Lifetime quest finally paying off!

A Former User

@Sound-Advice said in Lifetime quest finally paying off!:

I agree that by closing the jaw it will automatically raise the tongue. This isn't however anything more than a natural product of physics.

If the tongue is made to stay flat, how do you do trills in the upper register especially (for example) on the natural trumpet?
Well, by using the tongue. A person would "say "aaa" "EEEEE" "aaaa" "EEEEE" "aaaaa". Its called a lip trill but the lip isn't the real mechanism that causes the trill, it's the tongue. Here's a video to support and clarify my point that the tongue is paramount in one's ability to play in various ranges. The whole video is good but if you want to cut to the chase, go to 3:00 and start there. Elisa Koehler explains how it's done.

A Former User

@Sound-Advice
OK, I just tried the "pinch the nose and use an "EEEE" position with the tongue.
I had my daughter pinch my nose while I played a G above high C and no difference. Then I had my daughter place the iPhone screen under my nose as I played a DHC and no moisture on the screen. My guess as to what you're talking about? The tongue is anchored to the bottom of the mouth and the BACK OF THE TONGUE increases and decreases the oral cavity space which assists with range.

A Former User

@Dr-GO said in Lifetime quest finally paying off!:

FranklinD, Kehaulani, Sound-Advice have all made comment on this post related to doctors, so I just thought I would take an opportunity to address and clarify as a friendly service offered by we member of TB.
And for clarification, we are talking about people and not animals so I believe you may have meant humandegree rather than pedigree, yes? On that note though, I did have a cheek swab performed on my daughter sent to BioPet. She came back Pitbull. I trained her well. She is now by the way, an MS Social Worker, a human degree.

The discussion is about trumpet. In particular, The Stevens-Costello method and what's going on behind the aperture.

Dr GO

@Dr-Mark said in Lifetime quest finally paying off!:

@Dr-GO said in Lifetime quest finally paying off!:

FranklinD, Kehaulani, Sound-Advice have all made comment on this post related to doctors, so I just thought I would take an opportunity to address and clarify as a friendly service offered by we member of TB.
And for clarification, we are talking about people and not animals so I believe you may have meant humandegree rather than pedigree, yes? On that note though, I did have a cheek swab performed on my daughter sent to BioPet. She came back Pitbull. I trained her well. She is now by the way, an MS Social Worker, a human degree.

The discussion is about trumpet. In particular, The Stevens-Costello method and what's going on behind the aperture.

Perfect. And that discussion shall continue. Going on behind the aperture is truly your specialty and I always review your response with great interest as your detail is defining. Keep up the great work Herr Doktor!

Kehaulani

@FranklinD said in Lifetime quest finally paying off!:

Is a psychologist a Dr. in the USA?

Franklin, the difference is that the Psychologist is an academic degree and a Psychiatrist is a medical degree. They both use the term doctor.

The doctors can correct me if that's incorrect.

Kehaulani

@FranklinD said in Lifetime quest finally paying off!:

@Kehaulani said in Lifetime quest finally paying off!:

Sound Advice - do you "know" Franklin, where he's coming from and his posting background?

Kehaulani, in fact I'm very curious to hear your, without doubt, superior analysis on both subjects.

That quote, Franklin, was to encourage any poster to look into your posts with more depth before criticizing them. I won't make that mistake again.

Sound Advice

@Dr-Mark
Okay I'm going to offer just one rebuttal on the tongue arch for range and or trilling idea. Not that I expect to change your mind. As that's a little like taking sides on a contentious political argument. So I've found. Tongue arch for range practitioners are an adamant lot. I don't want to take issue with them because for the kinds of embouchures they use? Tongue arch seems work pretty well.

Facts and science won't sway a person who's mind is already made up anyway.

So feel free to use your tongue any way you like. However in the Stevens system I've found that it does not work to any significant degree. I've chatted with other Stevens system practitioners who've said the same thing too. At present Roy Roman, one of the most distinguished artists who both uses and advocates Stevens does not speak of the tongue arch.

Roman is smarter than me and is wisely avoiding mentioning the tongue arch. Probably because he doesn't want to enter into contentious debate. However I know for a fact that he doesn't use it. Because Roman is an exact follower of Stevens-Costello. It has worked extremely well for Roy since he changed to it back in the 1970s.

And I know for a fact that Roy Stevens considered the constriction of the mouth cavity by the tongue to be anathema to his method. He even once described the tongue arch as possibly contributing to my neck puff. Although I later disproved that theory to at least my own satisfaction.

I know that when I used to play Maggio on receded jaw chops that syllable use had some value for my production of lip trills and interval changes. But having crossed over into the world of Stevens-Costello? It is of no help. It's just not necessary. If I want to execute a lip trill I move my jaw ever so slightly up and down. Another way to quickly occilate a pitch is to "shake" the horn slightly at the mouthpiece.

Roy Stevens used to walk over to his students and perform a test to see if they'd gotten a good start. Remember in the Stevens method one plays a specific way. Not much room for personal changes. So Roy would first direct his student to blow a high C.

This a fairly easy thing to do on his method. While sustaining this high C Roy would put his hand on the mouthpiece receiver of the student and move it up and down slightly. All during this maneuver the student would continue holding the high C. Making sure not to stop the air. What Roy was listening for was to check if his up & down movement on the mouthpiece would make the sustained high C turn into a trill. Or conversely if it would cut the whole tone off.

If the tone cut out? The student was doing something wrong. But if instead the up & down movement changed the tone into a lip trill?

The student had passed his most important test. In fact one cat who was highly well trained at turning a physical movement of the mouthpiece into a shake or lip trill was Louis Armstrong. That guy was a classic example of the Stevens system although he probably didn't know it. Lots of gifted trumpet players use the Stevens system naturally. Brisbois obviously one of them. As was Roy Stevens himself.

According to Dr William Moriarty "Roy was a self-taught trumpet player". Having said that? Stevens also understood that his natural method aligned very well with the concepts launched by his predecessor William Costello. Obviously the method wasn't called "Stevens-Costello" at first but only the "Costello method". In fact you'll still hear a few oldtimers like Bobby Shew refer to it by name. Bobby calls it "a Costello thing" over on that Bud Brisbois tribute page at Seley Music.

Again I'm hardly the best example of a Stevens system player but this is largely because I've only recently found the missing link to the Stevens system. Had I found this missing element forty years ago? I probably would have had a far more successful career than I did.@8

Dr GO

@Sound-Advice said in Lifetime quest finally paying off!:

@Dr-Mark

I know that when I used to play Maggio on receded jaw chops that syllable use had some value for my production of lip trills and interval changes. But having crossed over into the world of Stevens-Costello? It is of no help. It's just not necessary. If I want to execute a lip trill I move my jaw ever so slightly up and down.

Sound Advice... I appreciate you can do this, and this is the same way I execute my lip trill while also using a more user friendly Maggio version.

Dr GO

@Dr-Mark said in Lifetime quest finally paying off!:

@Sound-Advice
OK, I just tried the "pinch the nose and use an "EEEE" position with the tongue.
The tongue is anchored to the bottom of the mouth and the BACK OF THE TONGUE increases and decreases the oral cavity space which assists with range.

I believe this is nicely demonstrated in the MRI below. Watch not only the tongue as range increases, but also the distal pharynx close more, all to decrease the entire volume of air in the oropharynx:

A Former User

@Sound-Advice said in Lifetime quest finally paying off!:

Facts and science won't sway a person who's mind is already made up anyway.

Ouch! you don't have to get pissy. I'm actually a science and facts kind of guy. You can't do what your saying and play the notes you say to play. Like I said, my guess is that you are using the back of the tongue to change registers while keeping the front of the tongue anchored against the lower teeth. I had someone about 6-8 months ago try and convince me of what you are suggesting. After a little observation and with the person finally becoming aware of what he was doing, he agreed that he was using the back of his tongue to manipulate the oral cavity but leaving the front of his tongue "anchored" to the floor of the mouth with the tip of the tongue against the front lower teeth. By changing the size of the oral cavity space with the tongue we are able to speed up and slow down the air used to make a note.

Dr GO

@Dr-Mark said in Lifetime quest finally paying off!:

@Sound-Advice said in Lifetime quest finally paying off!:

Facts and science won't sway a person who's mind is already made up anyway.

...he agreed that he was using the back of his tongue to manipulate the oral cavity but leaving the front of his tongue "anchored" to the floor of the mouth with the tip of the tongue against the front lower teeth. By changing the size of the oral cavity space with the tongue we are able to speed up and slow down the air used to make a note.

I think this is nicely demonstrated in this radiological enhanced electrode monitoring of the tongue (from a lateral and a straight on perspective}. I believe this demonstrates Dr. Mark's point nicely:

A Former User

If people will observe how Sarah manipulates the oral cavity with her tongue from a more open oral cavity (low notes) to an oral cavity that's filled with tongue starting at 1:48 (5. Slurred ascending E flat 4 octave harmonic scale), they will notice that Sarah (A fantastic player!!) does with her tongue exactly what I've been saying. This should put this discussion to rest.

Dr GO

@Dr-Mark said in Lifetime quest finally paying off!:

If people will observe how Sarah manipulates the oral cavity with her tongue from a more open oral cavity (low notes) to an oral cavity that's filled with tongue starting at 1:48 (5. Slurred ascending E flat 4 octave harmonic scale), they will notice that Sarah (A fantastic player!!) does with her tongue exactly what I've been saying. This should put this discussion to rest.

As they say in the sciences, Dr. Mark... QED.
or in the arts: Bravo, maestro!

A Former User

@Dr-GO
I'm not finding where Sound-Advice said that he was using the back of the tongue and anchoring the front part of the tongue. Here is a snippet from Sound-Advice from this topic a few pages back;
"Ahh" "Oooh" "Eee" and "Iiiiich" for a number of years . While I did have good range I didn't have great range. Since shifting over to the radically different Stevens approach I've found a tongue arch to have no effect on producing intervals at all.

A Former User

@Dr-GO
Its about (for me) finding what's best for the people we teach and what's best for how I play. Thanks for the Sarah video. Its enlightening for this topic. One needs to be careful when it comes to this kind of stuff. While the Stevens-Costello method is intentional, bad habits easily creep into our playing unknowingly and it takes a keen awareness to know when some subtle thing has done just that. I still contend that the tongue is an integral part of how we ascend and descend the registers. Thanks for bringing this video to the forum.
I like Sarah very much. She has a wonderful sound and in her videos, appears to be a nice person to be around. I watched one (she has a series of videos) with Wynton Marsalis and it was a good to watch.

ROWUK

Here we go again - uncontrolled empirical evidence called a "solution".

I have no personal grief with any embouchure method. I do have trouble with players that attain upper register without the common sense required to use it.

One thing that I would like to offer here:

If there is any truly killer method for developing the stratospheric register: WHERE ARE ALL OF THE KILLER LEAD PLAYERS USING IT?

Think about this for a minute. Any of the popular methods have hundreds - if not thousands of followers, but we still do not have hundreds of killer lead players. Why might that be? I have thought for at least 40 years about this and here is what I came up with:

not enough common sense
maybe physiology IS too individual to allow any system to have advantages
maybe the sound concept needed is not part of the method - a lead sound is a lot different than a 2nd Brandenburg, Richter, Michael Haydn sound - although the notes are the same
maybe all methods are very incomplete
maybe musicality and context must come first
maybe success is all natural talent (upstream/body use/teeth formation) and luck to find a method that does not muck up the talent

My own teaching searches for the goals of the player. If one of my students wants to be a lead player, then I am the wrong person to bring them there. I can give them enough basics and range, but then they need a real lead player for attitude and context. I do not preach any embouchure method dogmatically and in my over 50 year career, I know of more players worse off than before after attempting to "change their embouchures". The most success has been through evolution, not revolution. I avoid teachers preaching revolution.

Dr GO

@ROWUK said in Lifetime quest finally paying off!:

My own teaching searches for the goals of the player. If one of my students wants to be a lead player, then I am the wrong person to bring them there. ...they need a real lead player for attitude and context...

Don't sell yourself short, ROWUK. Where does it state "Lead Trumpet" on my Big Band Chart? It doesn't. It states "1st Trumpet".

I have had great success as a "First Trumpet Big Band Performer", because I was taught by a First Trumpet player for the CSO over 4 years. Eugene Blee thought me how to be a first trumpet player. To lead a section through dynamics, phrasing, style. He taught me: "You lead others to follow". Eugene did not teach me to play high. He taught me to play best. He did not teach me to play loud skillfully. He taught me to play soft skilllfully. ROWUK, You are the right person to take them there because you too are there to teach a trumpet player to be a leader, not a Lead Player. So don't sell yourself short. If one of your students decides to play 1st Trumpet in a Big Band and truly play Lead, then you have been successful!

Dr GO

In addition, do you have to be a 1st Trumpet player to be a leader? Absolutely not. I remember a post by Vulgano Brother relating a time when he played 3rd trumpet in the Spokane Symphony Orchestra, and made the comment that at times he had to subtly real the 1st Trumpet player in at times. Now that takes leadership!

A Former User

This post is deleted!

A Former User

Why change the subject?