Pops,
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Unbelievable lesson, man!
One of the craziest things is that I feel warmed up all the time now. It's WILD! I just buzz in the pedal area and my lip hums all the time. I feel like the Ice Man who just broke out of his "wintery coffin"!
The most important part of what I do is LISTEN to the player and decide how much is enough for him to handle. Overload the student and they crash and under load them and nothing happens at all. That is why most people can’t teach themselves they don’t know where that line is. It took a few THOUSAND lessons for me to learn it.
I have been online talking about lip buzzing and mouthpiece buzzing since 1995.
The 5 year old has vibrancy in his relaxed buzz and the trumpet player over dampens (creates so much resistance and stiffness that the lips don’t vibrate freely) so he has no vibrancy.
This over dampening comes from bad habits we get in the 6th grade. We play a second line G and they tell us to tighten up to play an A. By the time we have enough lip muscle to play and some wind control we are used to TOO much tension on EVERY note we play. Most players never break this horrible habit.
Another area where we over dampen the lips is keeping the lips in. Most people keep the lips pulled in even for low notes. We really should only pull in for high notes but that is another 6th grade habit that we never break. In the 6th grade middle C was high (2nd line G for some) and we pulled the lips in against the teeth.
We can all play better without this excess tension.
But isn’t the pencil exercise going to cause tension?
I had a college grad here last month that had a sound quality change 2nd line G to 2nd space A, 3rd space C to 4th line D, 4th space E to F, G on top of the staff to A.
By the end of the day he had a seamless sound and was even playing a couple of notes higher than before.
Listen to Doc play. His sound is seamless. He also plays 8-12 hours a day and warms up so different from most people that it gets talked about on the web.
Before I break the tension I have to replace the old need for it. I have to work on tongue arch, 4 different syllables for tonguing, breath support below the navel and once these things are working we can break the tension.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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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
. 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.
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
This site Trumpet College is about; Trumpet lessons and trumpet books by Clint 'Pops' McLaughlin. Trumpet college is the most visited trumpet site on the net. All trumpet embouchures taught. Play the trumpet effortlessly based on your facial structure. Thousands of trumpet students helped from amateur to pro level. Check out our trumpet lessons, our online trumpet lessons and our trumpet books. Trumpet playing, trumpet lessons, trumpet books. This site Trumpet college covers these topics: trumpet, trumpet playing, trumpet lessons, trumpet books, trumpet embouchures, TCE, Stevens, Superchops, Maynard Ferguson, mouthpieces, Bach, Bill Chase, Callet, Schilke, Doc Severinsen, Yamaha, Maggio, embouchure, trumpet books, trumpeter, trumpeting, Marsalis, Louis Armstrong, build a balanced embouchure on the trumpet. Thanks for visiting Trumpet College.
Pops
Featured student Rex Merriweather. Rex is in LA and has done Club, Studio, TV and Movie work.
Featured student Anne King. Anne is another LA musician. She has had many TV appearances (like this one on "Whose Line is it Anyway) and done tours with Guns and Roses, Don Henley, Ray Charles.....
Featured student Keith Fiala. Keith did a couple of tours with Maynard Ferguson and he is now playing in Austin Texas with a group call Memphis Train Revue.
2 video clips of Keith Wood at the end of an all day a lesson with me.
Short lick and how he feels with the new set.
Arpeggio Low G up to Double D and down to Pedal D.
Clint is a long-range thinker. He told me that he had a plan from our first lesson together, but it had to be in stages. First, he had to get my belly button (breathing) to work right. Then, straighten out my tongue arch. (and how he used compression) And finally, relax my facial tension.
If he had told me the whole plan, I would've wanted to rush things, just like a college kid. The kicker was when he said, "If you lived here in the area, we could've done all this in 6 months"! Oh well... The only thing I have to battle now is the habit of tensing when I see certain things coming up in the music.
The hardest part was the first hour of our lesson. I could not play a note (even make a sound) for the first hour. Man, I was close to tears. It felt like he wanted me to change my embouchure - I saw weeks or months of trial and error ahead of me. UGH! Then it just seemed to click. A low G came out that made us both smile - BIG! For the remainder of our 8 hours together (including a couple of hours on trombone), I never got tired. I have only gotten fatigued once since, and that was our last song on New Year's Eve -
I haven't even been able to get a good practice in since then. All I've been doing is buzzing. Relaxed feel, dude!
It has truly changed my entire musical life.
God bless,
Keith
Warm ups are to fix the problems you caused in yesterdays playing. No problems means no need to warm up.
Audio of me teaching a comeback player tongue arch using line 1 page 125 of the Arban book. The comeback player did all of the playing. I left out the 2 tries in the middle to save time.
Audio of why all players learn to be tense and how to stop.
Video clip of the loose buzzing that started the lesson.
Pops
I met "POPS" on the Internet and he helped me through some frustrating problems that I was struggling with on the horn, and he was always available.......
Thanks Pops..................
Herb Alpert
It was a pleasure to work with you Herb and I LOVE the Remix CD “Whipped Cream and Other Delights: Re-Whipped” that you recorded during our relationship. Congratulations on the CD making it to #5 on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz chart. You continue to be an inspiration to all brass players.
Pops
I have said over and over that it is possible to buzz with resting facial tension at a resting facial position.
It seems so easy to me.
I can ask a 5 year old to buzz and they will do the raspberry. (A Loose relaxed lip buzz.)
Yet when I ask a trumpet player to lip buzz; they tense up, make a face, roll the lips, turn colors, and squeak out something much closer to a fart than a real buzz.
As an adult those notes are no longer high and yet most people still keep their lips pulled in tight to play them. To improve to the next playing level you have to break those grade school habits and replace them with new ones.
This works with DMAs, working pros, college students, comeback players ….. everyone.
Now a comeback player doesn’t have the facial strength of a working pro so he will have to do isometrics to build some strength before his range shoots up.
NO.
We need some strength to play high without a strained sound. Our facial muscles work like any other muscle. If you can lift 100 pounds and I give you 100 pounds to carry; then you will struggle to walk across the room. If I give you 10 pounds then you don’t even notice the weight.
If it takes 100%, 90%... even 50% of your strength to play a High C then it is always going to be a struggle. Get it down to 20% and it is easy.
When we struggle we get tense. That tension goes into the sound too.
Ever wonder why Doc doesn’t care about sound when he warms up?
Why does he sound so bad in warm up?
Because he is trying to get rid of tension with every note he plays. He uses less and less tension until he gets under pitch and then he knows where his starting point is for the day.
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.
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."
Thanks.
He is also on my sound file page.
Pops