Month: December 2010

Arnold Jacobs On Embouchure: A Criticism, Part 2

~ wilktone ~ 4 Comments

A few months ago I posted a criticism of Arnold Jacobs pedagogy, specifically related to his dismissal of embouchure as an important factor of brass playing.  I recently got a comment on that article that has some very common misconceptions to my brass embouchure research.  I wanted to take a moment and address some of those now, using this comment as a launching point for further discussion.  I hope that my commenter, Kaj Fagerberg, doesn’t feel singled out here, as his points echo many made by Jacobs himself.  Due in part to Jacobs’ pervasive influence, these misconceptions are widespread among brass players.

Kaj writes:

I think what Jacobs is saying is that the embouchure must vibrate, that’s all it does. There is not a magic setting that one must find, it just produces vibration to produce sound. Our teachers spend so much time trying to get us produce a perfect textbook example of the embouchure, that they forget it’s goal is to vibrate. Yes, a functioning embouchure vibrates, just as a distorted one can. There is no difference. That is the point he is making.

I think it’s a pretty simplistic view that all the embouchure does is merely vibrate.  The lip vibrations must be controlled perfectly in order to play the correct pitch and with a focused and resonant tone.  It’s true that a distorted embouchure vibrates too, as demonstrated by Jacobs’ infamous embouchure trick, but a distorted embouchure formation is inefficient and causes problems we want to avoid.  Jacobs probably never actually performed with his lips twisted up like this because it would not be an optimal way to play and I think he’d probably help students avoid winding up the lips with the mouthpiece rim.

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Advice For Students Writing Music Papers

~ wilktone ~ 6 Comments

The last semester of 2010 just wrapped up.  Due to the nature of two of the lecture courses I just taught, I ended up with a lot of papers to grade during the last 3 weeks of the semester.  While reading them I made note of some of the common traps that my students run into when writing about music.  Even when I go over these mistakes in class, some of them are easy to make.

There are plenty of common writing issues that crop up regardless of the topic of the paper, such as grammar and proper form and style.  Different teachers will have their own policies.  Personally, I don’t care too much if the paper is done in MLA, APA, or Chicago style, as long as it is consistent (although I’m speaking here for mostly non-music majors taking elective courses).  Don’t make up your own system of citing and such.  Find out what your teacher wants you to use and make sure that you’re following it.

Here then are some common traps to avoid when writing papers about music.

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A Visit From St. Nick

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Last Friday’s annual Christmas Concert fundraiser was well attended and we managed to raise some good money on top of having a good time.  I was particularly excited about this concert because I had written a brand new composition for last year’s show, but winter weather forced us to cancel it.  We finally got to premier my composition for narrator and big band, music set to the poem A Visit From St. Nick.  Rodney Hagans is the narrator, but unfortunately he’s out of the camera frame for the whole video.  Still, you can get a good idea of how the chart sounds.

Changing Education Paradigms

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I’ve seen some of these RSA works before.  They create neat animations set to public speeches and other events.  This particular one’s soundtrack is a talk about education by Sir Ken Robinson on our standard education model.  Some very interesting food for thought, as well as being a slick animation to boot.

I just spent a couple minutes poking around Sir Robinson’s web site and it looks like there’s some interesting things to explore, plus lots of bells and whistles (it might load poorly on slow connections).

How To Mark Your Music

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Yesterday I mentioned Bruce Childester’s The Trumpet Blog as one of my recommendations for online brass resources.  A short time ago he had a great post on “How to Mark Your Trumpet Music” that I wanted to recommend.  He offers examples of several standard practices and other suggestions about how to mark music appropriately.

Some of his points I’d like to reiterate include only marking your music in pencil, so it can be erased.  Also, circled music means “tacet” (lay out), not look carefully at this.  Many music students will circle things they want to remember, but I encourage everyone to get used to only using circles to mean tacet.  You never know when you’ll need a sub last minute.  Your substitute may need to sight read a performance and might assume that circled parts mean lay out.  On the flip side, you don’t want to be the only one barreling through something you were supposed to lay out on because you didn’t know what that circle means.

One piece of advice I’d like to add to Bruce’s is the use of a dash and number (e.g. “-2”) over notes to indicate exactly when the note is released.  It’s common for students to release notes too early, so I often have them mark a whole note, for example, with a “-1” to remind them to release the note after all 4 beats (on the downbeat of the next measure, or off on 1).  It’s also useful for effects like “doits” and  fall offs (“-3” to mean fall until the 3rd beat, etc.).

While you’re at it, poke around a little at The Trumpet Blog.  There’s lots of good stuff in there.

Web Resources For Brass Players

~ wilktone ~ 1 Comment

Recently I’ve come across James Boldin’s post Top Sites For Brass, in which he discusses Brass Musician’s Top 10 Online Resources For Brass Players.  James comments and lists some additional resources that he’s found interesting (and thanks for the plug, James!).

Rather than reproduce what those both say, I encourage you go over there and check their recommendations out.  While I’m at it, here are, in no particular order, a few additional brass related sites that I enjoy looking at regularly.  You’ll notice that many of them explore areas other than brass, but that’s one of the reasons I enjoy looking through them. Continue reading “Web Resources For Brass Players” →

Embouchure Experiments Lead to Controversy

~ wilktone ~ 3 Comments

It’s a busy time for me, with the semester just starting to wrap up, and I’ve much grading to do.  There has been an interesting discussion going around in the horn blogosphere lately, which I’d like to comment briefly on before I get back to work.

It seems to have started with Bruce Hembd’s series of articles on Horn Matters, which he calls “‘Radical’ Embouchure Experiments” (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4).  In this series Bruce explores some new embouchure ideas (and revisiting some older ones) that he’s been playing around with lately.  They make for an interesting read and while I would argue that the exact procedures may not be the best for every player, it’s clear from the series that he’s just offering this for food for thought and not making recommendations for anyone else.

This series of posts led Julia Rose, the hornist behind Julia’s Horn Page blog, to begin thinking about how her attitude to analysis has changed over time with her post, “No more analyzing.”  I think the key thing to keep in mind to understand the context of her post is when she writes, “I understand that this way may not be for everyone, and that some folks may feel the need to analyze.  But that method is just not for me anymore” (my emphasis).

Many other people responded to the “Radical Embouchure Experiments” series in the comments.  Bruce responded to one in the comments area and then, I’m glad to see, expanded on that comment with a more detailed post.  “Random thoughts on ‘natural’ technique, embouchure study and sports analogies” addresses to some of the criticism that he’s gotten for engaging in that series of posts.  He raises some very good points about the approach that playing a brass instrument is not natural and that, in the proper context, analysis is not only useful, but essential.  If you read no other link on this post, I recommend this one.

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Multiphonics and Mood Indigo For Unaccompanied Trombone

~ wilktone ~ 6 Comments

At a recent concert I played, trombonist Wycliffe Gordon was the guest artist.  One of the arrangements we performed with him was his chart on Duke Ellington’s Mood Indigo.  In this chart there was a 4 bar solo for unaccompanied trombone to play using multiphonics.  Wycliffe used a few different multiphonic effects during the concert and is really good at doing them.

Multiphonics are special effects that trombonists (and other brass players) do by playing one pitch and singing another.  Several jazz trombonists have been known for using multiphonics, such as Dick Griffin, Albert Mangelsdorff, Bill Watrous, and Phil Wilson.  When the intervals are in tune and balanced correctly certain overtones will ring out and you can get three or more pitches sounding at once.

It reminded me of something I had worked up years ago to play the Mood Indigo as an unaccompanied solo piece.  Here is a recording of me playing it.

If you’d like to try this out for yourself, I finally also got around to notating it.  Click on this link to download a PDF copy of it: Mood Indigo

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Wycliffe Gordon Concert

~ wilktone ~ 4 Comments

I’m back from visiting Starkville, MS and playing with the Starkville Symphony Big Band.  Starkville is almost a 9 hour drive from where I live, but the trip was worth it to back up the great trombonist Wycliffe Gordon.

David Wilken, Richard Human, Wycliffe Gordon, Clifton Taylor, Jason Beghtol

Wycliffe was a consumate professional, amazing player, and all around great guy.  He sent his charts ahead of time, which was good as some of them were very challenging.  As I was practicing my parts (I helped split lead and second, mostly) I noted that several of the parts had solos to play (both written out and improvised).  I assumed that Wycliffe would be playing the solos in the performance, but went ahead and shed them for the practice anyway.  It was good that I did, as Wycliffe was very generous with solo space for the concert.  I got to play two fairly extended solos and traded on a couple more with the rest of the trombone section (from left to right, myself, Richard Human, Wycliffe Gordon, Clifton Taylor, and Jason Beghtol).

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