Category: Science/Technology

“Practical” Brass Physics?

~ wilktone ~ 2 Comments

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 buzz techniques. 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.

– Relationships between pressure, flow, lip motion, and upstream and downstream impedances for the trombone

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).

– Trombone lip mechanics with inertive and compliant loads (“lipping up and down”)

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.

– Mechanical response measurements of real and artificial brass players 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.

– Nature of the lip reed

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.
  • fig 8Straw 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.

Embouchure Muscle Use – Cheek or Chin?

~ wilktone ~ 2 Comments

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.

Clint McLaughlin – The Effects of Using the Cheek Muscles vs. the Chin Muscles When Playing the Trumpet.

Similar research has been done before. One of the best ones I’ve seen is Matthias Bertsch’s 2001 paper, “Visualization of Trumpet Players’ Warm Up By Infrared Thermography.”

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.

Matthias Bertsch – Visualization of Trumpet Players’ Warm Up By Infrared Thermography.

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.

Learning Absolute Pitch In Adulthood

~ wilktone ~ 1 Comment

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.

It’s the Plumber I’ve Come to Fix the Sink – for big band

~ wilktone ~ 2 Comments

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.

Sunset Finale for Big Band

~ wilktone ~ 1 Comment

As I mentioned in my last post about a month ago, I’ve been learning to use new notation software, Dorico. Since the late 1980’s I’ve been mostly using Finale for all my music notation and I’d gotten quite used to it. But now that Finale has been sunset and is longer being supported, I’ve pretty much completely switched to using Dorico instead.

Now that I’ve been using Dorico for a while I’m starting to get more comfortable with using it. I feel that once I’ve got a slightly better handle on it that I’m going to like it better than Finale. Dorico has a number of features that I find superior to Finale. For example, laying out the final parts for printing seems to go much faster than on Finale. Dorico does a much better job of automatically spacing out the staves and avoiding collisions (for the most part). Note entry also works better for me as I can play a chord on my keyboard and Dorico will remember what I just played so I can take my hands off the keyboard and press the rhythmic value on my computer keyboard, which was harder to work with in Finale’s Speedy Note Entry.

I haven’t used Sibelius or Musescore really, so I can’t compare Dorico to those programs, but my recommendation for former Finale users is that Dorico is a good option.

I did go through a couple of Dorico’s tutorials to get started, but I figured the best way to learn how to use the software for my needs was to jump in and complete some projects. After last month’s saxophone quartet commission was completed I began working on a new composition for big band. Here’s a MIDI realization of the completed chart.

So like many of my composition, the title is stupid (Finale was discontinued, so this is called Sunset Finale, get it?). The sound libraries I used in the above demo, however, is pretty cool, I think. I purchased Atomic Big Band Horns to use for all the horn sounds, excepting the solos. While I’ve been having some playback issues with this project that caused some notes to not play long enough or too long, I was able to come up with a workaround for this demo. So all the prewritten horn parts are using the Atomic Big Band Horns sound library, while the rhythm section and soloists are audio exports from Band-in-a-Box and use that software’s samples. It’s a pretty nice end result for a demo recording.

I’ve already sent it to the current music director of the Asheville Jazz Orchestra and we’ll probably debut this chart next month.

New Software, New Arrangement – O Come, O Come Emmanuel

~ wilktone ~ 1 Comment

By now it’s old news that Finale has been sunset and it is no longer being support. The last time I checked, Finale was still running on my computer, but it is only a matter of time before it won’t and I have many compositions and arrangements that exist as Finale files. I decided that it would be a good idea to go ahead and get started as soon as possible with new software for notation.

I’ve been a Finale user since 1989, I believe, when as an undergraduate I took a class in computer applications with music in the brand new computer lab. I believe it was Finale 2.0 that we used and I’ve been using Finale ever since. After some research I decided to go with Dorico. It’s been very frustrating at times trying to figure out how to do certain things on Dorico that are easy for me with Finale. Some of the most frustrating things about Dorico are how certain things are just a little bit different from what I’m used to. For example, the key command for a quarter note on Finale is “5,” but on Dorico that is “6.” One of the things that I like very much about Dorico is that you can customize things like key commands, so once I’m more used to the software I’ll start setting some of those up.

The best way for me to learn the new software has been to simply jump in cold turkey and use it for a project. Coincidentally, I got asked to write an arrangement again for Lenoir Sax (I’ve done a bunch of writing for them) for their Christmas concert. They asked for O Come, O Come Emmanuel in a latin groove feel. I’ve previously arranged a big band chart on this tune, so I borrowed a little bit from that but with a different groove for this arrangement it was pretty easy to come up with some new ideas. Here’s a MIDI realization of the completed arrangement.

Dental Structure and Brass Embouchure – The Shiner Plot Thickens

~ wilktone ~ Leave a comment

A recent topic on the Trumpet Herald forum spun off into a discussion of tooth structure and how it influences a brass musician’s embouchure. The thread mentioned some research on the topic that I wasn’t already familiar with, so I did some digging and ended up finding a newer paper from 2012, The Relationship of Oral Anatomy and Trumpet Performance: Prediction of Physical Talent by H. Zeynep Cilingir.

Cilingir got access to some very advanced dental imaging equipment and designed a very good study to look at trumpet players’ anatomical features and looked for correlations between playing characteristics and dental anatomy. My own dissertation looked in part at this topic and my results here were inconclusive. Cilingir’s research did find some interesting results.

I’ve blogged about this topic before, particularly in relation to the ideas of Matty Shiner (here and here). Shiner would tell students who didn’t have what he considered to be an “ideal” tooth structure for brass playing to undergo an orthodontic procedure.

There are several problematic issues, which I go into detail on the earlier blog posts. Briefly, Shiner never published his research and what we know about it from interviews he gave would almost certainly not get IRB approval. There are massive ethical and even legal concerns with how he went about this.

Red flags aside, that doesn’t mean that his ideas weren’t correct. Cilingir’s paper took a good look at Shiner’s ideas and found some interesting things.

In this research, the relationship between the rotation angle of the central incisors (Inter-incisal Rotation) and performance skills was analyzed in order to further investigate the Shiner brothers’ theory. The results showed an association between Inter-incisal Rotation Angle and Flexibility; participants with a more pronounced “V” shape between the central incisors received higher scores from Flexibility A and B exercises. However, no significant association was found between the Inter-incisal Rotation Angle and High Range or Endurance scores as hypothesized by the Shiners and Franks.

– Cilingir, p. 65

So there was a positive association with lip flexibility and the V shape Shiner felt was ideal, but there was no relationship between that dental structure and high range or endurance. Interestingly, Cilingir didn’t find any relationship between high range and daily practice or years of experience either.

Cilingir also find some relationship between the amount of space in the back of the mouth (Inter-molar Width measurements) and certain types of tonguing. Subjects with a wider back part of the mouth tended to do better with multiple tonguing and flutter tonguing. There wasn’t any correlation found between the general alignment of the upper teeth and any playing characteristics, although there was a statistically significant correlation between well-aligned lower teeth along with multiple tonguing and flutter tonguing as well.

Pretty much all of the anatomical features that Cilingir looked at were characteristics that come from what I think are mostly “arm chair” speculation. Like a lot of thoughts on brass embouchure, many players and teachers describe what they think they are doing, and then leap to the assumption that not only is that how they actually play, but is also the best way for everyone. Cilingir’s paper is, to my knowledge, the best serious look at whether the speculation holds water.

Other dental characteristics Cilingir examined included:

  • Overjet
  • Inclination of the first molars (the molars are said by some to “support facial muscles at the side of the mouth”)
  • Slightly protruded and wider teeth

There wasn’t a relationship found between the above bullet points and any trumpet skills.

Almost every brass musician who has had some dental work done knows that the tooth structure is an important part of the brass embouchure. The support of the teeth and gums underneath the lips and mouthpiece rim is a vital part of embouchure technique and when an alteration is made it usually requires some time to adjust technique accordingly. Sometimes the playing is immediately better as a result of dental work too.

However, that doesn’t mean that anyone has the inside track on what dental characteristics relate to good brass playing. Even Cilingir was very careful to qualify the findings several times. Here’s one example:

However, none of the results of this study should be considered conclusive. After all, music performance is a combination of numerous aspects of human mind and body, which are full of endless capabilities. I believe that anyone, regardless of their physical makeup, can succeed becoming an excellent performer with enough determination.

– Cilingir, p. v

Someday I hope that we’ll have a much more accurate understanding of how anatomical features influence brass technique, but we’re not really very close yet. Before we can get there we not only want to pin down the dental characteristics Cilingir looked at, but also learn how those features are influenced by things like lip size and texture, oral cavity size and shape, tongue size and shape, the degree of the musician’s malocclusion, and more. Not to mention the variables of what embouchure type the player is using and whether or not they are playing correctly that way.

Anyone who recommends specific dental work in order to improve brass technique almost certainly doesn’t know what they are talking about. If you need to adjust your teeth, do so under the recommendation of a dental professional and do not expect it to make for any improvements in your brass playing.

Skill Consolidation to Optimize Practice

~ wilktone ~ 1 Comment

I’m always looking around for research based ideas on how we can improve our pedagogy and practice. I came across this article a while back, bookmarked it, and then promptly forgot about it. It concerns research published in 2016 called Motor Skills Are Strengthened through Reconsolidation, published in the journal Current Biology.

The key to learning a new motor skill – such as playing the piano or mastering a new sport – isn’t necessarily how many hours you spend practising, but the way you practise, according to a 2016 study.

Scientist Have Found a Way to Help You Learn New Skills Twice as Fast

No big surprise there, we already know that how you practice is more important than what you practice or how long you practice. What I’m curious about is what practice strategies had the most benefit.

Recent evidence has shown that memories can be modified through reconsolidation, in which previously consolidated memories can re-enter a temporary state of instability through retrieval, and in order to persist, undergo re-stabilization.

Motor Skills Are Strengthened through Reconsolidation

Reconsolidation is the process where memories, including how to perform motor skills, are recalled and changed as new knowledge is (or motor skill development, in this case) are added. In order to ensure this is happening the materials or skill being practiced are subtly altered in subsequent practice sessions. In the paper quoted above the researchers used a specially designed computer mouse that worked through squeezing it. Test subjects were asked to practice moving the cursor on a computer screen using this unfamiliar mouse. After six hours they were asked to repeat it, but one group of the subjects were asked to practice it using a subtly different squeezing technique. These subjects ended up outperforming the group that practiced the exact same mouse technique.

The key, according to the researchers, is to mix up the practice in subtle ways, not drastically. There also needs to be a six hour gap between the initial practice and the subtly altered practice in order to give the brain enough time to consolidate the original practice.

It’s also important to note that this study only looks at a particular skill, moving around a cursor with an unconventional mouse. It’s not a slam dunk that a similar approach will work for practicing a musical instrument, but there’s also no reason to believe that it won’t.

How can we subtly alter the materials we’re practicing to achieve the reconsolidating effect? The closest analogue to the experimental design I can think of would be to practice on a different instrument, not necessarily a different instrument type. For example, I tend to select which trombone I practice based on whether I’m practice jazz or classical music, but when working on something like lip breaks or fretting patterns for jazz improvisation they could be practiced on my large-bore orchestral trombone instead. Another similar idea would be to practice on a different brass instrument altogether, say working on mechanical corrections to your embouchure on an instrument with a completely different sized mouthpiece.

There are obviously some other ideas that could provide a similar benefit. What thoughts do you have on how we can subtly alter our practice in order to maximize the benefits?

A Five Step Model For Refining Technique

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Ask a bunch of brass teachers how to make changes in instrumental technique and you’ll get a lot of contrasting advice, but if there is a consensus of sorts it seems to favor developing a good sound concept and allowing the body to figure itself out. I’ve written many times about why I feel this approach is not ideal, including looking at research that investigates how we learn and develop motor skills. The trouble with utilizing that research to design teaching and practice strategies for musicians is that a large part of that research is tested using skills that are new to the test subjects. What is the best way to make changes or refine a skill that is already developed? I recently came across an article published in 2016 in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology that takes a close look at that question and offers a five part model for making corrections to a skill already learned.

We do need to keep in mind that this article is specifically looking at athletics and not music performance and pedagogy, but I think that the psychology between instrumental technique and athletic skills is similar enough that we can use the same strategies. With that caveat in mind, here’s a look at the five part process for refining technique.

Step 1 – Analysis

Yes, the first step is to analyze the musician’s technique. Right off the bat some brass teachers are going to flinch when they read this. For many, analysis is seen as a bad thing and it leads to “paralysis by analysis.” I find this attitude silly, to be honest. If you or a student is freezing up when playing mechanics are getting a close look for how efficient it’s working then you’re doing the analysis wrong in the first place.

The analysis step is vital for a couple of reasons. First, we need to be able to assess if playing difficulties are due to a mechanical issue in the first place. Furthermore, the analysis process should identify the precise cause of a technique flaw in an objective manner. Too many brass teachers are too quick to assume that the issue is being caused by incorrect breath control or maybe a poor sound concept. Those things can result in inefficient technique, but there are other areas in brass mechanics that also need to be analyzed and addressed.

One point the article mentions that I think is important here is that the athlete’s (or musician’s) technique should be analyzed separately from an attempt at correction. In other words, the musician’s attention should not be on the playing mechanics being addressed while analyzing the technique. It’s best is the coach (teacher) is the one doing the analysis. It’s notoriously difficult to analyze your own issues, so if that’s necessary it’s probably best done by recording your playing and doing your analysis away from the act of playing your instrument.

Also addressed in the article in this stage is getting the athlete (musician) to buy into the process here and recognize that there is a technique flaw that needs to be dealt with. Since there is typically a drop off in performance that happens during the next stage due to the technical refinement being new it’s important that the musician understand why the change is necessary, what specifically to change, and how to make that change.

Step 2 – Awareness

The goal in this step is to deautomate the instinctive inefficient technique. When the habitual way of playing the instrument isn’t working properly it needs to be replaced by the correct technique and that requires the musician (or athlete) to be aware of the technique in the first place.

To deautomate the aspect of technique requiring refinement (hereafter termed the target variable), athletes are required to consciously apply a narrow and internal focus of attention (cf. Wulf, 2013), which enables access to the relevant movement component within the memory trace (Christina & Corcos, 1988). If control over the target variable remained largely subconscious, as is thought ideal for performance (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Swann, Crust, Keegan, Piggott, & Hemmings, 2015), it would be difficult to see how any long-term changes could be initiated. Indeed, Rendell, Farrow, Masters, and Plummer (2011) have demonstrated the limitations of implicit strategies in this particular context. More specifically, athletes counting the number of tones overlaid on music soundtracks (i.e., an effort not to think about the movement) during netball shooting practice to a higher than regulation ring led to an eventual lower ball flight trajectory instead of an intended higher trajectory, despite athletes not being aware of any change taking place. In short, a conscious focus seems to be an essential precursor of effective motoric change.

Implementing the Five-A Model of Technical Refinement: Key Roles of the Sport Psychologist – Howie J. Carson & Dave Collins

The bold emphasis in the above quote is mine in order to highlight the difference between this evidence based strategy compared to the approach many brass teachers take where they intentionally keep their students awareness off the specific mechanical skill. Traditional brass pedagogy skips this step.

One reason why I think many teachers intentionally avoid the process of helping a student become aware of their playing mechanics is that there is almost always a drop in performance when a change in motor skills is made. Where many brass pedagogues assume this decline is an indication that the awareness is making the problem worse, sports psychologists see this as a necessary step in the process. Music students need to be aware of what the purpose of this stage is and be realistic in their expectations.

The authors recommend contrast drills as providing good benefits in this stage of the process. Practicing this way involves spending some time alternating between the old and incorrect way of playing and the new and more efficient way.

Contrast drills challenge athletes for two main reasons. First, a movement component that has been under largely subconscious control must return to consciousness (i.e., executing an already existing technique under a different type of control); second, athletes must consciously manipulate their movement to achieve a new technique. As such, executions are performed with an imbalance of control and require a high degree of concentration and motivation. Using paradoxical training interventions (i.e., asking an athlete to purposefully make an error; see Bar-Eli, 1991) as one way to explain the intended outcome (see also Carson, Collins, & Richards, 2016), contrasts between techniques enable the coach to “reframe” the situation and the athlete to realize what is required to make the change, that is, to fully notice the difference.

Implementing the Five-A Model of Technical Refinement: Key Roles of the Sport Psychologist – Howie J. Carson & Dave Collins

Again, we can compare the emphasis on conscious manipulation of the technique recommended above to the more popular idea in brass pedagogy of discouraging any conscious manipulation of playing mechanics.

Step 3 – Adjustment

In this stage the goal is to make the specific change in technique. The musician (or athlete) becomes familiar with the new technique and how it feels and works when correct. The authors recommend feedback be provided to the student in the form of both recorded trials with the new technique as well as through questions, primes, and verbal instructions that guide the preferred technique.

Contrast training is adjusted in this stage so that the old versions of the playing technique are phased out in favor of the new and correct way of playing.

It has yet to be investigated, but we feel that attempts to unconsciously shape the new behavior, through solely implicit, constraints-based coaching, for example, are less likely to generate effective outcomes such as long-term permanency and robustness under stressful conditions. This may well necessitate a change of behavior by the coach if they are devoutly convinced by this approach, and the psychologist can help greatly by supporting the necessary approach.

Implementing the Five-A Model of Technical Refinement: Key Roles of the Sport Psychologist – Howie J. Carson & Dave Collins

The above quote notes that there are many athletes and coaches who favor an unconscious approach at this stage, but the author’s feel that this approach is less effective in the long term. I agree with their assessments here, but will reiterate their point that further research is needed in this area.

Step 4 – (Re)Automation

Only after the conscious adjustment is made to playing technique do the authors recommend working on making this change automatic. At this stage continuing to break up the playing technique or motor skill into individual steps becomes detrimental in situations of stress (i.e., a performance or audition). Instead, in this stage we finally begin to make the new way of playing internalized.

Music teachers frequently coach their students through mental imagery and analogy. I’ve often pointed out that this is a double edged sword. It’s not helpful in the earlier stages, but at this point it is a necessary step. It’s at this point where the teacher helps the student to perform the technique without conscious effort on playing correctly. This is the stage where the implicit approach takes over.

Step 5 – Assurance

In this final stage the goal is to generate complete confidence in the athlete (or musician) in the unconscious execution of the corrected technique. The student gets regular reassurance from the coach or teacher that new change is working correctly. Assessing the new technique through challenges involving physical fatigue or otherwise “pressure testing” the student is valuable in this stage. This is the point where the musician or athlete just concentrates on the end goal of making good music or putting the ball into the basket.

Final Thoughts

The authors note a specific pet peeve of mine in the typical strategy employed by most brass teachers, separation of the psychology of performing with an accurate understanding of motor skills.

First, there is a distinct need for sport psychology and motor control knowledge to be reconsidered in unison. Unfortunately, in our view, this separation has been driven by too narrow a focus in each case—emotion and cognition in the former and co-ordination dynamics in the latter. Bridging this gap, recent efforts have been made to examine the effects cognition over elements of the movement execution. Carson and Collins (2014, 2015) recently termed this study “psychomechanics” and have explored relative states of automaticity through use of intraindividual movement variability as an indicator of such control (e.g., when executing golf shots with a ball or as intentional practice swings; Carson, Collins, & Richards, 2014b). In short, planned training designs must address not only the development of task-specific cognitive strategies but also how the execution may be embedded with relative permanence and pressure resistance (cf. Carson & Collins, 2016).

Implementing the Five-A Model of Technical Refinement: Key Roles of the Sport Psychologist – Howie J. Carson & Dave Collins

Tip of the hat to Noa Kageyama of the Bulletproof Musician podcast and blog for posting about this article.

The Science of Swing

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NPR posted a report on their web site yesterday called “What makes that song swing? At last, physicists unravel a jazz mystery.” It’s an interesting look at swing groove and how physicists who happen to be amateur musicians approached answering the question, what is swing?

Still, a precise definition of swing has long eluded musicians and scholars alike. As the Big Band era jazz trumpeter Cootie Williams once reportedly joked about swing, “Describe it? I’d rather tackle Einstein’s theory.”

Fittingly, physicists now think they’ve got an answer to the secret of swing — and it all has to do with subtle nuances in the timing of soloists.

What makes that song swing?

When I read that my first thought was, duh! Of course it’s soloist timing, and their relationship to the rhythm section groove. What could science actually say about this? It turns out the devised a pretty subtle experiment that helps answer the exact question of what a soloist does to swing hard.

But since the 1980s, some scientists and music scholars have claimed that the swing feel is actually created by tiny timing deviations between different musicians playing different types of instruments. To test this theory, Geisel and his colleagues took jazz recordings and used a computer to manipulate the timing of the soloist with respect to the rhythm section.

What makes that song swing?

They then played different versions of the recording with different timings to jazz musicians and asked them to rate the performances. By a large margin, the musicians preferred one set of timing over another, even though they couldn’t pinpoint what it was that was different. They then analyzed classic recordings by important and influential jazz musicians and discovered that they were manipulating their time in the same way.

What was that difference? Read the article or give the report a listen. Did you agree with the majority opinion on which manipulated recording sounded better? Can you notice the difference?