The Wexford Carol is a traditional Irish Christmas song that was likely composed in the 15th or 16th century. It’s a beautiful melody and, at least in my part of the world, not nearly performed enough. An Irish organist named William Grattan Flood transcribed a singer performing this carol and then published it in 1928, which helped it to become more popular around the world.
It’s popular enough that Lenoir Sax asked me to write them an arrangement of this piece for their upcoming Christmas concert. I finished it a few days ago and they had their first read-through of it last night. Here’s the MIDI realization.
Arranging carols and hymns can be challenging because they are usually the same musical material over and over, just with different text on different verses. Arranging them as instrumentals requires doing something more or different in order to keep it interesting. With this arrangement I added some new musical material to use as an introduction, interlude, and coda (which is in a different meter than the carol, just to provide a little more variety). I also modulated the keys on repeats and orchestrated and harmonized things differently to help keep it from getting too repetitive.
I’ve written a bunch of arrangements for Lenoir Sax. I think this is the third Christmas carol arrangement I’ve done for them.
If you’ve been reading my blog long enough you already know that I’m interested in the science of music and pedagogy. I feel that since so much of our art form is very subjective, whenever we can take an empirical look at bass playing and teaching it can offer objective insights into how we practice and teach. So I was very interested when I discovered an article, reprinted from the Utah Music Educators Journal, titled “Practical Brass Physics to Improve Your Teaching and Playing.” Unfortunately, I’m not very certain that the physics are practical, or even necessarily true.
The article is written by either Steve Oare or Shannon Roberts, it’s not clear. The byline states Oare, but then there is a photograph of Roberts prominently displayed at the top of the article and other photographs in the article show Roberts. Regardless, the author wrote that after witnessing a master class by Allen Vizutti that his teaching and playing were transformed by what he heard. He decided to investigate the ideas further to see what physics had to say about the concepts Vizutti discussed regarding “smooth air” and “no buzz techniques.”
But even with these successes, I still harbored the following burning questions. How does this technique actually work? What are the physical mechanisms that make this work for brass players at any level? How can I teach this to students and colleagues and support it with evidence? These questions subsequently led me to investigate tube physics, air jets, oscillators and any topics that could provide answers and evidence for the smooth air and no buzztechniques. What follows is a summation of this scientific information and some practical applications to teaching and performing.
The first issue to discuss here is the author’s research methodology. He had some questions and tried to find answers that supported his preconceived notions. Right from the beginning, his research is biased. While one could argue that his “research” was informal, when you look for evidence that supports your hypothesis you’re going to miss evidence that contradicts it. This is why the null hypothesis exists. If the author wanted to learn more about the hypothesis that “smooth air and no buzz techniques” works because of physics, he should have looked for evidence that falsifies the research question. If none exists, then he’s on to something. Any evidence that he presents now is tainted by researcher bias.
But that doesn’t mean, in and of itself, that the evidence isn’t correct, just that we need to really take a much closer and skeptical look at it. He lists three basic topics of misconception in brass playing, embouchure mechanics, mouthpiece function, and tube mechanics.
1) Embouchure Mechanics:
Buzzing is the technique that produces the best sound on a brass instrument. False
Buzzing the lips to match pitches translates into pitch accuracy in the instrument. False
Buzzing is the only way that one can make musical tones on a brass instrument. False
All three of these “misconceptions” rely on the belief that the lips don’t actually buzz inside the mouthpiece when playing. This is explicitly stated later in the article.
The formation of the lips creates a natural opening (aperture), similar to vocal folds that act as frequency oscillators.
As air is forced through the lips, the lips never touch each other. Instead, they oscillate because of the shifts in air pressure, turbulent eddies in the mouthpiece and elasticity of the skin.
The first bullet point is more nuanced than the author acknowledged and the second is wrong. The lips do in fact touch each other, otherwise there would be no sound. At this point anyone who states the lips don’t actually open and close while playing isn’t paying attention, there is just too much evidence (both theoretical and observational).
There are many more you can find, but the idea that the lips do not buzz while playing is false, therefore the “no buzz technique” the author is advocating for is highly questionable. We can discuss whether the playing sensation of not buzzing the lips to play is helpful or not, but the reality is that no buzz=no sound. Buzzing is the only technique that will produce a sound on brass, not just the best sound. Whether or not the lips actually vibrate at the frequency of the pitch is irrelevant to his hypothesis, but again, it’s much more nuanced than the author presents.
In general, I think it’s fair to state that the lips do vibrate at the frequency of the pitch being played, with a caveat. The research I’m familiar with on this topic often show that the lips vibrate at a frequency that’s typically just a touch above of the pitch frequency.
The players normally played at frequencies about 1.1% above that of the impedance peak of the bore, but could play below as well as above this frequency and bend from above to below without discontinuity.
Trombonists normally play at a frequency slightly above a bore resonance. However, they can “lip up and down” to frequencies further above the resonance (more compliant load) and below (inertive load).
All measurements revealed a strong mechanical resonance with “outward striking” behavior; the played note always sounded above this frequency. Several measurements also showed a weaker second resonance, above the played frequency, with “inward striking” behavior. The Q values of the dominant resonances in human lips were lower than those typical of artificial lips.
The results show that with extreme efforts the players can generated playing frequencies both lower and higher than the corresponding air column resonance, but that the playing frequency under normal playing conditions (the “most comfortable note”) is almost always higher than the corresponding air column resonance. This supports the view that human lips function as “striking outward” reeds.
From a practical standpoint, I feel it’s fair to say the lips do vibrate at the frequency being played, or near enough. Certainly it’s not something that we can feel or hear while we’re playing, it’s something that can only be checked with special equipment. What this information doesn’t support is a “no buzz technique.”
Some of the author’s argument conflates feeling with reality.
For example, one’s lips feel like they are buzzing when they play. It is intuitive, then, to conclude that the buzzing is the cause of the tones being produced. But it will be shown that the lip buzz sensation is not a cause but an effect of several factors: air jets, pressure changes in the mouth cavity, strong turbulent eddies in the mouthpiece, a frequency feedback loop to and from the lips, and mouthpiece cavity resonance.
In order for a tone to be produced on a brass instrument the lips must oscillate (opening and closing) before the standing wave reflects back and helps to support the lip vibration. Again, one can discuss the benefits of feeling like the standing wave sets the lips to vibrating, but without the lips oscillating to start with, no tone can be produced. Certainly if we want to attack a pitch cleanly the lips (and air, tongue, fingerings/slide position, etc.) need to be set correctly for that pitch. If the author’s hypothesis were correct, how does the instrument know the musician wants to play a low C or a high C?
Another example is the technique of placing and sealing lips into the mouthpiece. It naturally seems that the cup “captures” a pitch created by buzzing lips. It will be illustrated that this is false. Instead, smooth (laminar) air flows between the lips & into the mouthpiece, which produces Aeolian tones and maximal resonance of the mouthpiece cavity. These actions excite the harmonics of the standing airwave in the instrument to sympathetically resonate. In effect, the air column resonates in a similar fashion to a string on a piano.
Getting into the weeds of the acoustics is not in my wheel house, so I’m a little unsure about the above. Best as I can tell, the flow of air into the mouthpiece is not a “smooth (laminar)” flow, the air is pulsed into the mouthpiece cup as the lips open and close. After the air passes the lips it swirls inside the cup before it gets blown into the shank. An Aeolian tone is created when air passes a solid object and generates an oscillation of the air stream, such as a flute tone or whistling. Brass playing are sustained lip-reed oscillations, not Aeolian vortex tones.
Now it is true that the brass tone is the air column inside the instrument oscillating, which strings do as well. Where the piano string analogy breaks down for brass is that we only rarely play the fundamental of the air column, we are almost always playing on the harmonics of the vibrating column of air inside the instrument. On a piano the string length determines the pitch. On brass, the frequency of the lip vibrating influences the column of air to develop nodes and oscillate on the harmonic series.
When the author “puts it together” he included a graphic representation. Take a look at it.
Now take a look at the graphic I created way back in 2010 when I needed an image to spice up a blog post.
It’s a pretty poor job of graphics, to be honest. I just wanted an image that depicted a brass musician playing with the tongue tip touching the bottom of the lip (as something to avoid, by the way). I don’t know why the author took this crappy image for his graphical representation, since it really doesn’t add anything. I might have even granted permission to use it, if I had been asked.
In short, buzzing has no positive effect on tone production. It is merely a sensation felt on the lips due to air pressure changes. An effective experiment one can try is to simply blow air into a mouthpiece while inserting it in a brass instrument. The result is the Aeolian tone Mouthpiece Effect. No buzzing is ever needed. One can also try the opposite. Buzz into a mouthpiece while inserting it. Do not alter the buzzing in any way. The resultant sound is kazoo-like and uncontrolled. A comparison of the muscular positions and tensions of the buzz and smooth-air techniques yields some interesting results. The photo and spectrographs, which follow, illustrate those results.
Yeah, not really. If one were to conduct the above experiments utilizing artificial lips I suspect that the results might be different. Trying to do this with a human being will result on the musician making micro-adjustments, perhaps even without realizing it. Blowing air into the mouthpiece while inserting it into the instrument does, in fact, alter the conditions and the resulting back pressure can indeed make it feel as if the lips begin oscillating on their own, but that’s just the player making enough adjustment to get the tone started. Try doing this with a high C, instead of the low pitch that you end up with this experiment.
Likewise buzzing the mouthpiece and then slotting it into the instrument requires some adjustments. The lip position and blowing activity is different between mouthpiece buzzing and playing the instrument. The author pointed out that the mouthpiece itself has a natural (very high pitch) resonance. Buzzing on the mouthpiece alone requires the player to lip the oscillation to the desired pitch and this is quite easy to do on the mouthpiece. Adding the instrument then adds the resonance of the air column inside of the instrument and influences (not creates) the frequency of the lip vibration. So by mouthpiece buzzing and slotting the instrument you’re going to need to make an adjustment or else you will get an uncontrolled and kazoo-like sound.
The author does eventually get down to brass tacks (no pun intended) with some practical suggestions.
Always incorporate breathing exercises into every practice session. This promotes more lung capacity and the ability to produce steady laminar air.
Straw Blowing to achieve laminar (smooth) air. This is one of the most beneficial exercises a brass player can perform. Place the straw between the lips. The straw should make no contact with the teeth. Simply practice blowing long phrases/tones into the palm of the hand. Concentrate on steady smooth air. Follow this immediately by blowing into the instrument. The results are remarkable. One can see and hear immediate improvement. This is very beneficial for students who are currently having difficulty with tone production.
Make an “M” for embouchure formation. The “M” position of the mouth, as in the word “mom”, is the most natural brass embouchure. It places the lips in a very relaxed and supple position for smooth air production.
More closed M for higher notes, open for low notes. This is a productive method for register change. Tighten the “M” as if one is squeezing a straw between the lips. This can be practiced with the straw ahead of time. Emphasize steady air when shifting to the next overtone.
Breathing exercises are fine, and probably to be encouraged. The idea that one can increase lung capacity is a myth on its own, but not worth going into right now. Laminar air flow doesn’t really apply to brass playing, which has the pulsating and varying jets of air.
Straw blowing might make for a way to lead a player towards a particular playing sensation, but doesn’t recreate the way the lips actually vibrate. It might also lead to the student going too far in that direction. Use that exercise with caution.
Setting the embouchure formation with an “M” syllable is fine, I use that analogy all the time. However, I prefer not to describe ascending as “squeezing a straw between the lips.” My concern here is that the squeezing action results in bringing the mouth corners in from their position as ascending, rather than keeping them lock in the same place for the entire range. Sure, if a student has difficulties with pulling them back with a “smile embouchure” the sensation of bringing them in like you’re squeezing a straw between your lips might help. But some brass musicians have the opposite problem, their mouth corners get pulled in towards the mouthpiece rim, which can choke off the sound and make it difficult to ascend from the upper register without resetting the mouthpiece (I speak from personal experience here).
Conclusion
If something in the article speaks to you and helps you with your playing and teacher, that’s just fine. Don’t mistake the playing analogies and playing sensations the author is claiming to be actual fact. I find his claims that the lip vibration is merely a playing sensation ironic. The physics he covers have just enough truth to them to sound legit, but not enough to be objectively helpful. Is the article inspirational? Maybe, but I was just disappointed.
I recently came across an older “guest blog” post from 2019 in the International Journal of Music. Written by trumpet teacher Clint McLaughlin, the post is titled, “The Effects of Using the Cheek Muscles vs. the Chin Muscles When Playing the Trumpet.” His post discusses his study of what muscles trumpet players activate and compares players who use a “smile embouchure” versus a “frown embouchure.” Using a thermal infrared camera, decibel meter, and spectrum analyzer, McLaughlin found that the players who used cheek muscles (specifically the Zygomaticus Major, Buccinator, and Risorius muscles) had weaker range and resonance compared to players who relied more on muscles around the mouth corners (specifically the Depressor Labii Inferioris and Depressor Anguli Oris muscles).
The results aren’t very surprising, I think. While at one time it may have been common for brass teachers to instruct students to ascend by drawing their mouth corners back (often referred to as a “smile embouchure”), this notion is very much in the minority today. In fact, I would be hard pressed to find qualified brass teachers who actually teach a smile embouchure now. It’s not too hard to find brass musicians who do have a smile embouchure, however it’s pretty universally acknowledged that this causes range and endurance issues.
McLaughlin’s takeaway advice is for trumpet players to utilize what he refers to as a “frown embouchure,” I guess to distinguish it differently from the smile embouchure.
Notably, the findings indicated that players employing the frown embouchure exhibited superior range and resonance compared to their smile embouchure counterparts. The thermal images and corresponding analyses revealed that the muscle activity within 1.5 cm of the lips and around the chin was crucial for optimal trumpet performance. The frown players consistently demonstrated a more robust harmonic presence, with some exhibiting up to 13 strong upper harmonics, underscoring the effectiveness of this embouchure in achieving a resonant and powerful sound.
During the warm up of trumpet players, face muscle contractions with increased blood flow result in a higher temperature of the overlying skin. This effect can be visualized and quantified by infraredthermography. The analysis demonstrates that the main facial muscle activity during warm up is restricted to only a few muscle groups (M.orbicularis oris, M.depressor anguli oris). The “trumpeter’s muscle” (M.buccinator) proved to be of minor importance. Less trained players expressed a more inhomogenous thermographic pattern compared to well-trained musicians. Infrared thermography could become a useful tool for documentation of musicians playing technique.
Since McLaughlin’s study essentially replicates Bertsch’s paper I feel that the muscle activity in the trumpet embouchure is pretty well established to be better focused on the area around the mouth corners and not in the cheeks. Where I deviate from McLaughlin isn’t so much in the findings, but in the specific term he uses for his recommendations, “frown embouchure.”
That might be more of a minor quibble. I prefer to describe the best position of the mouth corners when playing brass to be more or less where they are when they are at rest. We certainly don’t want to pull them back as if smiling, but I don’t believe that pulling them down into a frown position is best either. While it may help players prevent their mouth corners from being drawn back to think about frowning instead, I don’t really find pulling the mouth corners down to be correct. The muscles at the mouth corners do need to be engaged, but I don’t want my students to pull them down out of their position.
Taken together, both McLaughlin’s blog post and Bertsch’s paper also show the potential for using infrared photography as a valuable tool for studying muscular effort while performing musical tasks. Bertsch has even taken this idea further, looking at the entire bodies of a violinist, saxophonist, and trombonist to see what muscles were activate to perform.
In addition to the description of effective embouchure technique as a “frown embouchure” I do have some other criticisms about McLaughlin’s writeup of his research, however I don’t think that these invalidate the data he presents. These arguments are simply standard points that anyone who has engaged in serious academic or scientific research would probably also raise. That’s not to say that McLaughlin’s research isn’t interesting or useful. Some of my disappointment may be more related to the policies and publishing practices of the International Journal of Music.
I’ll start with that point. It’s difficult to find more information about the International Journal of Music’s publishing policies. Their editorial board seems solid, but I can’t find any information about their peer reviewers. Their editorial policy does mention “rigorous peer review for research-oriented content” but doesn’t note who their reviewers are (just their editors), whether the reviews are blinded, or how they label peer reviewed content compared to non-reviewed content. I think the $360 publication fee for an open-access article there is a bit much for an online journal that specifically seems to cater to a general audience. An average to purchase your own domain name and host a web site of your own for a year is about $150 if you’re just interested in getting your ideas out there, so you’re just paying extra to be associated with the IJM. Peer reviewers are volunteers, not paid staff, so while I don’t think the IJM is a predatory journal, I’m not sure how seriously they should be taken by scholars.
I suspect that the vast majority of articles published in the International Journal of Music are not peer reviewed and McLaughlin’s post (more on this below) probably would not be accepted for publication as peer-reviewed, such as in the (not to be confused with) International Journal of Music Education. In my opinion, naming their journal so close to the more serious scholarly resource was a bit sneaky. Maybe they didn’t really consider the confusion that could result with such similar names to be an issue, but the International Journal of Music Education is one of the gold standard publications of music research. The International Journal of Music, however, is much less so.
As best as I can tell, authors who publish in the International Journal of Music are qualified musicians, but a large portion of the articles (at least the ones accessible without a subscription) are “fluff” pieces, like interviews, obituaries, or other non-academic works written for a general audience. McLaughlin’s writeup there is described specifically as a “guest blog,” not really an article. Brevard College doesn’t have a subscription to the IJM, so I can’t go deeper without paying a subscription fee personally, and I don’t really think that it would be worth it for my purposes, so take my criticism here with a grain of salt. The articles behind the paywall may be very well researched and written. They do have ads on their site and also have links for marketing opportunities, which aren’t really a red flag for non-peer reviewed journals (they have to offset their costs somehow), but peer reviewed journals typically do not include ads unless they are for professional conferences or organizations, not products.
More specifically to McLaughlin’s post, I think he wrote up what he wanted to and what the editorial staff asked him for, but nothing more. A publication in a peer reviewed journal would have required a literature review and much more information about McLaughlin’s methodology. Since McLaughlin is essentially replicating earlier research a scholar would want to know this before citing or drawing conclusions. A thorough literature review also shows that McLaughlin is aware of the current consensus among experts in this topic, isn’t reinventing the wheel, and is addressing criticisms and concerns that often come up when different researchers look at similar topics in different ways. A detailed report on the methodology also helps scholars to bring appropriate weight to the findings. For example, McLaughlin’s writeup includes data from 5 test subjects, but we don’t know for sure if those are the only subjects or if they are a small subset. 5 test subjects is not enough to come to any statistical significance, even if the results are consistent with consensus. More data should also be presented in the writeup so that the reader understands how typical the examples are. It’s not necessary to include all the raw data from every test subject in an academic paper, but enough should be presented so that a scholar understands how typical the presented examples actually are. For all we know, those examples may have been cherry picked to demonstrate McLaughlin’s preconceived ideas. When conducting studies like this the researcher should be testing the null-hypothesis, gathering up enough evidence to prove that a real effect is actually present. In other words, you try to find evidence against what you expect to find and if you can’t, you’re on to something.
My last criticism about McLaughlin’s writeup has to do with the photographs he uses in his post. While he does helpfully label the specific areas of the face in the infrared photos, the view does not provide good context to see exactly where the muscles were activated or show other areas around the face that might also be related. Compare an example of McLaughlin’s photographs…
… to photos published in Bertsch’s paper.
Bertsch’s photos provide much better context. There may be a good reason why McLaughlin needed to photograph his subjects so close to the face (and they were playing trumpet at the time, I believe, so that is one difference), but if you’re comparing the muscles around the mouth corners to the muscles around the cheeks a better view would include the area around the mouth corners, rather than cropping them out. Bertsch’s data shows whether or not the muscles at the chin are activated as well and while the performers are not actually playing. Taken as a whole photos of the entire embouchure area both while playing and while at rest might provide evidence for or against whether the player is actually “frowning.”
If dwelling on the negative above seems like I’m against the IJM or McLaughlin’s research I want to again state that I think the blog post is very good. It offers further evidence for what the general consensus already states and is presented in a way that makes this information more accessible to non-academics. Heck, all my criticisms here apply to pretty much everything I post here! I guess I mainly am bothered by the veneer of a scholarly article in an academic journal that is really more focused on a general audience.
Update: After I made this post this morning I had a thought to poke around on Clint McLaughlin’s web site and sure enough, he has a more detailed writeup of his experiment over there. His discussion over there addresses some of my quibbles that I made above and has even more examples, including video, that you can look at. If this is a topic that interests you, I highly recommend you go to McLaughlin’s web page, Thermal Imaging And Spectrum Analysis Study Of Trumpet Players.
I was not familiar with composer Roger Evans until recently.
Evan Rogers is a British orchestrator and conductor based in Los Angeles, working across film, TV, and games.
Recent film and TV projects include Nosferatu, Snow White, Alien: Romulus, Twisters, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and Meg 2: The Trench. In games, Evan was the lead orchestrator and conductor for Payday 3, lead orchestrator for Disney’s Illusion Island andLuna Abyss, composed by longtime collaborator David Housden, and orchestrator on titles such asCall of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Jedi: Survivor among others. Upcoming projects include Mortal Kombat II, Kraven the Hunter and The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie.
Evans has a resource on his web site that is an absolutely incredible reference for big band composing and arranging. He deals with fundamentals, such as instrumentation (transpositions, great descriptions of range capabilities, and doublings), score and part layouts, articulations, voicing techniques, and much more.
I was looking for information on standard practice on setting up big band scores and came across this reference. Even though much of it was already familiar to me, I learned new information reading Evans’s entire resource. I happen to be helping to put together a concert of big band music composed by several musicians in the Asheville Jazz Orchestra and ended up forwarding this reference to the other composers to help them put their music together for the band to play. For anyone around western North Carolina August 3, 2025, come check out this concert.
I finally broke down and added a dedicated page here for brass players looking for lessons to sort out embouchure difficulties. If you look in the menu above, you’ll see a page called Lessons. That page includes the contact for to reach out to me via email as well as some additional information. I usually want to see a player’s chops in action before we schedule the lesson, since every once in a while I can spot something that’s easy to fix, plus it’s nice for me to get an idea what I’m going to be working with before we start. I have a video example and some music there so you can see what I would like to see and hear from that.
I’ve also added some info about how to use the audio settings on Zoom so that we won’t have difficulties hearing each other on the Zoom call. After helping too many new students get their Zoom settings set up correctly I think I’ve discovered the usual culprit so if you set up the audio settings as I mentioned in that page we should hopefully not need to spend time in the lesson troubleshooting audio issues.
Is there a “secret” to playing high notes on a brass instrument?
According to this video, it’s got something to do with the teeth and lips, but he’s not very clear on what he means. He talks about if you imagine the air passing over the tongue it hits the back of the teeth and then on the lips it forms a “thick” air stream. But we need a “thin” air stream to play high. He then demonstrates how he can place the mouthpiece in different (horizontal) placements that, I think he claims, naturally create a thin air stream for high notes.
But the key is his Mays Double-Aperture System (MDAS). This is used to unlock “High Note Air Jets” (HNAJ). He goes through a number of procedures to position the lower lip closer to the top teeth, position the top lip further away from the lower lip, curl the lower lip over the lower teeth, drag the lower lip so it’s in line with the edge of the lower teeth, direct the air up (with the jaw), experiment with horizontal mouthpiece placement (in order to find a place that “unlocks” air channels), experiment with vertical mouthpiece placement, and create “fast” air with “dry areas” of your lips.
Now I can see how some of this experimentation could lead to brass students finding a “sweet spot” on the lips that works best, but much of his description seems to be more his playing sensations or an analogy. This sort of experimentation done subjectively could just as easily screw a player up, in my opinion.
By the way, I would type his embouchure as a Medium High Placement type.
But there are a lot of more videos on YouTube that teach us the “secrets” to playing high. Let’s see what another says.
This video states that it’s tongue position. But he first describes that instead of going “up or down” on the center of the pitch we need to go “out deeper into the center of the instrument.” The lips, he says, are not the cause of the sound but rather just responding to everything else (most especially the oral cavity resonance). With the lip position what you want to do is think of the air column as a string. To go up an octave, you use the tongue position to “cut the air column in half.” He discusses a “half whistle,” which I like to describe as a pitched hissing instead.
Tongue position is an important part of the puzzle, and his idea of a “half whistle” is similar to something that I’ve been using in my own practice and teaching as well. But is it the “secret” to high notes for all players or does it depend on what the student is already doing and what direction they need to move towards? I think that in order for this concept to have such a dramatic effect the musician will need to have other things, like the embouchure and breathing, already pretty well in place.
By the way, my best guess for his embouchure type is the Very High Placement type.
In this video we learn a bit about how the brain is plastic and changes as we learn new motor skills, but it can adopt to incorrect technique as well as correct technique. So we need to practice correctly in order to reinforce efficient playing rather than incorrect playing.
Regarding the embouchure, he describes his as having an “open aperture.” The concept of an open or closed aperture to play a brass instrument is sometimes brought up, but people often use the terms differently and neither really describes what happens as a tone is being played. The aperture actually opens and closes throughout the playing. Regardless, he makes the connection between aperture size and dynamic (larger aperture for louder notes, smaller for softer) and range (smaller aperture for higher notes, larger for lower).
According to this teacher, we can create “compression” at three points in the playing apparatus; the lips, the tongue, and the glottis. Of the three, we don’t really want to do so at the glottis as that tends to cause playing issues. The tongue is used to create a resonance in the oral cavity to match the pitch being played, as described in the previous video. He briefly discusses a “modified yoga breathing,” which he describes as a process to breathe in first at the abdomen, then the intercostal muscles, and then then “claviculary” (at the clavicles). The goal of all of this is to remove excess tension, so I guess that’s the secret he’s talking about.
For descriptions and instructions on breathing I think I prefer to avoid the three-step process he advocates. I lean more towards how Arnold Jacobs would prefer to get the student taking a natural breath, using the sensation of moving air instead. Perhaps you could use those three regions as a guide for the teacher to use to see if the inhalation is working correctly, but Jacobs famously pointed out that you can imitate this body movements without moving the air correctly. It’s not the body moving that creates efficient and relaxed breathing, but rather efficient breathing that causes the body to move in the manner we associate as correct.
I can’t really guess his embouchure type from this video. Every time he plays the camera focuses on the bell of his trumpet and we can’t get a decent look at his embouchure. Probably one of the downstream types.
What’s the point of going through contrasting discussions on playing well in the upper register? Particularly since they cover some different things? Some players could definitely follow the advice of any of these videos (or the myriad of other videos purporting to offer the “secret”) and find something that clicks. But again, it really depends on what other playing factors are already in place and what needs adjustments.
With my personal interest in brass embouchure technique and pedagogy it’s very easy for me to break down the “secret” to opening up the upper register there. If I were to take it more personal, I might even advise all players to put as little upper lip inside the mouthpiece as possible and play upstream. But that particular adjustment that worked so well for me might be exactly opposite of what another player needs to do.
Ultimately the best way to open up the upper register is to get the coordination of all the different playing factors working together. It can be very helpful to isolate something in particular (tongue position, mouthpiece placement, breathing, etc.) because it can help us to both diagnose what needs changing and make the corrections. But these things must interact with the other playing factors in order for things to work efficiently.
I’ve discussed (quite a while ago) how I dislike it when brass teachers describe things as “secrets” to unlock your potential. It always seems that when that’s the rhetoric the advice is either pretty much already acknowledged as an important part of good playing mechanics or something really unusual that I wouldn’t advocate for. Most of the time I think well-intentioned teachers describe what clicked for them personally and then transfer its importance on to every student.
What do you think? Is there really a “secret” to good brass technique? Do you think that it’s OK to describe corrections as a “secret” and I’m being pedantic? Or do you agree with this pet peeve and think that brass teachers need to stop being so over-the-top in their sales technique? Is it just a way for these teachers to get clicks on their videos, drive traffic, and hawk their books and lessons? Let me know in the comments if I’m being a curmudgeon.
I’ve been working on some big band writing lately. The last two I completed were big band arrangements for my friend, Wendy Jones, to sing with the Asheville Jazz Orchestra. Both those songs were originals she wrote, The Day I Saw You and All the Years. Since those charts are not my compositions you can follow those links to hear Wendy’s combo recordings of her songs and come to our concert in August where they will be featured.
After completing those two arrangements I worked on an original ballad of mine, called Breathing Easy. I wrote the A section of this tune many years ago as a demonstration of how to use melodic cells to come up with ideas for composing new melodies. It was long enough ago that I don’t recall exactly how the melody for this tune got developed, but I do know that the melodic cell I used was the first two bars of London Bridges.
If you want to give it a listen, here is a mockup I did of this chart. I used Dorico for the notation and then to generate the midi realization for the horns, with the Atomic Big Band Horns sound library. The rhythm section and tenor sax “improvised” solo were generated using Band-in-a-Box. I dumped all the audio files together into Logic Pro and cleaned up some of the glitches there.
Can you hear London Bridges in there? I’m not sure I can, but I think I did some octave transpositions and inversions to get the melody sounding so different.
I’ve found Dorico makes it easy to put together parts, but it isn’t quite as easy for me to layout the score as easily, so the last bit I have to complete is to fix the layout of the score. I’ll be able to get this printed and then sent off to the current directors of the Asheville Jazz Orchestra very soon, so I hope that we’ll be able to perform it sometime soon.
Full disclosure, I don’t possess absolute pitch nor am I an expert in this field. I do find the topic fascinating, however, and when I came across a recent study about learning absolute pitch as an adult I was curious to learn more.
Just in case “absolute pitch,” sometimes known as “perfect pitch,” is unfamiliar to you, it is the ability to identify and sing pitches without a point of reference. It’s distinctly different from relative pitch, which is the ability to identify pitches based on the sounds of intervals using a point of reference. People who possess absolute pitch frequently describe the sounds of different pitches as having a sort of “color,” which researchers call “chroma.” It’s not pitch memorization, where an individual memorizes the pitch of an A440 by carrying around a pitch fork all the time, the different pitches has a distinct chroma that is as identifiable to them as red is different from blue.
Absolute pitch is very rare and conventional wisdom has been that it needs to be developed in childhood and can’t be learned as an adult. That said, a recent study, “Learning fast and accurate absolute pitch judgment in adulthood” by Yetta Kwailing Wong, et al, makes a compelling argument that certain training methods are able to obtain results among musicians without absolute pitch that are quite similar those with absolute pitch.
Wong and the other researchers trained 12 musicians for 8 weeks using an online computerized training program. The program was not easy, it involved at least 25 hours total with at least 2 hours of training per week over that time. The system was designed to start with identifying a single pitch, but over many different octaves, which I gather was one of the unique differences between this system and earlier ones. Once the participants were able to pass the test to identify the single pitch accurately a second pitch was added and so on. This doesn’t mean that the subjects heard only one or two notes, they heard many additional pitches during their training that were to be considered “out of bounds” until those additional pitches had been added. By the end of the 8 weeks training the participants were shown to be able to accurately identify an average of just over 7 pitches (ranging from 3 pitches at the low end for two subjects to all 12 pitches for three of them) with a 90% accuracy rate.
If these results can be replicated it is a very interesting step forward regarding how we might teach ear training. The researchers haven’t made their training program available, as far as I can tell, but I would imagine that it’s a matter of time before their program, or similar ones, becomes available. I also imagine that the training would involve a cost to take as well, but if the program is shown to have similar results for most adults it might be worth the expense for many musicians.
The full paper is available here. A summary of this research can be found here.
I’m getting much more comfortable using Dorico now, after decades of using Finale for my music notation. The bulk of my composing and arranging is for big band, so putting together a couple of new big band charts has been helping me learn the new software. It’s a different work flow compared to Finale, but as I’ve gotten used to it I find Dorico has some very nice features that I think are good improvements. The engraving side of working is particularly easier than with Finale, as Dorico I think does a better job of initially laying out the score and parts for printing and generally require less editing than I’ve found on Finale.
Like the last chart I recently wrote, this one is pretty straight ahead. I messed around with a couple of things harmonically, such as keeping all the V chords as C7sus, sometimes even a C7sus(b9), an idea I picked up from Tom Coppola, who was a pianist that I taught and performed with before his passing. The ii chords tend to be a tritone substitution, in this particular case a Db7. So instead of a standard ii-V-I I wrote bVI7-V7sus-I13 (Db7-C7sus-F13 in this key).
I also played around with the trumpet section playing with plunger mutes quite a bit, which gives it somewhat a Basie style feel to it, there’s definitely a Sammy Nestico sound to this one. The trumpet and trombone solo are also meant to be played with plunger mutes. That’s where the title comes in, It’s the Plumber I’ve Come to Fix the Sink.
Apparently when I was a kid I found this cartoon hilarious.
Over time, this line became an inside joke in my family, to the point of where I still remember us joking around with this line well after I had forgotten this cartoon. When I came up with this line as a title for this chart I looked it up, just to make sure that someone hadn’t already used it for a big band tune, and found this cartoon. It brought back some memories of the TV show Electric Company and some other childhood experiences.
Here’s a MIDI realization of the actual chart. The sound library I used for the horns is Atomic Big Band Horns. The rhythm section and solos were generated in Band-in-a-Box, using their “Real Instrument” samples, so the solos aren’t quite the style I wanted, but ok for a demo. I changed around the EQ of the solos in a DAW (Logic Pro, if you’re curious) and added a guitar “wa-wa” plugin to simulate plunger mutes as much as I could.
Straw Blowing to achieve laminar (smooth) air. This is one of the most beneficial exercises a brass player can perform. Place the straw between the lips. The straw should make no contact with the teeth. Simply practice blowing long phrases/tones into the palm of the hand. Concentrate on steady smooth air. Follow this immediately by blowing into the instrument. The results are remarkable. One can see and hear immediate improvement. This is very beneficial for students who are currently having difficulty with tone production.
