Best posts made by Kehaulani

You show up on a gig with a horn that looks like that, you better play!

I stumbled into something yesterday that is a real check on one's intonation. It is developmental and probably only pertains to developing players, either beginners or come-back, which I consider myself. And it is simply playing recognizable songs.

I am posting this because it might be an overlooked technique that some can use.

One can play flexibilities like Schlossberg and Irons or other similar exercises and think you're O.K. with intonation. Maybe you play flatter as you ascend but don't really notice it, fooling yourself.

But you can more easily hear with a song that you know. If your intonation is faulty, you know immediately that something is just not right. The intervals you can readily hear because you know how the song must go. Try it and see if it helps.

I cleaned my horn once and my range dropped a fourth.

@GeorgeB: George, I would suggest just that you find out what works best for you. Just to reiterate - you have to be ready for this. Incorporating it befopre you're ready for it just causes problems.

But to your question as to when. After playing this exercise, I had to do a little playing to refocus my sound and embouchure. If this is your last exercise of the day, I would suggest you do follow it with some quiet, focused playing as a warmdown. I personally, wouldn't do it right out of the gate, lest your embouchure is set for a different kind of playing than most of your other exercises are. If you do it in the middle, I would take a break before continuing and I would begin that session with some focus, controlled playing before continuing with your exercises.

p.s. Getting up at 5am, Hell no. Getting in at 5am? Oh yeah!

Here's a good example of alternate, cornet playing, Warren Vache.

@Newell-Post said in Repair wooden cases?:

@grune Try a luggage and shoe repair shop. They exist in most cities.

Exactly. Been there and done that several times.

@adc said in Clarke’s Technical Studies Redux:

has anyone here used Saint Jacomes? I have done some. My music teacher I don't think uses it so I don't do much of it.

You can get a copy in PDF for free off the intreret and judge for yourself.

I might add that I have often heard measures two and three played as dotted eight-sixteenth notes and not straight eights. Caution.

If they work, use them, if they don't, then don't. But don't use some rationale that they don't work as an excuse for getting out of playing them. A placebo effect, as it were. Don't be lazy or expedient.

When I began playing them, of course they were part of my routine. Later on, I believed they stiffened my lips, so I quit playing them. Instead, I played "moving long tones", like Chicowitz' exercises and Concone.

Jump several decades and several strokes later. I was trying, unsuccessfully, to regain my playing strength. All sorts of exercises only had minimal effect. Then, I read that both Miles and Chet, when asked how they got their chops back, first mention out of the gate was, "long tones". I started playing long tones and, almost immediately, my chops got more consistent and my playing better.

Now, part of this could be a chicken or egg scenario. It could be that all my other work prepared me so that the addition of long tones became effective. But there's no way I would know that, so I have to believe that the long tones, in and of themselves, have a significant effect, at least for someone like me who is trying to build, or rebuild, one's chops.

I read about instrumental vibrato imitating the human voice, but who's to say that the voice used little or copious vibrato?

What the human voice does is often put into the context of modern reflection. But who is to say that vibrato is natural to the human voice?

Trumpetsplus (maker Ivan Hunter) and Charlie Melk and James Becker at Osmun music might be able to advise you best as to how to proceed.

You're an amateur, civic band and you have gradeable competitions? Man, am I against that. BTAIM -- I have a couple of question, George.

1.) Could you have played that piece at the given tempo when you were younger, or not even then?
2.) How far, rehearsal-wise, are you into this piece?
3.) What part do you play in concert band?

Boy, arranging music from a variety of original scorings is just great. Let us know when you post another video. I'd love to hear it/them.

Gary, any chance that we could have you post your warm-up/long tone (Blee) exercises? Thanks.

(You're correct. Edited)

Here we go. Thanks to an anonymous donor:

p.s. Can we make this a sticky?

Circle of Breath
New
By popular demand: the circle of breath:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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!

6. 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.

I sympathise. Don't instrument makers generally account for all the variables and how they affect each other and design a horn accordingly? And when you change various parts of a horn, aren't you messing with the original design, allegedly the optimum balance of elements, already?

Just to be clear, if a player is advanced enough and sensitive enough, he may benefit from changes but isn't most of this just pipe dream? And how many of us are really that advanced enough and sensitive enough?

You know, if you're having finger-speed problems on Liberty Bell, your conductor is taking it at way too fast a tempo. There's such a thing as interpretation, but I don't think it rationalizes taking a piece of music totally out of context.

BTW, every time I open another entry in this thread, I can't help seeing Monty Python.

Jazz or classical. If jazz, I would add UNT and Berklee.

I use them for muscular development, keeping the air flowing consistently, and with cresc.-decresc. to develop these varying embouchure levels constant, i.e. keeping the same pitch and relative tone quality when it changes volumes. Different levels and, maybe, different goals depending on the need at the time.

I found out that chasing groupies increased my wind capacities immeasurably. And the prize at the end of the trail significantly increased my respiratory pressure.

Seriously, though, I find this very interesting. As long as you eggheads can keep the information in the realm of we peasants.