tuba. I needed to filter his information through trumpet lenses and adapt accordingly, not just treat the concepts as dogma.
Some really interesting videos to watch where you can see the tongue arching for upper and dropping for lower notes in some cases and not doing this in other cases. Sometimes it arches to start a higher note and then drops to sustain the pitch once it is achieved. It can make you wonder if the tongue has any function in that area at all!
X-Ray Trumpet – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjSBQl38ksk
Pete Bond – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47wkhBH9pMY
Sarah Willis MRI Chamber – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWcOwgWsPHA
View embouchure from side with see-through mpc David Wilken – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyxXOcHhYV4
Free Buzz Mouthpiece Buzz:
Buzz mouthpiece
To buzz or not to buzz
Use or don’t use BERP or not or use a tube or visualizer rim
They’re all different techniques that produce different results, and each can be useful (or hurtful) depending on the student, the goals, etc.
Cichowicz and Jacobs both taught that the free buzz was counter-productive and that it caused the lips to be too tight. Jacobs taught that you really don’t have an embouchure until the rim of the mpc seals the lips. He advocated buzzing with a rim visualizer and/or a mouthpiece.
Stamp was a big proponent of buzzing the lips alone without the mouthpiece. Cichowicz said he liked the Stamp method but never mentioned anything about the lip buzzing part except to say that he thought it wasn’t helpful.
Buzzing the lips w/o the mpc is not exactly the way the embouchure works, but it can train the lips to behave in ways that are helpful when the mpc is connected – like working the corners and teaching the muscles to firm up on the teeth instead of pressing against each other and shutting off the flow of air.
Mouthpiece Buzzing with zero pressure is a good next step to this process – again something that seems to go against what I learned in grad school but I’ve found to be very helpful for learning to play with less pressure and developing a more efficient upper register.
I like starting the day with a little free buzzing followed by zero-pressure mpc buzzing in all registers before playing the horn.
Relaxed Gut/Tight Gut
Point of Conflict – Cichowicz taught a relaxed gut, open throat and mouth and teeth, and had us working on lots of slurred studies (Clarke) and lower register technical etudes (Getchell, Bosquet). Consequently, over time my upper register and endurance suffered. I sure had a big, warm tone though!
What was missing – a balance of low and high playing, an understanding of how to apply muscle exertion in positive ways without creating debilitating tension.
Case in point – I was tied in knots in a trumpet lesson – tense and locked up in the throat. Cichowicz, in an effort to get me more relaxed and get the air flowing better, noticed that I was tensing my gut and locking up in my throat – a concept referred to as the “Valsalva Maneuver”. He had me put my hand on his stomach while he played a two octave arpeggio from low C to high C so I could see and feel that he could do this without tightening up his stomach muscles. I applied this as best I could and over time, as the concept morphed into something it was not intended to be, I began noticing a lack of support and warmth in my tone in the middle and upper registers. Firming up the GUT helped this even though it seemed to contradict the teaching of the master.
My understanding of core support when I came to Cichowicz was shaped by my experiences in high school and undergraduate training.
Mr. Hood (my beloved and much respected high school band director) – told me to tighten up my gut when I was a fat kid in high school marching band standing on the front line with my belly hanging out
Mr. Austin (my lifelong mentor and trumpet teacher from midway through high school throughout my undergraduate years) – “tight gut” support like he was taught in voice lessons — these are the things that shaped my thinking before Cichowicz.
Relaxing the gut helped immensely at first until I turned it into dogma and it became a problem. I came to Cichowicz with misconceptions and misapplications of the otherwise good information given to me by previous teachers. My misunderstanding and careless overdoing are what led to the problems.
Arnold Jacobs also taught this relaxed approach and made comments like “Make a study of weakness” and avoid tension of any kind. Taking his advice at face value as I did, because he was the master and had produced many great students on all wind instruments, I turned it into dogma and over did it.
WHO WAS RIGHT? WHO WAS WRONG?
There are elements of truth and value in both approaches, and both can be used to balance each other.
Reconciling differences
Trumpet players do tend to be an uptight bunch and we tend to over-use our muscles to our own detriment, but there comes a point in our approach where we must come to terms with things like internal air pressure and firm muscles – both of which are needed to some extent in high brass instrument playing.
For most students and teachers, insisting on relaxed playing is necessary because of the tendency to over-do muscle use and pressure (both air pressure and mouthpiece pressure). The physically strong player often becomes muscle-bound, overusing muscles in conflict with each other creating many problems with flow, range, resonance, intonation, and endurance. It sounds like this player is not using enough air and is using too much muscle (which is correct), but telling them to use more air only makes them blow harder and tense up even more.
Often these players are locked up in the throat and too tight in the center of the embouchure. Blowing more air to try to get past these closures only creates more inner pressure and it forces the compressed lips forward into the mouthpiece and forces the player to have to increase mouthpiece pressure to compensate. That’s destructive both to the sound and the body.
But some students need to be told the opposite – they need to be encouraged to support from down low, firm up the core muscles, engage the cheek muscles and BLOW. (But telling this to a muscle-bound player will only make his/her problem worse.) But when they try to blow more air the under-developed embouchure (underdeveloped partly because of a constant lack of airflow) can’t handle the increased load and either shuts down or just produces a louder, blatty sound. Or the student pinches to compensate.
And some, once they’ve done what you’ve asked them to do with relaxing, etc., need to be given permission to explore firm muscle support from the gut and learn how to apply this without locking up the throat and other muscle groups.
As a teacher, be willing to go either way with your methodology depending on the needs of the student. When you see a student turning red in the face and blowing hard with little results, it’s ok to get them to maybe back off the air just a bit and concentrate on efficiency. Soft, non-pressure playing in the warm-up, practicing “air trumpet” before playing a phrase (blowing air patterns with articulation and fingering notes on the horn, but not making the lips buzz).
The player who plays too soft and uses too little air needs to breathe bigger and engage the core muscles. Support from down low as much as the embouchure works – “Whatever you do with your lips, match it twice as much with your gut.” “The higher you play, the lower your support should come from and the stronger it should be.”
“OH” Vowel or “EE” Vowel
Dogma – Telling everyone to open up the teeth to produce an big, resonant tone.
Case in point – In my early years of teaching I had a young high school student who was pinching and playing with his teeth too close together. We worked very hard on opening up the teeth and saying AH to round out the tone. This student was very bright and eager to sound good and please his teachers. We made good progress during the spring, and he went home for the summer and continued to work on these concepts. When he came back in the fall he looked like a beaver when he played – his jaw was way below where the mpc rim was and the horn had an extreme downward angle because there was nothing there for the mpc to rest on. He had managed to learn how to make a nice sound, but there were obvious problems in his playing because of the new setting. And sadly, this was my fault. I still agonize over this one after all these years.
What was missing – my understanding of how this student would perceive my instructions and my dogmatic insistence that he keep opening up his teeth. Most of my students that have clenched teeth or overly pinched lips need minute-by-minute reminders to open up, say AH, say OH. Not this student, evidently. The fix involved telling him the exact opposite of what I was taught by all the greatest brass teachers of the time.
Changing or Adjusting Embouchures
Case in point – My high school and undergraduate days I was taught that a properly working embouchure was the first consideration. Cichowicz and Jacobs taught that if you fix the air, the embouchure will adjust itself and correct itself naturally. This is then what I applied in my teaching and personal practice. Consequently when embouchure problems occurred in my own playing or with my students I was reluctant to address them head-on confident that focusing on the air, the embouchure would follow suit and fix itself. While a good approach to song and wind does tend to help an embouchure work properly (even a bad one), there are still very specific things about a trumpet embouchure that need to be considered and are worth the time and trouble to fix. Understanding how embouchure works is a huge help in playing and teaching. While over-thinking embouchure and over-adjusting embouchure can be a huge detriment to playing, it is important to be able to spot embouchure problems and deal with them.
Again in my early years of teaching, I had a very fine and talented jr. high student with an embouchure that was obviously way too low, and I knew it. My grad school training, though, had taught me to focus on the air issues and let the embouchure fix itself. This student had a beautiful sound and no obvious range/endurance problems – at least not compared to his peers. But when he decided to go off to college as a music major, the first thing he had to do was fix his embouchure – a tough way to start a degree in trumpet! I could have, and should have, helped him when he was younger, but my ridged, dogmatic approach to my learned methodology (in my youthful zeal and inexperience) kept me from it. I’m sure he learned more about how to help others through an embouchure change dealing with it in college than he would have in jr. high, but it’s still a tough thing to go through, and I should have been able to help him with this when he was a younger player.
(I now like the Frank Campos method of embouchure change discussed in his fine book “Trumpet Technique”)
What was missing – I was missing a balanced approach to dealing with airflow and embouchure issues. I felt like I was betraying my schooling when I sidestepped breathing and flow to deal with muscles and setup.
Embouchure Changes
I’ve gone through several embouchure changes in my time on trumpet. Early high school days I tended to play with the mpc very low on the top lip.
Later the Maggio method convinced me I needed to put the mpc high on the lip and pucker.
I then returned to a lower placement when my sound became too fuzzy. And I also tended to place low and then stretch the top lip out even more.
Then later I added a bit of that pucker back to “pad” the lips from mouthpiece pressure (so I could press more and get away with it). This went on for many years and created a host of response problems, injuries and swelling and skin problems as well (zits, cuts, ulcers, etc.) as well as intonation problems – sharp upper register.
Also over the years I’ve had to resort to sliding the mpc down on the upper lip at times (especially on piccolo trumpet) to get the higher notes out when I’m getting tired and then letting it turn into a habit during busy seasons. “Cram practicing” between teaching trumpet lessons and commutes to town tends to make problems like this (as well as others) creep (or rush!) into my technique when I get busy.
During the COVID shutdown I decided to rebuild my embouchure and try to find a more efficient way to play because as I’m getting older, I find I don’t heal as quickly as I used to and I need to be more thoughtful about how I play – I’d like to keep playing for at least a few more years! My embouchure “change” basically involved doing the things I had been teaching about embouchure but not actually doing. – letting the corners do more of the work, not pressing, keeping the air flowing and fighting the urge to clamp-down-and-blow-harder to get high notes (which works to some extent, but it causes injury and excess tension along with response problems, dull sound, bad intonation – and it hurts!)
Some things I’ve learned
A good healthy dose of practicing what I preach! And considering some other things that were new for me too.
Pressure works, but pressure injures lips, hurts endurance, intonation, tone, and response.
It’s possible to compensate for these things to a degree, but pressure comes at a high cost.
Spend some time at the beginning of your playing day using zero pressure buzzing and playing to develop your corners and train your mind and confidence to use less pressure.
It’s possible to play in the upper register without turning red in the face and straining – and it even sounds better and is better in-tune.
Tongue arch is a helpful technique, but is not always necessary, or is it always helpful.
Charlie Guyer story –
The corners of the embouchure are as important as the middle part that vibrates
The red part of the lip between the corners and the mpc rim are very important to develop
Dogma we can count on – PRACTICE – and keep a balanced diet in your routine fundamentals practice.
All brass players need some form of practice in:
Long Tones addressing all registers – can be strict longtones or Cichowicz, Stamp, Schlossberg, etc.
Flow and Slur studies with the valves
Flow Studies using articulation
Lip Slurs and Flexibility Studies
Articulation studies including multiple tonguing (mixed with flex and flow)
Intervallic studies
Endurance Studies (etudes and sight-reading)
Long Tones
Many approaches to this including strict long tones, Stamp Studies, Cichowicz “Flow Studies”, Schlossberg, the Caruso Method, etc. – they all address the same major issues of TONE, AIR FLOW, RANGE, ENDURANCE, EMBOUCHURE FORMATION
Just playing the long tone study will help a little, but applying the ears and mind to these studies is what will either make them very helpful or destructive.
Derase Book Notes;
Dominic Derasse – “The Book of Trumpet Secrets”
Brass teachers often take a rigid approach to teaching embouchure and many fine, successful teachers and players have vastly different approaches. The best approach for the individual depends on the individual – anatomy, desired goals, mental/emotional setup, etc.
Often teachers will contradict themselves or change their approach – Philip Farkas switched from teaching aiming air straight into mpc with aligned teeth to teaching more of a downward angle between 1962 and 1970.
Donald Reinhardt taught the Pivot Method – blowing more upstream for lower notes and more downstream for upper notes. Studies showed many players do this naturally to some degree. Some agree, some say the whole apparatus should remain still.
Arnold Jacobs taught that it’s more about air and musical thought – “wind and song” – and less about chops
Caruso taught that it’s more about coordination and strength
Donald Fink – “pucker tempered with a smile” embouchure
Raphael Mendez – saying the letter M will keep face muscles set on the teeth and not allow the lips to overlap. Then use a pivot, tongue arch, and press lips together.
Arban – Mpc 1/3 upper, 2/3 lower
St. Jacome, Clarke – mpc 2/3 upper, 1/3 lower
Stevens-Costello and others – ½-1/2
Maggio Method – 2/3 upper and puckered embouchure – using the pucker as a cushion for the mouthpiece –
Claude Gordon studied with Maggio and Clarke and both teachers used this setting to some degree.
Callet’s “tongue controlled embouchure” keeps the tongue forward and in contact the lips and the corners relaxed
Ghitalla was so concerned that the lips be curled in and upper register setting be available, that he advocated teaching beginners to start out with curled in lips and the teeth actually closed (from an interview in ITG many years ago).
ARTICULATION
TUT Tonguing
One of the first things we’re taught in beginning band is not to stop the sound with the tongue. It sounds harsh, abrupt and unrefined. And it’s also an important concept to teach beginners. Leaving the ends of the notes open leaves room for ring and resonance and provides a subtle taper to the release. However, advanced players will benefit from exploring various methods and styles of tongued releases.
Problems come when this concept develops into something that has to happen all the time – even on faster articulated passages – or even slower ones.
We think of notes as individual puffs of air and the even appear that way on the page, but when we play them that way, the air puffs and the line is rough, response is problematic, and extra energy is exerted which hurts endurance.
Keeping air flowing during fast articulation – students tend to play notes as individual entities causing the air to start and stop or bump and push making lines rough and response inconsistent.
The trick is to keep the air flowing as if slurred and tongue only with the tongue – but this will resemble TUT tonguing and that’s totally ok – in fact, it’s preferable.
Fast articulated passages in classical music require tonged articulation on the front and back of notes in order to keep airflow steady.
Generally – T to right above top teeth making an OH or OO vowel sound –
Tonguing in upper register often will cause players to use the flat part of the tongue behind the tip to facilitate the arch. The tip will actually touch the bottom teeth. This is OK, but you may not want to actually teach your jr high students to do this.
Tongued releases for Jazz – “Dot” – starting with a legato attack and ending with a hard T.
Anchor tonguing
TTK vs. TKT
TKTK vs. DGDG vs. N-NG
Blow More Air
Derase – blowing more air blows lips apart and causes you to fall off high notes
Also the harder you blow, the more mpc pressure you will have to use
Breathing exercises and large breaths are indeed helpful, but not if we over use the air and get out of balance between air and embouchure. It’s easier to blow harder than to form a correct embouchure, so this is an easy mistake to make
Tight gut
Mr. Hood/Mr. Austin/ Mr. Cichowicz/ Arnold Jacobs / Now
Soft gut vs. tight gut – tight gut may cause throat to constrict, but it does add support that gives trumpet sound better core esp. in upper register – not blowing harder, but just better supported
And just what is a “tight gut” to any given student? How is this perceived?
What may be a “tight gut” to one person may be something totally different to another.
Big Breathing
Take a deep, full breath every time – full lungs do tend to make sound more full and open, but also can cause tightness and the need to “dump” air. Ray Mase advocates just breathing what you need when you need it. Jim Manly says only breathe into the upper part of the lungs.
Breathe only as much as you need
Breathe “high”
Bobby Shew breath – breathe low, tuck in (“Wedge”)
Breathe through nose / Drop jaw and breath through mouth