Play Through or Rest
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Started a regiment of Carmine Carusos' calisthenics for brass and have found these excercises to produce results. Carmine recommends 20-40 minutes a day and I think I may have overdone it about 3 days ago. My tone has gone to heck and it is difficult to maintain a "G" above the staff.
Question is..... Is it best to lay low and not press myself or continue with these strenuous excercises?
I feel if I play through the pain I will reach a new plateau, however I do not want to incur any damage.
Thoughts/advice?
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Bad tone means you are doing or have done something wrong. Re-examine and change what you are doing. What is that? No clue. I don't know the routine you are following. But I've sat next to endless players whose first notes were terrible. That screams bad things were happening or have happened. Just logic.
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I concur with Richard III
I would add that brass practice in general and trumpet/cornet practice in particular is closely bound to the manner in which we form our tones.
To give an example, a piano if we press the middle c key and keep pressing it until we tire the piano will sound the tone consistently and will not tire of sounding that c.
However the tone of a brass instrument is entirely and totally a result of the sophistication with which we generate the tone.
As we brass players tire and the tone begins to fail due to developing poor technique or fatigue or other similar reasons, we end up playing and practicing poorer and poorer tones.
Practice replicates and reinforces the thing we practice.
If we keep producing wonderful tones as we practice we are fixing and reinforcing beautiful tones into our muscle memory.
If we continually practice blatty and rough sounding tones due to fatigue or poor technique we end up reinforcing poor tones into our muscle memory.
The much repeated advice of rest as much as you practice is built upon this wise knowledge. Rest is critically important to good development.
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I know the Caruso method, but I would suggest that you not take it to any extremes. If you injure yourself, that could be the end of your brass career. And, at the very least, if you are making really nasty sounds, that will alter your internal "ear" that you use when you are playing music.
I would generally stay away from methods like Caruso. There is so much out there that is genuinely helpful and not damaging in any way.
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What Grateful player describes is normal muscle physiology and trying to train muscle development. This needs to obey the rules of muscle development, through muscle physiology and biochemistry principles. I taught muscle physiology and biochemistry at a medical school for 27 years. I have been able to use this knowledge to apply it to a method of developing a safe and optimal trumpet embouchure, as is outlined below:
When control is lost and repetitively increases in intensity, it is time to put down the horn. Loss of control means fatigue has set into embouchure muscle. Initial fatigue is not damaging but is giving advanced warning that blood flow to muscle groups is compromised. At this point, lactic acid builds. If this continues without rest, the acid environment leads to muscle fiber strain. If this continues then the condition progresses to sprain. This then begins a process of remodeling (disrupting the initial efficient architecture of the motor units connection to on another). That process then progresses to negatively impact the embouchure from that point on disrupting the initial efficient natural architecture, irreversibly.
Carmine himself may be good for playing 40 minutes a day and that may be what he finds is needed to progress, but he is making this recommendation for an individual that has an embouchure that has matured and had the chance to develop and adapt to handle more stressful challenges.
My recommendation would be to start the series but as soon as control is lost to end the session. Note the time it had taken to get to that point. Keep practicing to that point for the next 2 weeks. Then in the 2 weeks that follow, try to increase the session by another 5 minutes. Then stay there again for another 2 weeks. Then add another 5 minutes and repeat the cycle. After a month or so, you can then meet the initial threshold of the 20-40 minute practice range.
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@Dr-GO Thank you for this advice/input.
I am convinced to move forward with these exercises at a greatly diminished rate. All it takes is words like irreversible, and I am scared off. Looks like a lot of mid range long tones for the near future.Thanks again
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We must always keep in view that trumpet playing is a fine motor activity - not weight lifting. Endurance comes through training efficiency and body use. The goal is NOT a six pack!
The problem with Caruso is if we in fact treat the exercises as "calisthenics". This is a 100% wrong image.
Remember: the harder you press your lips together, the more blow force that you need to get them vibrating. The #1 problem that I observe is that way too much force is used - with the lips being forcefully pressed together as well as being mashed against the teeth.
Our embouchure must speak with a whisper of airflow. Starting from this side of playing, we develop that efficiency and NEVER need a hurricane to blow the lips apart. -
As always, ROWUK has hit the nail on the head...
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Il est important d'apprendre à gérer son repos : une goutte de médicament guérit, une cuillère peut tuer
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@Boolawan said in Play Through or Rest:
Il est important d'apprendre à gérer son repos : une goutte de médicament guérit, une cuillère peut tuer
Or the English Translation:
It is important to learn to manage your rest: a drop of medicine cures, a spoon can kill
An interesting concept that does apply. Dosing the exact amount of time one plays during a session is not a "one dose applies to all" concept and varies very much with an individuals skill and endurance level.
As a physician, I have best learned how to titrate medications to optimize benefit and minimize side effects in for my individual patients. As a musician, I can only prescribe the absolute dose of performance time to myself, as it is very difficult to use my personal experience as a set prescription for others.
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@grateful-player
We must respect to the letter what C. Caruso says
"If your lips become swollen, tired or stiff, wait longer before resuming the exercises. If they continue like this, do not touch them until it is comfortable. Any discomfort will increase the chances of manipulation reaching a grade and will cause a parasitic movement."
Carmine Caruso "Musical Calisthenics for Brass" -
