@Niner said in How about a "Random Meaningless Image...let's see them string"?:
Maybe this isn't a good idea. Here are a few more.
Poor guy. Experienced the reality of "100% electric."
@Niner said in How about a "Random Meaningless Image...let's see them string"?:
Maybe this isn't a good idea. Here are a few more.
Poor guy. Experienced the reality of "100% electric."
Here's a story for you. In 2004, I was a teenager living in Boise, Idaho. That year, my father took me to see a concert at the Gene Harris jazz festival. Later on in the concert, they introduced a pianist I had never heard of. His name was Dave Brubeck and he was in his 90s. It wasn't until much later I realized the significance of that concert. I can honestly say that I actually saw Brubeck perform live.
I never knew this song had lyrics. Interesting.
@flugelgirl said in Easy Quiz:
I wouldn’t say all trumpets look the same now - Bach’s still look like Bach’s, Schilkes also have their own specific look, and the two Adams Bbs I play are quite distinctive. We could easily play this game with modern horns.
Oh, absolutely. Even the valve "feel" is quite different. I can tell Bach valves from Schilke valves any day. Same with Getzen. Some of the best valves I ever tried were from CarolBrass...and my Selmer Radial has an amazing feel to its valves. Trumpets from various manufacturers still have peculiar qualities that leads to customer loyalty. I wonder if Kanstul struggled because they tried to be more like other manufacturers than to create their own identity.
This is surprisingly hard for me. But, I will guess that one is a Conn!
Circle of Breath
New
By popular demand: the circle of breath:
The first step is a prepared body. If our chest cavity is "collapsed", we have to inflate it with force. That is pretty stupid. When we are sitting or standing up straight but relaxed (yoga is VERY good for this), all we have to do is inhale. We can get a huge amount of air without having to pressurize the lungs by force. Learning to prepare the body for playing is easy with beginners and increasingly difficult for players with more experience as they have to break habits to make new ones! It is important to have this activity monitored.
Once the body is big and relaxed, we draw a big circle. The left side (moving clockwise) is inhale and the right side is exhale. Notice at the top and bottom of the circle that it is still round - no disturbances. Our transition from inhale to exhale and exhale to inhale must mirror that. We do not hold air in, it is either moving in or out. We have to practice getting BIG breaths without building up tension in the throat or upper body. We use the diaphragm to inhale, but subconsciously. We don't need to think about how those muscles work, we just give them the big, relaxed body and they know what to do!
We do not need to "push" our air out, we just exhale. Generally students have a BIG problem getting a big breath and then just exhaling. There is so much "learned" tension present that they need weeks to get this down.
Once our breathing works (in my lessons that means when I am satisfied - not when the student thinks that they are done), then we replace exhale with play. We do not tongue notes, we just switch to exhale and what happens, happens. The goal here is to develop the breathing apparatus and lips so that we are so relaxed that sound comes at the peak of the circle with no kickstart by the tongue. A couple of weeks of long tones this way shows us a lot about everything that we have been doing wrong. Notice how Rashawn in the youtube just exhales a triple C? Completely free of hard work! This is how it has to work in every register. Just exhale the note.
When I am happy with this stage, the student exhales into lipslurs - same principle - no tongue! Just exhale! Another couple weeks goes by to "perfect" this (it is never perfect) and we have made a considerable step forward. Our tone is no longer dependent on the tongue to reliably speak - regardless of how high or low, loud or soft. Generally with no tongue applied, we can lip slur a fifth to an octave more than we had before. The range caves when making music because we are still missing too much stuff.
At this point I have very specific things to learn to add the tongue. Critical here is that we do not use the sledgehammer tonguing that we needed when we were using pressure, we have to develop infinitely small "T", "D", "K", "G", "L", "R" attacks that are only used to "articulate" the beginning of the tone that occurs at the peak of the Circle of Breath. The tonguing must occur EXACTLY at the point where we switch from in- to exhale. If we tongue too early or late, we screw up the transition. This means we are back to long tones and trained ears and eyes to insure that old habits don't screw up what we have now carefully built. Once long tones work, we can tongue the initial intro into the lip slur. If our tone without attack was clean, the articulation is only frosting on top of the cake!
Following this, the student gets easy tunes like from the hymnbook and we work on proper breathing and articulation of real music.
This Circle of Breath is as far as I am concerned the biggest deal in trumpet playing. Without being able to do this, the rest can't ever click. It is as simple as inhale/exhale. The problem is understanding what we have done to ourselves: how sloppy we sit, stand, walk. How crappy our posture is, how caved in our upper body is, how tense our neck and shoulders are because we hang our heads, how brutal our tonguing is to kickstart a screwed embouchure that uses excessive pressure to enable playing at all. In addition we have a learned unwillingness to accept very small steps of improvement because we have learned to download cheats and believe the idiots that claim to have silver bullets for problems. We do not even notice the small improvements and therefore get frustrated that we haven't experienced the "miracle". I won't even get into lifestyle and attitude.
The human state is a product of what we repeatedly do. We need challenges and successes. We need the wisdom to prepare ourselves adequately for the challenges any time that we can. That foundation can carry us a long way if it is solid.
I am very passionate about process and that is why people get angry with my "approach". I don't really care. They can put me on their ignore list, go somewhere else or rally enough people to drive me off. TrumpetMaster is for free and to be honest, I am here because what I do has helped quite a few. If the community changes for what I consider to be the worse, I have no financial or emotional ties.
Yeah, I suppose it would. Don't feel like moving it
Hi Moshe,
I'm not sure what you mean by this thread. Prayer requests are totally fine. I'm just trying to avoid "religious debates" and such. But yes, prayers and thoughts with you, I sure hope all goes well. Thanks,
I really love the older look of the Northeast. I also like the Pioneer-style brick homes where I live. It's very charming.
@Tobylou8 said in Artist on BOARD:
@Dr-Mark said in Artist on BOARD:
@BigDub said in Artist on BOARD:
Oh no you didn’t go there!
Remember folks,
When you get the urge, don't pick your nose, let Wilson Pickett!Reminds me of the old proverb; You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, BUT, you can't pick your friends nose!! You're welcome!
I see no reason why that would be physically impossible.
I'm kind of irritated that the museum states it has "valves," when, clearly, it is a "keyed" bugle and not a valved instrument (as in perinet or rotary valves).
I saw that photo and immediately thought, "oh no, another massacre." What a crazy world we live in
But yes, the practice drones are nice. I especially like the cello sounds over a midi sound.
I don't get it... what's going on?