Yesterday I attended the North Carolina Trombone Festival, held at Appalachian State University this year. It was a wonderful time. I heard two very fine trombone choirs perform, the ASU Trombone Choir and the Charlotte Trombone Collective. The Performer’s Showcase Recital featured a number of the guest artists and most performed pieces I wasn’t familiar with already. I got to meet some colleagues from around North Carolina that I haven’t met before and also finally met a couple of teachers face to face for the first time.
There were also some workshops and I gave a presentation on brass embouchure technique and pedagogy in the morning session. While preparing for this I spent some time practicing it and recorded myself. Here is one practice session, unedited, but I think that it will get the points across pretty well. I didn’t write out everything I planned to say. Instead I had some bullet points of things I wanted to say in my presenters notes (as well as on the slides) and spoke about them off the cuff. I think that this makes a live presentation feel more natural, but on video it perhaps comes across better to recite something prewritten. What do you think?
At any rate, here is the practice session for anyone who is interested but wasn’t able to attend the festival or went to another workshop at the same time.
If you’ve read through some of my embouchure materials I’ve already posted here you’ll recognize the discussion as well as many of the examples I use. But it’s possible that this format and organization works well for some people as an introduction or review.
I recently got an email from a trumpet player, Lee, who reminded me about a topic I’ve been meaning to blog about for a while. In his email about a different topic Lee mentioned that the range requirements for trumpet player are more demanding than that of trombone. While on the surface this could be correct, I’m not so certain that this is really true. There certainly is a lot more nuance that goes beyond how high each of those instruments are expected to play. There’s also the range where these instruments spend the most time playing as well as the length of time in a given performance. Of course that’s going to depend also on the style of the music and what the individual piece is. It’s really hard to quantify this and often it gets framed as which brass instrument is harder to play, which is not really a useful argument.
Regardless, as someone who has spent a lot of time studying scores of great composers and arrangers I’ve noticed that the playing demands placed on different brass instruments are not always comparable. A phrase played on a Bb trumpet in a particular range is going to have a completely different quality if played an octave lower on a trombone. A trombonist pasting out an F above high Bb can sound exciting, but it doesn’t have quite the same punch as the equivalent G above high C on trumpet. Then we also need to consider how much a particular brass part plays on a given piece of music. If I were asked to play a NOLA brass band style sousaphone part in the equivalent range on tenor trombone or euphonium I think I would be gassed by the end of one set, maybe sooner. Good arrangers come to an understanding of what good brass players are capable of and write parts accordingly.
Are there some ways to objectively look at the playing demands placed on different brass instruments? Maybe, but all the ways I can think of have their limitations. Still, I find this an interesting thought experiment and did some “back of the envelope” analysis to see if I could come up with anything that might tease out an understanding.
While I’m not really a brass doubler, I do find it useful to practice trumpet from time to time and while I was a student, particularly in high school, I played all the brass instruments in different ensembles. I also taught all the brass instruments for a while back when I was teaching at Adams State College and ended up working on my chops on all the brass to try to be able to keep up with my students. But honestly, I found it more effective to simply transpose and play along on trombone with my students on other brass instruments because it provided a better model. I’m providing this background simply to point out that I’m not completely inexperienced on every brass instrument, but also to acknowledge that I’m only expert on trombone (and some might argue not even on that). My background as a composer and arranger writing for brass might be more relevant, since I’ve had a chance to discover through trial and error what works well for different brass.
Suggested Ranges – Orchestral
The easiest way to look at the demands on brass range I could think of was to look at orchestration and arranging sources to see what is recommended by experts. Are trumpet players generally required to play a greater range than tubists? Which brass instrument seems to require the widest range or the highest range? For my purposes in this post I’m going to focus on trumpet and trombone in particular, but also discuss tuba and French horn when I have some info to share.
One of the first books I was assigned as an undergrad for scoring music was The Study of Orchestration, by Samuel Adler. I have the 2nd edition, so your copy might be different. If you’re not familiar with this text, it is largely concerned with orchestral arranging, so these ranges might seem a little smaller if you compare this to big band playing.
Bb Trumpet
This text suggests a range of 2 octaves and a minor 6th for trumpet. The highest recommended note is the 9th partial. The Adler text also helpfully describes the characteristics of the registers for each instruments. For trumpet it describes the lowest written F# to the B above as “rather dull,” the middle C to A above the staff as “clear bright and most articulate,” and B above the staff to the D above the staff as “brilliant but strident.”
French Horn
Horn is a different animal than the other brass instruments. The fundamental pitch of the instrument is actually lower than a trombone, but they tend to be scored on higher sounding pitches. The range demands on a horn are larger than on the other brass, Adler recommends a playable range of just under 4 octaves. We are cautioned, however, that the lower register are difficult and to be avoided in fast passages. Written C below middle C up to G below middle C is described as “dark and may be a bit unfocused.” Above that to written middle C is “deep and solid.” From there to G on top of the treble clef staff is “bright and heroic” and above that is “brilliant and loud.” The highest suggested note is way up in the partials and I’m too lazy to count and figure it out. If you’re a horn player help me out in the comments.
Tenor Trombone
The suggested range for a tenor trombone is 2 octaves and a diminished 5th, a whole step smaller than trumpet, but then Adler provides some additional upper register notes in the parenthesis. Adler writes, “Theoretically, the quarter notes . . . are possible, and many professional players can play them, but they are difficult and risky.” If we included the highest note in the above suggested range the tenor trombone has a range of 3 octaves and a minor 2nd. The lowest pitch up to the G on the bottom of the bass clef staff is described as “dark and rather nondescript.” From there to the F above the bass clef staff is labeled as “very strong.” G above the bass clef to the Bb whole note in the tenor clef above is “very intense.” The highest suggested whole note is the 8th partial.
Tuba
Adler’s suggested range for writing for tuba is 3 octaves and a major 2nd, but it is covered in the text that tubists will often play instruments pitched in different keys. The lowest suggested pitch above, F, to the Bb two ledger lines below the staff is described as sounding “deep and heavy.” From the C below the staff to E in the staff is indicated as sounding “very strong” and above that is “getting weaker but quite intense.” The highest recommended pitch for tuba is the 13th partial, I think.
“Winner of the Range Contest”
It’s not a contest, but the horn wins with almost 4 octaves. Tuba comes in second with 3 octaves and a major 2nd. Trumpet and trombone are about the same, roughly 2 and 1/2 octaves, depending on which pitch you go with for the highest recommended note on trombone.
Suggested Range – Big Band
For suggested ranges for big band writing I grabbed Nelson Riddle’s text, Arranged by Nelson Riddle. I’ve got several good books on arranging for big band, this just happened to be the first one that I grabbed off my shelf.
Trumpet
This suggested range is very close to Adler’s suggestions. For some reason the lowest note is a half step higher, so 2 octaves and a Perfect 4th. If you know Nelson Riddle’s arranging you know that he would often write his lead trumpet parts higher than suggested.
Trombone
Riddle describes the recommended range of the trombone differently from the trumpet, like Adler. The two notes at the beginning of the above example are almost the same as the equivalent trumpet range, 2 octaves and a diminished 5th. But Riddle also adds some pedal tones (personally, I wouldn’t recommend too many pedals on tenor trombone and the lowest I can think of in classical repertoire is the pedal G in the David Concertino for Trombone and Orchestra.) He clarifies his upper register suggestions as “The upper notes. . . are all practical and easily available to experienced professionals, but younger and weaker lips usually have ‘A’ or ‘Bb’ as a ceiling, and the high ‘D’ in particular seems to be the starting note of a kind of ‘stratosphere’ which is closed to all but the very finest players.”
French Horn
Riddles range suggestions for horn are difficult to follow. The above image is a recreation of what is in the book, but there’s not much description on what all that means. He covers the French horn in his chapter on woodwinds and then later in the chapter on brass. I may be missing a complete discussion on what ranges he recommends for horn, since I’m skimming.
Tuba
Riddle’s suggested range for tuba is a bit smaller than Adler’s, 3 octaves total.
“Winner of the Range Contest”
Again, not a contest, but at least according to Riddle the tuba “wins” at 3 octaves. I won’t attempt a guess as to what he feels is the playable range for the horn. The trombone might be considered to eke out the trumpet a hair. That said, I tend to think of the playable ranges of trumpet and trombone as being equivalent to each other (for professional players), but with some caveats that I mentioned earlier and that I’ll get into now.
Playing Demand Comparisons – Big Band Lead Trumpet and Lead Trombone
Something important for composers and arrangers to consider when writing for brass is how much time the players spend actually playing and how much rest they get in a given piece. Nelson Riddle notes, “The brass section should be used for punctuation and support, and should not be given the sustained passages you would assign to string players, who can saw away for hours without rippling a muscle or generating one drop of perspiration.”
Since most of my own writing and much of my playing is for big band, I’m most familiar with that repertoire. One thing I’ve noticed with most of the great arrangers is that the trumpets generally are used more sparingly than the trombone section. I think there are two main practical reasons why. First, the lead trumpet part in the upper register is often saved for the exciting shout chorus and it’s helpful to give the trumpet section a chance to rest a bit before they are required to play up there. Secondly, the range of the trombone section alone is a bit more rich and solid sounding than a the trumpet section up an octave by themselves. While there are certainly times when the trumpet section can carry a passage on their own, it’s more common for that section to be blended with the saxophone or trombone section. You don’t have to go very high before 4 trumpets alone start to sound “tinny” whereas the trombone section voiced an octave below is in a range that sounds rich and clear.
But I wanted to come up with a more objective way to measure my impressions here. I grabbed a chart out of my own library, A Little Minor Booze by Willie Maiden, written for the Stan Kenton Orchestra. I figured something out of the Kenton library might make for a representative sample of what is expected in modern big band playing. I looked at the lead trumpet and lead trombone parts and worked out a couple of different things that would give us a glimpse into the different playing demands. I worked out the required range for both parts, but also looked at what the average note and median note was for both parts. I also looked at how much of the chart each player would have the metal on the mouth. It’s not really an accurate comparison, a quarter note playing a 6th partial concert F isn’t as demanding as playing that same pitch for a whole note. Controlling for that sort of variable is too much work for a blog post (and just guess at how much effort it took to write this post already), but I think it could be done if someone was interested enough.
Here are the results using some charts to compare.
Following this chart takes some explaining. In order to easily calculate these numbers I assigned the number 1 to the concert E below the staff for both trumpet and trombone (the lowest recommended non-pedal tone note for both). The F above that was assigned the number 2 and so on, all the way up to the written “double C” on trumpet at number 43. Here’s another way to look at this data.
Lowest Pitch Played
Lead Trumpet (written)
Lead Trombone
The lead trombone part was required to play the equivalent of an octave lower than the lead trumpet part.
Highest Pitch Played
Lead Trumpet (written)
Lead Trombone
On the second to last measure the lead trumpet has to play a “double C.” This is a major 6th higher than the equivalent highest note on the lead trombone part. The lead trumpet part has an entire range of two octaves, the C in the middle of the staff to the C two octaves above. The lead trombone part has an entire range of 2 octaves plus a minor 3rd.
Average Pitch
Lead Trumpet (written)
Lead Trombone
The average pitch for the lead trumpet part came out to a diminished 5th higher than the lead trombone part.
Median Pitch
Lead Trumpet (written)
Lead Trombone
The median pitch, that is the middle between the highest and lowest notes played in both parts, has the lead trumpet part a major 3rd above the lead trombone part.
Mode Pitch
Lead Trumpet (written)
Lead Trombone
The mode pitch refers to the pitch that occurred most often in the part. The lead trumpet mode note was the equivalent of a Perfect 4th higher than the mode note in the lead trombone part.
Measures Spent with the Metal on the Mouth
Lead Trumpet
Lead Trombone
The entire chart of A Little Minor Booze is 108 measures long (not counting the quarter note pickup). The lead trumpet part has at least one note in 33 measures, compared to the lead trombone part having 53 measures with something to be played.
Summary Impressions
First of all, let me make it clear that all the above really doesn’t tell us which brass instrument is the most demanding to play, but it might give the composer/arranger some ideas on what brass are capable of and how to write more idiomatically for those instruments. For big band writing in general, my best guess is that the lead trumpet will typically be required to play higher, but the lead trombone part will be required to play a wider range in general. The trombone section will typically need to play for longer periods of time with less rest, whereas the trumpets, who probably need to play more in the upper side of their range, will get more rest. If you want your trombone parts to be higher than typical you might want to write them with more rests than normal. Likewise, if you want your trumpets to play more throughout your arrangement you should write their range lower than you might otherwise. If you want to look at which instrument is required to play the widest range in general, you can probably assume French horn can cover the most range, followed by tuba, trombone, then trumpet.
My general thoughts on range capabilities for similarly experienced brass musicians is to pretty much think of them as the same. Take the roughly 2 and 1/2 octaves for trumpet and transpose that down an octave for the range of trombone and euphonium. Drop that down an octave for tuba standard range. Those aren’t perfect, but they will give you a decent idea to work with so that instead of having to memorize ranges for 3 different brass instruments you memorize 1 range and transpose by octaves. French horn, of course, is different and you’ll need to learn their range if you’re going to write for that instrument effectively.
I thought I had posted this video before, but when looking for it here I couldn’t find it. Here’s a video of tubist Oren Marshal, of the London Brass, in a rehearsal. Look at his chops closely and see if you can guess his embouchure type. My guess after the break.
On Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 1:30 PM Eastern I will be hosting a free Zoom workshop covering basic brass embouchure patterns and some pedagogical implications of understanding these embouchure types, followed by a Q&A session. Have your instrument and set up your camera to get close up to your embouchure and we’ll conclude with “guess the embouchure type.”
Space is limited, so to reserve a spot please fill out the contact form below.
Edit: I’ve heard from one person who tried to use the contact form and got an error. It seems to be working for me, but if you have any trouble please leave a comment (I will get notified that there’s a comment in the queue if you haven’t had a comment approved here before) and I’ll back in touch with you.
Edit #2: The workshop is now full. If I hear back that someone isn’t going to be able to attend after all I will post an announcement here and on the Trombone Chat forum topic. Since there seems to be plenty of interest I am considering running another workshop later. If you’d like to see another one feel free to email me, post on the TC topic, or by leaving a comment here on this post.
After over 10 years of blogging I figured that I had already covered this very common embouchure issue in its own post, but after wanting to help out a teacher with some questions about it I searched and realized that I’ve only discussed the smile embouchure in the context other topics. In this post I’m going to dig into the smile embouchure and go over some common suggestions for eliminating it that I think are inefficient before I go over what I’ve found to be the best approach. If you want to skip all that, check out this post on free buzzing.
Around the turn of the last century it was apparently common for brass teachers to actually instruct students to ascend by pulling the mouth corners back into a smile. It works, to a degree, similar to the way that stretching a rubber band while you pluck it will cause the band to vibrate faster and therefore sound a higher pitch. This technique has a characteristic look.
Avoid the Smile Embouchure
Today this technique is almost universally rejected by brass teachers. It tends to limit the upper register and endurance. Pulling the mouth corners back to ascend eventually reaches a limit to where the musician simply can’t smile even further to ascend, resulting in a range cap. Stretching the lips back also makes the lips more sensitive to mouthpiece pressure. This results in difficulty with endurance and also simply risks injury due to mouthpiece pressure.
While brass pedagogy seems to have come to a general consensus on avoiding the smile embouchure, we don’t have an agreement on the best way to help students make corrections to the smile embouchure. Part of this disagreement is due to every student being a little different and responding to instructions in their own ways, but a large part of the disparity in instruction seems to be due to a general lack of knowledge about what’s happening in the embouchure in the first place.
Awareness and Conscious Effort Is Inefficient
If you’ve never struggled with the smile embouchure yourself it might seem that the best way to eliminate the smile embouchure is to help your student become aware of the problem and ask him or her to consciously stop it. Mirror observation is often used for feedback and brass teachers will often prescribe exercises that start in the range where the corners are not pulling back and ascend gradually into the trouble range. The idea here is to start from a point of good technique (mouth corners in place) and strive to keep that technique the same while ascending.
This usually doesn’t work, at least not very efficiently. It’s notoriously difficult for brass players to make this sort of adjustment for a couple of reason. First, these musicians have a “conditioned response” to ascending on their instrument. It’s simply too habitual for them to just stop. Secondly, and even more relevant, the muscles at and around the mouth corners are usually too weak to hold them in place while ascending.
It’s pretty well established now that the area around mouth corners are responsible for a lot of the muscular effort for a well-formed brass embouchure. There have been studies that empirically investigate which muscles in the embouchure are active while playing a brass instrument. The more advanced the player, the more focused the embouchure effort is on keeping the corners firm (and the chin flat). The advanced trumpet player in the image above (the top row) shows a much more focused muscular effort at the mouth corners (and chin) than the beginner (middle row) and trumpet student (bottom row).
One reason why it’s so difficult for brass students to eliminate the smile embouchure is because the muscles that should be holding the mouth corners in place are too weak. Just as you can’t expect someone to bench press 200 pounds without building up to it, a brass musician can’t hold their mouth corners in place without developing the strength to hold them in position.
Embouchure Problems Are Embouchure Problems – QED
One of the most common approaches I come across from teachers, who I feel should know better, promote the idea the all embouchure problems are really breathing problems. These teachers insist that the best way to help a student make corrections to a smile embouchure are to work on breathing. Many also emphasize assignments of music, rather than technical exercises.
While there’s nothing inherently wrong in teaching good breathing and musical expression, any smile embouchure correction that happens as a result here is largely going to be in spite of, rather than because of the focus on breathing. Don’t misunderstand what I’m pointing out. Excellent brass technique requires efficient breathing and musical expression, but embouchure problems are embouchure problems. Teachers who advocate for developing embouchure technique purely through good breathing and musical expression usually insist that it’s ultimately better to take a student’s attention away from their embouchure. That may be all well and good, depending on the student, but in the process they ignore what the real cause and effect of the smile embouchure actually is. In this case, I think advocating that the teacher have a good understanding of embouchure technique here is different from discussing how much of that to communicate to students and when.
In a little bit I’ll show you how you can get a student to stop pulling the mouth corners back into a smile while forming an embouchure almost immediately (with some qualifications). I have never seen working on breathing to help a student correct a smile embouchure as immediately. If fixing the breathing fixes any “embouchure problem” immediately then the original issue was misdiagnosed. Embouchure problems are embouchure problems – by definition.
Sure, working on breathing and musical expression can (eventually) result in a brass musician correcting the smile embouchure. However, this is because the student is developing embouchure strength and control over time from practicing the instrument, not because the breathing is better or the musician’s mental image of the music is in mind. Furthermore, some players who happen to be more prone to a smile embouchure appear to have difficulty building embouchure strength simply by playing a lot (see Low Placement embouchure type players), at least more so compared to peers who have different anatomical features.
Free Buzzing
In my experience, regular free buzzing practice is the fastest and most efficient route to eliminating the smile embouchure, for a number of reasons. While I go over my rational, it’s important that I specify how I teach free buzzing and address some common concerns about it.
There are many brass players and teachers who dismiss free buzzing because it doesn’t directly relate to how the instrument is played. This is true, but if you are careful and methodical about your approach you are actually exploiting this difference. Consider the “conditioned response” difficulties I mentioned above.
For advocates of fixing the smile embouchure with breathing and musical expression, my rational for addressing it instead with free buzzing should be already familiar to them.
For example, in order to change the preconditioned responses elicited in a student when playing his or her instrument, Mr. Jacobs will simply remove the musical instrument and have the student blow on the back of the hand, buzz on a mouthpiece, or breathe into a strange apparatus. By conditioning the correct response away from the horn, it is then transferable to the instrument. This offers the additional benefits of keeping exercises from dulling musical passion, enhancing strangeness, allowing a multi-sensoral approach, and avoiding previously conditioned baggage. Most importantly, this additive approach keeps players from having to go back to square one on their instruments-particularly valuable for professional players who must maintain a busy schedule. Thus instead of altering a bad behavior, Mr Jacobs advocates that one simply learn a new correct behavior to supplant it by changing stimuli and eventually transferring the response back to the horn. Meanwhile, the old, undesired behavior will extinguish itself from lack of use.
When a student has developed a habitual way of playing the instrument that is getting in their way, it’s very difficult to approach it from what they are doing wrong. Instead, it’s more effective to go after what to do correctly. Furthermore, crafty teachers like Arnold Jacobs used ways to remove the trigger for the conditioned response (the instrument) and make corrections where those bad habits didn’t come into play. As the proper technique became learned, the instrument was gradually added to the mix.
Free buzzing does exactly this, with the added benefit of actually building strength in the muscles that hold the mouth corners in place. Furthermore, free buzzing higher pitches softly and with a mosquito-like sound makes it virtually impossible to pull the mouth corners back into a smile. Instead of helping to raise the pitch, it hinders it. While free buzzing the brass musician has to keep the corners locked in place.
So to return to what I wrote above, it instantly fixes the smile embouchure, albeit in a different context. It introduces “strangeness” removing the conditioned response. Even better, where playing the instrument allows the student to pull the corners back to ascend before the range caps, free buzzing only reinforces the correct mouth corner position. For these reasons, I feel that using free buzzing to eliminate a student’s smile embouchure is superior to addressing it directly while playing or through breathing and musical expression.
How to Free Buzz
My personal favorite free buzzing exercise to teach is from Donald Reinhardt. He prescribed slightly rolling in the lower lip inward and just over the lower teeth while bringing the top lip down to lightly touching the lower lip.
Without any assistance from the mouthpiece or the instrument, form the lips in the prescribed manner and sustain a buzz on middle concert B flat to the fullest extent of a normal playing breath. . . Buzz and inhale three times in the prescribed manner and strive to make each buzz a higher pitch than the previous one – then rest.
Encyclopedia of the Pivot System, p. 169, by Donald Reinhardt
That’s it. Maybe 3-5 minutes at most. Done as described and with just a little bit of work daily spread out over several weeks it should make for noticeable improvements without the risk of feeling “muscle bound” or otherwise screwing up a brass musician’s chops.
As an aside, I edited out the part where Reinhardt instructs holding your finger over your lips when inhaling and breathing in through the mouth corners for clarity here, but I do teach and recommend that in my more detailed discussion and video of this exercise. I also want to point out that the free buzz should be soft and thin sounding. Try to make it sound like a mosquito buzz.
That one exercise done daily for a few weeks or so should translate into a reduction of the smile embouchure at least, and over time can even eliminate it by itself. If your student needs some more help, there are two additional ideas you can try with free buzzing. One can be helpful for pretty much all players, others require you to know and understand the student’s basic embouchure type. These are also based on (if not outright taken from) exercises I picked up from Reinhardt’s writings.
Using Reinhardt’s description of a free buzz above, instruct your student to free buzz a pitch that is at least F below middle C (concert pitch, in other words F3 or F inside the bass clef). Keep the free buzzing tone soft and mosquito-like. After free buzzing that pitch, have the student play the pitch on their instrument as a long tone, then stop and rest. Then buzz pitches up a scale and repeat this exercise until they start feeling fatigued. Observe how the mouth corners look, but it’s not necessary to have the student watch in a mirror unless it helps then to see it (another option is to have the student watch in the mirror every other pitch). This exercise, which I feel is good for any brass player, can help eliminate the smile embouchure by helping the student to experience the correct mouth corner position while free buzzing and then quickly try to translate that to the instrument.
If the student is one of the downstream embouchure types, particularly the Very High Placement type, you can take the above exercise but instead of free buzzing and then playing the pitch on the instrument next, have him or her free buzz into the instrument. For some downstream embouchure type players this can be an excellent way to fine tune other elements of embouchure form as well as the mouth corner position. Low Placement/upstream type brass player will not want to practice buzzing into the instrument, since their mouthpiece placement too drastically changes certain elements of their embouchure form while playing compared to free buzzing.
Free buzzing ticks off all the boxes that we know is effective for correcting instrumental technique. It specifically strengthens the muscles we want. It forces the brass musician’s mouth corner form towards the habit we’re trying to develop while also removing the trigger for the habit we’re trying to eliminate. Lastly, it’s effective over time, but it’s probably more efficient than any other common approach to correcting the smile embouchure.
Remember, keep your student’s free buzzing light, soft, and somewhat airy sounding. A little bit every day spread out over time is much better than a lot at once.
One final idea for those teachers who insist that everything their student works on should have musical value. Use the same described procedure for free buzzing (soft and thin sounding, keep it above F3, etc.) but free buzz simple tunes. Personally, I think it’s fine to work on instrumental technique by removing it from a musical context at times, but if your student has difficulty switching focus back on the music or slips too easily into trying to multitask while playing, free buzzing melodies has the same benefits.
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.
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.
While trombone is my primary instrument and it’s been a while since I’ve seriously doubled on any other brass, I’ve been thinking lately about fingering issues after doing a “guess the embouchure type” post of trumpet player Giuliano Sommerhalder. One of the things I noted about the video I used for that post was that Sommerhalder doesn’t place his finger tips on the valves, but instead places the second digit of his fingers over the valves. Even though this isn’t what is traditionally taught for fingering technique Sommerhalder is obviously not slowed down by this.
Coincidentally, I’ve recently come across a couple of articles online about fingering that comment on these things. A friend of mine from grad school at Ball State University, Dr. Adam Gaines, wrote a short article for Blessing Brass called There Are Only Three Valves. In it, Adam notes: Continue reading “Fingering For Brass Players”→
Here is a cleaned up version of my 50 minute video presentation called Brass Embouchures: A Guide For Teachers and Players. While I’ve had this presentation up on YouTube already, I had to split it into 6 parts when I initially posted it. Later I tried to post it in a single video, but the audio and video didn’t sync up towards the end. This time I believe it should work just fine all the way through.
I’ve forgotten who sent this link to me, so I apologize for not giving credit. I’ve posted lots of videos and photos of brass players using transparent mouthpieces, here’s Brian Kane playing a transparent tuba.
He’s also playing a transparent mouthpiece, but the camera doesn’t focus on it to see his air stream direction. Probably downstream, but that’s always a probable guess simply because most players are statistically more likely to be downstream.
Kane’s comments on the diameter of the tubing and how it affects the upper register of that instrument is interesting. Building a brass instrument to play well in all registers is a complicated thing.
