Trumpet Lessons

Pops,
You have single-handedly given me the confidence and the ability to meet - EXCEED my wildest dreams. When I first came to you I never would have believed I would tour with Maynard Ferguson!!!
Keith Fiala

Phone lessons now available. Info about those here.

I teach based on the students' physical traits and not based on any one book or system. It is completely different from anything you may have experienced.

We work on how YOUR body wants to do compression, YOUR best way to support the air, how to reduce mouthpiece pressure, how to give you a sound as BIG as a house, RANGE, ENDURANCE, TECHNIQUE and TONE, TONE, TONE. Notice sound and tone are mentioned 4 times and range only 1 time. We have to remember what is most important.

As we develop as players we are often given challenges that we are not ready for. This leads to short cuts and bad habits. (Multiple embouchures, pressure....)

Even taking time off will NOT break the habits. Habits are ingrained and will comeback. You have to fix the need for the bad habit and then break the habit over and over and over.

That is why I do all day long lessons. I teach you the right way and then spend time helping you to break the habit. You have to be pushed until you are dead tired and then I have to NOT allow you to cheat. A second or third day helps dramatically in allowing you to use your new techniques in your everyday playing.

This approach is extremely effective. Embouchure changes can even be completed in a few days.

Many people think I only fix embouchure problems or teach range. Mainly because I can accomplish those tasks in an astonishingly short amount of time. However; I teach trumpet playing. That encompasses a great many skills.

The topic of embouchure changes is very popular now. You can see many posts about them on several forums on the net. Many people mistakenly believe that I change the embouchure of most of my students.

I personally don't change embouchures unless the old embouchure is unusable. (No range, no endurance, bad sound.... But I only judge this after tweaking the air support, tongue usage.... I make sure all of the other things are working first.

Even then I don't like to do drastic changes. I don't like to put someone on a lip curl embouchure when they played open for years.... (I didn't say I would NOT do it I said I don't like to.)

This is because of down time. Embouchure changes from a tension based set moving to a compression based set will have a period of time when the player is worse than before. If they had gigs or were in a band then they can't perform for a while. Just looking at posts on different forums you will see people talking about 12, 18, 24.... Months and still not feeling like they control the new set.

That is because NO consideration was given to their facial structure and to HOW they built muscle and habits with the old embouchure.

Too many teachers and students think of ideal and NOT real world situations.

Some students can't take the frustration of being beginners again and at the bottom of the studio during a 2-4 semester embouchure change. Many of those drop out or change majors.

Again some teachers simply ignore this. It is almost like they don't even see it. My freshman year of college the teacher made 18 students do an embouchure change. The next year only 4 of those students were still in music at that school. The teacher still didn't learn and did the same thing to the next freshman class.

Again Too many teachers and students think of ideal and NOT real world situations.

Yes in an IDEAL world there is a good trumpet embouchure look. But there are physical reasons why many don't play that way. We have to take into account the facial structure and jaw alignment.

We sometimes have to make a compromise between IDEAL and REAL life.

Most of my students play for a living or at least half of their living and can NOT take ANY down time. That means any and everything we do has to make improvements in the sound and they can't go backwards.

To accomplish a "change" this way means that many small steps happen to get things ready.

i.e. When a person plays an open embouchure setting they build muscle in a way that hinders how a lip curl set works. They normally rely on tension to play. This hinders the sound production during a change because curl reacts differently when used with tension than when used with compression.

So BEFORE they can add a curl they need to break the use of tension. If you look at each stumbling block and work on it this way then there is NO down time. The problem is that the cure now becomes different case by case.

Some people learn to break the use of facial tension by learning to play very softly. Some people learn to break the use of facial tension by pulling the corners in and making a slight pucker because soft playing never did it for them. Some people learn to break the use of facial tension by............

See we are all different and learn in different ways and need different things.

Sometimes it is also a matter of when something is showed to a student. They have to be ready in more than one way for the lesson.

1.) They have to fully understand what they are doing and need to do. This is hard because some people don't like to ask questions and you never fully know what someone else knows. If they don't fully understand it then it makes it harder for them to do it.

2.) They have to be physically ready for the task. Someone who is using facial tension is NOT ready to switch to lip curl or compression. It would sound horrible. They have some unlearning of habits to do first.

3.) They have to be ready for the possibility of playing at a lower level for a while and to go back and cover old material again so the old skills are habits on the new set. Some people don't want to do this.

There are many things to consider when doing an embouchure change and I only mentioned 1 physical trait that needs to be overcome. There are several.

I think some teachers take these changes too lightly and without fully discussing what is going to happen with the student.

People email and call every week to ask me if this lesson will give them a reliable Double High C. Nobody can honestly say that they can do this. Yes there are some teachers who will say they do this for everyone. But they don't. Nobody can.

Infact due to time constraints it really isn't possible for everyone to get that range.
Are you willing to practice 8-12 hours a day 365 days a year? Doc does.
No not every one has to spend this much time but some people do; so we have to keep a realistic goal in mind.

Everyone who has come for a lesson felt better about their tone, tonguing, flexibility, endurance and security of range.

One such player was Mark Curry. Besides making what I consider to be the best mouthpieces around; Mark also played lead for Woody Herman, and Ray Charles for years. Mark came in for a range boost. I surprised him by working on a few skills that I noticed could be perked up while I heard his warm up. WE did get around to range and endurance but we did other things first. The end result was he was very happy and mentions it on his website. Go buy a mouthpice from him at Curry mouthpieces.

Another was Rex Merriweather who has clips on my sound page and his story is here. Rex warmed up with Woman of the Dark by Chase. I noticed some technique flaws and accuracy issues. After working on this we hit range.
Here is a quote from Rex:
"I shocked a few band mates after a show one night as I glided easily up to and just over triple high "C"! It really helped me to except the fact that I could do it, after hearing you play it."

Then there is Keith who was playing locally in Austin but wanted much more. He wanted to play with Maynard. Well he finally got there but we worked on a LOT more than just range. IN fact on the MF tribute page they make mention of Keith and his "Old World Sound".
Thanks.
He is also on my sound file page.

Some have even made huge range increases. An octave or more. BUT they were already very close and had the lip strength; just not the knowledge to do it.

My point is that nobody trying to remain totally honest can promise to turn you into, Maynard or Doc or whoever your favorite player is.

Look at my sound files page and you can see that I have had seriously good results with some of my students.

Each of these got much more than JUST range work. I will NOT do JUST range work. What good is more range if you lose tone or it remains poor, or if tonguing and flexiblity are not good? I work the total player.

Sound clips of my students.

To take a lesson click here.

Copyright protected from 1995 to date.

This will pertain to breathing and maintaining an open airway. I will start out with a concept that several may disagree with. All I ask is that you consider what I'm telling you. The diaphragm is called an involuntary muscle. It works without us thinking about it . It works when we are asleep. It can help us sneeze or cough. We can however, exert some control over it. We CAN hold our breath , take a breath when we want, take a short gasp or a long deep breath. This indicates a measure of control. In as much as trumpet playing IS AIR and breath control then working on this major source of our breath is vital.

There are several Yoga exercises that are excellent as is timed breathing while walking or jogging.

The airway must always be open both in inhaling and in playing. One problem is posture. I've seen many experienced players slumped over while jamming. I've seen them with their heads down our their arms against their ribcage. If we give this its proper importance then we see that these things WILL lead to a closed throat, shallow breaths and poor support.

If the jaw is pushed forward slightly this will cause the throat opening to be larger than it normally is. Try it. Move the jaw forward slowly and check if you can feel your throat open up. Think of the effect that can have on your tone. The more forward jaw position will also make your lower lip take on more of the workload. This increases endurance (after you get used to it). Notice that I said more forward Stevens demanded an even tooth alignment. I advocate moving it until the throat opens. This will be different for every player.

Another key feature in maintaining an open airway is a pivot. You could write hundreds of pages about this. But that's already been done. In a nutshell by raising or lowering the bell of your horn while you are playing you can maintain a more open airway and clearer tone. As you play higher and lower notes the air stream will slightly move in the mouthpiece. If we can keep it lined up with the throat hole the sound is better. The SLIGHT bell movement will produce an opposite movement or realignment of our lips to the mouthpiece.

Now which way do you move the bell? Try this test . Play a low g 1-3. Move the bell up then move it down. One way should improve the sound. When you move to a lower note from now on always pivot this direction. The opposite direction will aid the upper notes. This is a good movement whenever you have to leap between notes.

The tongue arch has been used for years to speed up the air inorder to play higher notes. Most people arch to the point where the sound quality is affected. Instead of arching up to eeee try aaaaa. This is a more open sound yet it still compresses the air slightly. After all the tongue arch cannot give you an extra octave. It is merely used for rapid note movement. The abdominals compress the air for your range. As for the tongue arch using a long aaaaaa sound instead of an eee is a more open mouth position and therefore a fuller sound. If you are playing 3 ocatves over high r# then you use whatever is needed to stay there.

As for a specific vowel for below middle c, middle c to Eb ... that is not strictly the case. All lip trills , slurs and leaps are accomplished in part by using a tongue arch. If you have maxed out your tongue motion at Bb below high c how do you plan to continue going up? The tongue arch is like an elevator it should help you to compress and thereby speed up the air to achieve higher notes.

Surely if you did practice out of the Irons book this was apparent. So you start out on the low c to second line g and lip slur back and forth. Both of these notes are below middle c yet a tongue arch is useful in speeding up the excerise. Likewise if you are playing a high g and want to slur up if you are already in the extreme eeee position where do you go? My suggestion is to attempt to substitute a long aaaa when possible and save the extremes for a reserve.

Now for the full breath on every note or phrase. Have you ever had to play 1 note by itself to fill out a chord in a song? What about the 3 or 4 measure phrases? These do not require as much air as a full 8 measure phrase. At the end of a very short phrase an inexperienced brass player will feel a need to exhale before he or she can take a breath. If this overbreathing continues for any length of time the player will sometimes turn red or gasp for air. No you didn't run out of air for playing however, your body really likes to have oxygen in your lungs. What has hapened is you tooka full breath and used less than half. Now when you take a full breath you only replace half of the stale oxygen deprived air in your lungs. As this continues you end up gasping for air. Does this sound familiar?

Overbreathing really is a kind of self suffication (in the extreme). The exception was taken for high notes. Well here WE may be using different standards. Some people consider g on the staff to be high while others are referring to an octave or so over that. In this extreme upper register overbreathing becomes more apparent. Have you seen people get dizzy, lightheaded, or blackout. They were overbreathing. I know some people say if you release the pressure really slowly it will not happen. If you did not overbreathe and have so much leftover air under pressure it would not happen either.

Timed breathing is another aspect of playing. Some people always take a deep full breath. When playing in the upper register this creates tension. The upper register takes air compression and speed but not air mass. The low notes need the full breaths. Try a half or quarter breath before you play your next high g. This will allow your muscles to do their job.

Pops

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This site Trumpet College is about; Trumpet lessons and trumpet books by Clint 'Pops' McLaughlin - All major embouchures taught. Learn how to play effortlessly based on your facial structure. Thousands of students helped from serious amateur to pro level. Check out our trumpet lessons, our online trumpet lessons and our trumpet books. Trumpet playing, trumpet lessons. This site covers these topics: trumpet playing, trumpet lessons, Stevens, Superchops, Maynard Ferguson, mouthpieces, Bach, Callet, Schilke, Doc Severinsen, Yamaha, Maggio, embouchure, trumpeter, trompette, trompeta, trumpeting, marsalis, louis armstrong. Thanks for visiting.
Pops
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