Month: September 2010

Learning Styles

~ wilktone ~ 4 Comments

The idea of “meshing” a student’s learning style with the way one teaches is an old and common approach to pedagogy.  As this idea goes, we should work out whether our student is an “analytical” type or a “creative” type and alter our instruction to fit the way our student learns best.  Somewhat related to my post from last Friday, if the student is an intuitive learner and enjoys learning by listening and imitating, then we should teach more by playing for the student.  On the other hand, students who are a little more “left brained” will learn best through analysis and we should teach them the details.  Students who are visual learners should be assigned reading while students who learn best by doing should be given in-class projects.

This sort of teaching philosophy is ubiquitous these days.  There are tests that teachers can give to assess their students’ learning styles so that we can cater how we present the information to them.  Some students may prefer to get their information through pictures, some through speech, some through text, and many other methods.  It seems like a no brainer, particularly for those of us teaching private music lessons, where we can easily alter our instruction for an individual student without worrying about a class full of differing students.  There’s only one problem with meshing instruction to fit the individual student’s learning style.  When carefully controlled and tested, students generally don’t respond better or worse to being taught in their preferred method.

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Guess the Embouchure Type – Dick Nash

~ wilktone ~ 4 Comments

Another installment of “Guess the Embouchure Type” today.  This time I’m going to take a close look at the embouchure of the great trombonist Dick Nash.  Nash is sort of a trombonist’s trombonist.  Many fans may not know his name, but they may have heard his playing on countless soundtrack recordings and albums by artists like Stan Kenton, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, and many more.  Take a look at the video below.  Around 2:35 into the video we get a good closeup look at his chops.

Nash has a very low mouthpiece placement.  It’s low enough that you don’t really need to look at him play into a transparent mouthpiece to see that he has an upstream embouchure.  While he doesn’t change registers abruptly enough to get a close look at his embouchure motion, it’s pretty obvious that his embouchure is an example of the Low Placement type.

If I recall correctly, Nash was one of the players photographed in the hard to find book by Bill Spilka called Chops.  Does anyone know of other videos or photos that show a close look at Nash’s embouchure?  Any other players that you’re curious about with good videos or photographs of their embouchure?  If so, leave your suggestion and links below and I’ll use them for my next installment of “Guess the Embouchure Type.”

The False Dichotomy – Imitation vs. Process

~ wilktone ~ 5 Comments

This particular topic is one that has bugged me for a while.  It only seems to become an issue when I’m involved in an online conversation, however, which suggests to me that part of the problem is that written communication is more difficult to get this particular point across.  When I have the opportunity to discuss this with teachers and players in person, we almost always immediately come to an agreement.

What I’m talking about here is the difference between two extreme pedagogical approaches to music.  On one end there are teachers who advocate imitation as the most important part of the learning process.  The gist of this idea is if you play for and along with your students, and get them to imitate the sounds they hear, they will figure out what their bodies need to do on their own, without resorting to instruction on exactly how to form the embouchure, manipulate the tongue, etc.  As evidence for this approach it’s common for people to offer that we learn to talk and walk without needing to worry about the exact physical details and usually do so perfectly.  Additionally, since we don’t want to think about the details when we perform (we want to concentrate on the musical expression), we should always practice with our attention on the sound alone.

On the other side are the analytical types.  According to this extreme, you need to understand exactly how you create the sounds on your instrument and always focus on doing so correctly.  By analyzing the details you will learn exactly how to play best the and learn how to make your body perform correctly.

The problem is that these two extreme points of view are not mutually exclusive and, with few exceptions, no one really seems to advocate either to the point of leaving out the other.

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Dress For Success

~ wilktone ~ 1 Comment

I just came across a reference to a paper written by Noola Griffiths in the journal Psychology of Music on how our visual impressions change our aural perception of the music we hear.  Griffiths carefully conducted a ingenious study where she carefully selected four female violinists, filmed them performing the same piece at the same tempo in different attire, and then dubbed in a single performance so that the same performance was heard on each video.  Then Griffiths had the musical performances rated by other musicians.  The results were unsurprising, but interesting.   Continue reading “Dress For Success” →

X-Ray Videos of Brass Players

~ wilktone ~ 1 Comment

The above embedded video from YouTube is an fascinating look at a horn player and a trumpet player performing various types of tonguing in different registers.  There are some interesting things that I noticed watching it.

I’m not sure when this video footage was filmed, but it had to be a while ago (update: John Ericson, from the Horn Matters blog, noted that the footage was taken for Joseph A. Meidt’s 1967 dissertation, A Cinefluorographic Investigation of Oral Adjustments for Various Aspects of Brass Instrument Performance).  These days we have a better understanding of the risks involved in a casual dose of X-ray radiation, so I doubt that a legitimate researcher would be able to go through an Institutional Research Board and get approval for this sort of study.  

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Larry O’Brian Retires From the Glenn Miller Orchestra

~ wilktone ~ 2 Comments

This may be of interest to some of you.  Trombonist and leader of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Larry O’Brian, is retiring soon after 25 years of being on the road.  Another trombonist, Gary Tole, will be taking over as Music Director.  I had the opportunity to work for Larry a couple of times in the past few years on the Miller band.  He was very nice to me, making a special introduction of me during my first show with them (he heard I was “Dr.” Wilken and I think figured at first I was a medical doctor, which made for some amusing quips on the concert).

Congratulations on your retirement, Larry!  Congratulations on your new position, Gary!

Another Embouchure Question

~ wilktone ~ 2 Comments

I got another question via email that I’m going to try to answer today.  As always, take my response with a grain of salt.  It’s very hard to diagnose technique issues without being able watch the musician play in person.

Ken writes:

Is there any way to look at a persons lips and decide which mouthpiece would be best? Every teacher starts at Bach 7C but I have read that people with a dew or tear drop have a particular hard time and are advised to pick a different instrument. I have struggled in High School and quit. I have tried three times and quit. I am now 60 years old and am trying one last time. . .  For the first time I am making some progress. But I can’t tell how bad the dew is since nobody seems to know much. So is there some test or book I can compare my lips to and decide if I should continue or throw in the towel?

First, don’t give up!  If you are interested in playing trumpet (or any brass instrument), the key to playing well is to learn how your breathing, tonguing, embouchure and other factors interact with each other.  Some of these things take some time to learn and are really best done under the guidance of a good teacher.  Sometimes players can figure things out on their own, but sometimes a little push in the right direction is all a student needs to break through.

Secondly, I don’t think it’s really possible to simply look at a player’s lips and determine what mouthpiece qualities would work best for a particular player.  Sometimes people will speculate that a player with thick or thin lips is better suited for one or another instrument, but if you look around at good players you’ll see so many exceptions that I wouldn’t recommend a particular instrument based on lip size or shape. (Athough, there are some cases where a low brass mouthpiece may be too large for a player’s face and the nose or chin can get in the way, but it’s often possible to change rim sizes and make it work.)

That said, there are some mouthpiece qualities that players belonging to certain embouchure types may find helpful (please look through that link to understand exactly what I mean by the following embouchure types).  The Medium High Placement players don’t usually want to go with too big a mouthpiece cup as they often have a big and dark sound naturally.  Very High Placement players often find that a larger rim diameter helps and if they want a darker sound can sometimes go with a deeper cup than Medium High Placement players.  Low Placement types players similarly may use a deeper cup for a darker sound, but on low brass they often don’t want to go with too large a rim as the chin may get in the way.  These are not always the case, however.

As far as your “dew drop” goes, I haven’t gotten a close enough look at enough players with them to say for certain that it will have a noticeable effect on your embouchure.  Some players don’t seem to have any issues with it, while I’ve heard of others who place the mouthpiece off to one side.  Since many players do best with an off-center placement, I can’t really say whether a prominent “dew drop” makes an off-center placement better.  I suspect that it isn’t as large a factor as things like the length of the lips to the teeth or the shape of the teeth and jaw.

Thomas Stevens is a fine trumpet player with a pretty prominent dew drop (follow the link to see a photo).  I wasn’t able to find any photos or video online that show a close look of where he places his mouthpiece.  If anyone out there knows of one, or knows first hand how Stevens places the mouthpiece, it would be interesting to see.  There is a video on YouTube of Stevens performing one of his compositions, along with Gabriele Cassone and Hakan Hardenberger.  It’s a pretty cool piece.

There is a distinct possibility that it’s not your horizontal placement that’s causing your troubles, but the vertical placement.  Take another look at the three basic embouchure types and note how these different types have different ratios of upper to lower lip inside the mouthpiece.  While you’re trying out placing the mouthpiece to one side or another, you might mess around with placing the mouthpiece higher and lower on your lips to see if you can find a “sweet spot” where things open up.  I’d try this experimentation with the high end of the middle register and upper register, since it’s too easy to play wrong in the lower register and it won’t really be a good test of whether you’ve found your correct embouchure type.  Rest lots while experimenting and don’t use too much mouthpiece pressure.

It’s really best to have someone experienced in typing embouchures help you out with all that.  If you have access to a teacher that is curious about embouchures, you might have him or her take a look at some of my resources and try to offer you some guidance that way.

Anyone out there have anything to add about the dew drop feature?  Do you have one and find that you place best off to one side because of it or does it not really matter?  Has anyone worked with any students like this and found something that might help Ken out?  Please leave your comment below.