Category: Practice

Embouchure Experiment – 10 Days With the Opposite Type

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This post is a followup to Friday’s post. If you want to try to solve this embouchure puzzle on your own you should look at the video here first, then come back and read this one. In order to follow this post completely you’ll need to understand what the three basic brass embouchure types are. If you don’t, please read this post and watch the video embedded there. If you want a more complete discussion of this, start here at this page.

I’ve been taking some time lately to catch some video lessons with my one of my mentors, Doug Elliott. For those of you who might not already be familiar with Doug, he is a trombonist, mouthpiece maker, and an expert in brass embouchure technique. He was also the primary source in my dissertation, “The correlation between Doug Elliott’s embouchure types and selective physical and playing characteristics among trombonists.” Doug has been guiding me through an experiment we tried to fix the problems I’ve been dealing with.

Once more, here is a video that shows the issues that I’ve been covering up for a while now manifest. You can hear the choked upper register, but can you spot the mechanical issue that is causing it? The answer, and the path that Doug helped guide me though to make corrections, are below the break.

Can you spot the cause of the problem?
Continue reading “Embouchure Experiment – 10 Days With the Opposite Type” →

Embouchure Difficulties – Spot the Cause

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Many brass musicians have had embouchure breakdowns, including some very exceptional players. So it should come to no surprise that a mediocre player, like myself, can run into some issues with embouchure technique. This in spite of my interest in brass embouchure technique and almost 25 years of study in embouchure form and function.

For years I’ve had some nagging difficulties that have caused some problems in my playing. I’m usually able to muscle my way through them, especially after warming up for a while, but I haven’t been fixing the mechanical problems, only getting good at covering them up. This is actually quite common. What’s strange is that I know exactly what I’m doing wrong and what I should be doing, it’s just been a bear to make the corrections happen consistently.

Recently I’ve decided to make it a priority to fix these problems. Since at the current time we’re still in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I don’t have any serious performing obligations so this is a good time to get this done. I’ve been catching some video lessons from my mentor, Doug Elliott, who has been guiding me through an interesting embouchure experiment that has helped solidify things for me. But before I post about that I want to give the masses a chance to see my problems manifest and make your best guess as to what you think is going wrong. Then, offer your hypothetical advice.

Can you spot the mechanical issues? How would you fix them with a student? Post your thoughts in the comments here. On Monday I’ll post what Doug and I figured out was happening and the experiment we tried that eventually made for good improvements.

Deliberate Practice

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This is probably not new news to most of you, but I found this article called “The Myth of ‘Practice Makes Perfect‘” interesting. Author Annie Murphy Paul discusses the research on how improvement requires not a lot of practice, but deliberate and focused practice.

“Hundreds of thousands of people took music lessons when they were young and remember little or nothing,” he points out, giving lie to the notion that learning an instrument is easiest when you’re a kid. The important thing is not just practice but deliberate practice, “a constant sense of self-evaluation, of focusing on one’s weaknesses, rather than simply fooling around and playing to one’s strengths. Studies show that practice aimed at remedying weaknesses is a better predictor of expertise than raw number of hours; playing for fun and repeating what you already know is not necessarily the same as efficiently reaching a new level. Most of the practice that most people do, most of the time, be it in the pursuit of learning the guitar or improving their golf game, yields almost no effect.”

The Myth of ‘Practice Makes Perfect’ – Annie Murphy Paul

While this is really not new information, most of us still don’t practice deliberately most of the time. It’s not fun poking at your flaws and forcing yourself to address them. If you’re into an activity it’s probably because you find it fun and constantly finding things that you don’t do already well make it less so. It takes discipline to spend your practice time not sounding good, but it’s absolutely the best way to spend your time if you want to maximize your results.

There’s a lot of scholarly evidence to support this approach. Paul cites a couple of papers that are also interesting reads. I couldn’t find the original paper online, but here is a 2008 paper by Anders Ericsson, “Deliberate Practice and Acquisition of Expert Performance: A General Overview.”

Traditionally, professional expertise has been judged by length of experience, reputation, and perceived mastery of knowledge and skill. Unfortunately, recent research demonstrates only a weak relationship between these indicators of expertise and actual, observed performance. In fact, observed performance does not necessarily correlate with greater professional experience. Expert performance can, however, be traced to active engagement in deliberate practice (DP), where training (often designed and arranged by their teachers and coaches) is focused on improving particular tasks. DP also involves the provision of immediate feedback, time for problem‐solving and evaluation, and opportunities for repeated performance to refine behavior. In this article, we draw upon the principles of DP established in other domains, such as chess, music, typing, and sports to provide insight into developing expert performance in medicine.

Anders Ericsson

Paul also references research done specifically with musicians, “It’s Not How Much; It’s How: Characteristics of Practice Behavior and Retention of Performance Skills.” The researchers looked at how different pianists practiced a challenging passage and then rated their performances the next day to see what strategies worked best. You won’t be surprised to learn that the musicians weren’t the pianists who practiced the longest, but those who focused their practice in a way that they practiced the passage correctly, rather than reinforcing mistakes.

The lesson to learn here is to always practice with an ear towards what your mistakes are and make sure to fix them. It takes great effort and isn’t the most enjoyable way to practice, but it’s absolutely the best way to improve.

Speaking of which, it’s time for me to go practice.

Thoughts On Mouthpiece Buzzing

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When I was a music student mouthpiece buzzing didn’t seem so controversial as it seems to me today. Most of my teachers used it to a degree, but didn’t emphasize it too much. Today there are many books and routines for brass that incorporate or even focus on mouthpiece buzzing. There are also many teachers and players, some very prominent ones, who discourage any mouthpiece buzzing. Others swear by it. 

When I see disagreements in brass pedagogy and practice I like to take a step back and look at the question as objectively as possible. What does mouthpiece buzzing practice do to our normal brass playing? What’s the relationship to normal brass playing and why does it have a positive or negative effect? Are there ways to maximize the benefit and reduce any drawbacks? 

Mouthpiece buzzing requires the brass musician to focus the embouchure perfectly on pitch or else the note will be out of tune. On the instrument the player can get away with being a little off because the acoustics of the instrument will “slot” the note for you. However, if the embouchure still isn’t focused correctly on the instrument the tone won’t be as focused. I also suspect that playing a note with the embouchure not quite in focus is more tiring in the long term then working with the natural resonances of the instrument.

Even though buzzing on the mouthpiece doesn’t utilize the natural harmonic resonances of a brass instrument, it’s worth noting that a mouthpiece does have a harmonic frequency, It’s just a high one due to the very small resonance chamber that’s created. I’m not expert enough in the acoustic principles at play to know how this comes into play when mouthpiece buzzing, but I do know that many brass musicians find they have areas where they have issues when buzzing the mouthpiece. 

Along with requiring the embouchure to focus correctly, mouthpiece buzzing also works the player’s breathing. If you buzz into the mouthpiece alone you’ll find that you exhale the air more quickly. One school of thought is that by buzzing into the mouthpiece alone you practice really moving a lot of air quickly. The idea is that by getting used to moving more air than usual the player will be better able to move a lesser amount air on the instrument. 

Some teachers and players adjust the resistance while mouthpiece buzzing in some ways. There are devices that you can buy the allow you to fine tune the opening of at the shank end of the mouthpiece and simulate the back pressure of playing the instrument. A cheaper alternative is to put a bit of your finger up and block a bit of the hole at the shank of the mouthpiece.

Critics of mouthpiece buzzing offer that it’s different from playing the instrument. They argue, plausibly, that the technique you use for buzzing the mouthpiece well is going to be different from what you want to use while playing your instrument. I tend to agree that there probably other things that brass musicians can practice that will work better in the long term. If you’re too accomplished at buzzing the mouthpiece it risks getting in the way of playing the instrument well.

But there are situations where I think that mouthpiece buzzing can provide some benefits, with some caveats. I feel mouthpiece buzzing should be used sparingly and only for short times. When used, it’s best to immediately afterwards play something on the the instrument. Mouthpiece buzzing is different from playing the instrument, and if you are careful it’s possible to exploit that difference.

One of my mentors used mouthpiece buzzing mainly in the context for helping legato playing. He would have his studio play a phrase or three of a legato etude, then buzz it on the mouthpiece (only tonguing initial attacks after the breath, the rest no tongue). Immediately after buzzing, with as little time as possible, we were to pop the mouthpiece back into the instrument and start the etude over. Usually students would notice an improvement in tone and ease of playing. 

For teachers, this mouthpiece buzzing exercise can give your student a quick and easy “win” in your lesson. While benefits of mouthpiece buzzing seem to be a little more short-term, sometimes it’s good to give a student a boost of confidence. There are also definitely musical techniques that mouthpiece buzzing works on outside of brass technique, such as ear training and even expressive playing. 

I should also mention that mouthpiece buzzing is a great way to introduce beginners into how to form a brass embouchure. Free buzzing is usually pretty challenging for a beginner, at least while getting the embouchure form I want to encourage, but it’s much easier to do on a mouthpiece. Buzzing on the mouthpiece is often easier for a new player to get their first sound than trying it on the instrument.

All that said, I really haven’t used mouthpiece buzzing regularly in my own practice and teaching for a while. My preference is to work to address things in ways either directly on the instrument or in a way that is further removed from how normal brass playing works (i.e., through singing to develop ear training, free buzzing to develop embouchure strength, breathing exercises to develop good breath control). 

My two cents – You probably can do just as well without mouthpiece buzzing in the long term, but if you don’t do more than a few minutes or so a day you should be OK if you feel it’s helpful. I would recommend you don’t use it as a warm up, always start your practice by playing your instrument. When you do buzz on the mouthpiece, always immediately return to playing the instrument and ensure that you’re developing your ability there, rather than getting better at being a mouthpiece buzzer.

“Embouchure Motion” Stabilizer

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Donald Reinhardt created an exercise he called the “Pivot Stabilizer.” He intended students to use this exercise as their first notes of the day. Here is the exercise, with some hand written notes and instructions for a specific trumpet student.

In order to better understand this exercise you first should forget about the embouchure “pivot.” Reinhardt defined it a certain way, but unless you studied it from him you almost certainly don’t understand what it is. Instead, think of this as an exercise to stabilize a brass musician’s “embouchure motion.”

Embouchure Motion – The natural motion a brass player makes when changing registers where the mouthpiece and lips together will be pushed and pulled along the teeth and gums in a generally up and down motion. The position of the mouthpiece on the lips doesn’t change, just the relationship of the mouthpiece rim and lips to the teeth and gums. Some players will push upward to ascend while others will pull down. Some players will have a track of their embouchure motion that is side to side. For more details on this phenomenon go here.

Assuming that you fully understand the embouchure motion definition above, you can make use of Reinhardt’s exercise to help make a student’s embouchure motion function more efficiently with less conscious effort. The arrows drawn into the music above are a specific trumpet student’s embouchure motion direction, just make sure that you’re instructing (or using, if this is for your own practice) the correct embouchure motion for the individual student. The student should use this exercise as a way to find where the tone is most open and resonant for each particular note.

The first time through each three measure set the student should watch what the embouchure motion looks like in a mirror. On the repeat Reinhardt instructed the student to close his or her eyes and instead focus on the feel of the embouchure motion assisting with the slurs. The “V” after each set was Reinhardt’s notion to remove the mouthpiece from the lips for a moment before moving on to the next set.

One thing I wanted to adjust for this exercise was the starting note and where the “home base” range for this exercise lies. For many students, particularly the Very High Placement and Low Placement embouchure types, it can be more useful to use a higher pitch as the central range point. Many of these musicians will find it easier to play correctly in their upper register, so slurring up to the high range before playing down to their low range gives them a better chance to descend correctly (as opposed to slurring down to the low range before up to the high range, as Reinhardt’s original exercise).

The above exercise duplicates the purpose of Reinhardt’s “Pivot Stabilizer” but moves the center of the exercise to G on top of the staff (for trumpet) and also has the student playing an ascending slur first, before descending to low C.

If you want to experiment with your own practice or teaching using these exercises here are some printable files for you.

Original Pivot Stabilizer
Embouchure Motion Stabilizer for Trumpet
Embouchure Motion Stabilizer for Horn (I might transpose the range differently, depending on the student)
Embouchure Motion Stabilizer for Trombone/Baritone/Euphonium
Embouchure Motion Stabilizer for Tuba

Why You Shouldn’t Be a Fake Book Player – And a Couple of Reasons Why You Should

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Eric (no last name that I can find) published an article on jazzadvice.com that makes a very compelling argument that jazz musicians should not read tunes out of a fake book. For the non-jazz musicians out there, a “fake book” is a collection of lead sheets (melody and chord progressions) of standard jazz compositions. Often you will find players using them on gigs or in rehearsals. Eric argues that using them is a crutch. He describes three pitfalls of using a fake book.

I) Ignoring your Ears
The main problem with fake books is that they allow you to play tunes and create solos without using your ears.

One of Eric’s points here is that by using your eyes to read the music you’re going to turn off your ears. Fair enough, but my classical music colleagues typically read music on their performances and they are always advocating using your ears and listening to what you are playing and what’s around you at the same time. Granted, they are not improvising, but there’s probably a happy medium in there that we can use.

II) You don’t really ‘Know’ the tune
When you rely on a fake book, you never get to the point where you “know” the tunes that you’re playing.

Back in the day I worked as a trombonist on cruise ships. On one ship I worked on we had two cruises a week, two shows each night. I ended up playing the same show four times a week, and some of the dance sets we played used the same book even more often. It got to the point where I had much of the music memorized, even without consciously trying to.

Maybe I’m different from some folks, but I naturally get to know tunes just by playing them over and over again.

III) Limiting the music
When you can only play the tunes in that fake book on your music stand, you’re not only putting yourself in a box musically, you’re limiting the music itself. But, what exactly does that mean?

Eric’s article was published in 2014, but even then I think I was beginning to see the use of tablets and phones as PDF readers become prolific on gigs. Many people (including myself) have what would be 1,000s of pages of sheet music stored on a tablet instantly available for when a tune is called that isn’t memorized. Sure, there are tunes that just aren’t in those books too, but we enjoy access to sheet music these days that just wasn’t possible in the days of fake book hard copies.

With the caveats that I’ve presented, let’s look at the benefits Eric mentions for learning tunes by ear.

I) Improving your ear
By getting away from the fake book, you’ll not only improve your ear, you’ll actually be using it.

Learning a tune by ear also has the added benefit of memorizing it faster (at least for me). Sure, it will take you longer (initially) to be able to play the entire melody, but that melody and the changes will get into your long term memory quicker and stick with you longer.

II) Knowing a tune intellectually and aurally fosters creativity

Creativity is dependent upon a certain level of proficiency and freedom.

I think most of us improvise more creatively when we know the tune really well.

III) Listening and interacting when you perform
One common theme that you see with players or groups that use books to perform is that everyone ends up staring at the book. Every player is in their own world and focusing on their own part. They’re all playing at the same time, yet no one is playing together. As a result there is little to no musical communication within the group.

Again, I would like to point out that in the classical world musicians strive to listen and interact with each other while reading their sheet music. Granted, there are different aesthetics going on in classical music compared to jazz. Instead, I think it’s a matter of attention.

We can typically only concentrate on a one or two things at a time, but performing music requires us to have control over multiple things at a time. Musicians will need to have technical mastery over their instrument, play together with other musicians, concentrate on time, harmony, melody, etc. Effective multitasking in and of itself isn’t about developing the ability to think about many things at once, it’s about having such command over the task that attention isn’t required, it’s automatic. That’s why having a tune committed to memory is so useful. By not needing to concentrate on the sight reading it frees up your mental energy to concentrate on listening and interacting with your fellow musicians.

And therein lies my best case (weak as it is) for learning to read lead sheets. Many of the “ear” players I gig with are not great sight readers. Don’t get me wrong, they can be some of the most creative musicians to work with, but when I get with them on a gig that requires reading they struggle. Jazz musicians who are solid sight readers don’t need to take up such mental energy trying to follow the lead sheet because their reading is to the point where it’s automatic. Those musicians can get on a gig with my big band and sight read one of my original compositions while listening, interacting, and improvising creatively. I don’t think it’s just the act of reading the music that is limiting a jazz musicians playing, it’s the mental focus of reading that’s pulling their attention away from listening and using their ear.

All that said, Eric’s article is a great read and the advice he offers is golden. Check out more of what he wrote and start (or continue) memorizing tunes. While you’re at it, take a tune you don’t know and haven’t heard before and force yourself to play over it by sight. Two sides of the same coin.

Coming Back After 211 Days Off

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Sarah Paradis is the trombonist with the Mirari Brass Quintet. I was able to watch them give a masterclass a number of years ago which was wonderful. Sarah recently had a son (congratulations, Sarah!), but some complications forced her to take a long time off from the trombone. She’s doing well now and is back to playing trombone and blogging about her experience taking such a long time off and what it’s going to take for her comeback.

Mentally, I didn’t mind too much about this break because I knew it was something I had to do for my health and especially for the health of my baby. It hurt my ego a bit because I couldn’t play with Mirari Brass Quintet, I couldn’t take any gigs, and I missed out on an audition for my local symphony. But again, my family’s health is more important than any gig, so it was clear what I had to do.

In this first of what I hope are several posts, Sarah writes a bit about the circumstances that required her to take time off of the horn, what it was like to teach lessons without being able to play, and her plan for further posts on this topic. I’m looking forward to reading more about her experiences and what we can all learn from her. Check back later on the Brass Blog for updates.

Learning a Musical Instrument as an Adult

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My wife has recently become seriously interested in learning to play music after not really having any musical education prior. While she’s dabbled a bit in the past, she needed to find an instrument and genre of music she was particularly excited about to get to the point of where she decided to take the plunge. For her, it’s Celtic harp.

She enjoys being able to ask me for help. Even though I don’t have a background in either Celtic music or harp, I’m still able to answer basic questions and even more complex ones involving music theory or ear training. I’ve been on the lookout lately for things that she might find useful and came across 7 tips for adults taking up a musical instrument. Honestly, the advice that’s in there is good for anyone, regardless of how old you are or even whether you’re just starting out with music or have been playing for decades.

  1. Dedicate a small amount of time every day to practice.
  2. Find some new music to play.
  3. Get your instrument serviced.
  4. Give yourself something to work for.
  5. Remember why you’re doing it.
  6. Persevere.
  7. Don’t be afraid.

Frankly, the above suggestions (and you should read through the short article for extra thoughts on each piece of advice) are solid for learning anything new. OK, maybe “get your instrument serviced” won’t apply to something like creative writing, for example, but the gist of the article does an excellent job of getting started on creative projects.

Elasticity Routine For Lip Flexibility

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A few months ago I caught up with Doug Elliott and took another lesson. For those who don’t know, Doug’s embouchure types and terminology are the ones I prefer to use here and my lessons and interview with him were important resources for my dissertation. Doug studied from Donald Reinhardt and took Reinhardt’s ideas and developed a presentation of them that makes them easier to understand.

At any rate, at my last lesson with Doug he reminded me of Reinhardt’s “Elasticity Routine,” or at least the technique and point behind it. I have some inconsistencies in how my chops function between my upper register and F3 and below. Glissing without using the slide between partials in this register are helping me make my embouchure function more consistently. They are also pretty good for developing lip flexibility and overall embouchure control.

There was a forum topic on the Trombone Forum that was discussing similar exercises, so I threw together a short video describing and demonstrating what I’ve been practicing. It’s not as good as Doug’s demonstration for me, but I think you can get the point of how the Elasticity Routine works. The exact glisses that you do are not as important as how you do them. Do not let up on the mouthpiece pressure and try to gliss between those partials as smoothly as possible.

I had a couple of pretty good glisses in there and some examples of me struggling to make them sound smooth. They all sound better now than they did a few months ago. The point is not that this should sound good (although that’s what I’m trying for when practicing this drill), but how they help your playing.

On the Importance of Grit

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Here is another TED talk, part of a playlist on “Practice Made Perfect.” The overall theme of these videos are improving learning. In this talk, Angela Lee Duckworth discusses the importance of grit to learning.

 

Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn’t the only thing separating the successful students from those who struggled. Here, she explains her theory of “grit” as a predictor of success.

Duckworth refers to the “growth mindset,” something that I posted about a couple of weeks ago.

So far, the best idea I’ve heard about building grit in kids is something called “growth mindset.” This is an idea developed at Stanford University by Carol Dweck, and it is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed, that it can change with your effort. Dr. Dweck has shown that when kids read and learn about the brainand how it changes and grows in response to challenge,they’re much more likely to persevere when they fail, because they don’t believe that failure is a permanent condition.

I find it interesting that Duckworth also studied teachers in her research. She not only looked at which new teachers in a tough neighborhood would stick it out, but also which teachers would show more successful outcomes for their students. This tells me that grit and the growth mindset are also characteristics of good pedagogy, as well as qualities we want to encourage in our students.