Is there a “secret” to playing high notes on a brass instrument?

According to this video, it’s got something to do with the teeth and lips, but he’s not very clear on what he means. He talks about if you imagine the air passing over the tongue it hits the back of the teeth and then on the lips it forms a “thick” air stream. But we need a “thin” air stream to play high. He then demonstrates how he can place the mouthpiece in different (horizontal) placements that, I think he claims, naturally create a thin air stream for high notes.

But the key is his Mays Double-Aperture System (MDAS). This is used to unlock “High Note Air Jets” (HNAJ). He goes through a number of procedures to position the lower lip closer to the top teeth, position the top lip further away from the lower lip, curl the lower lip over the lower teeth, drag the lower lip so it’s in line with the edge of the lower teeth, direct the air up (with the jaw), experiment with horizontal mouthpiece placement (in order to find a place that “unlocks” air channels), experiment with vertical mouthpiece placement, and create “fast” air with “dry areas” of your lips.

Now I can see how some of this experimentation could lead to brass students finding a “sweet spot” on the lips that works best, but much of his description seems to be more his playing sensations or an analogy. This sort of experimentation done subjectively could just as easily screw a player up, in my opinion.

By the way, I would type his embouchure as a Medium High Placement type.

But there are a lot of more videos on YouTube that teach us the “secrets” to playing high. Let’s see what another says.

This video states that it’s tongue position. But he first describes that instead of going “up or down” on the center of the pitch we need to go “out deeper into the center of the instrument.” The lips, he says, are not the cause of the sound but rather just responding to everything else (most especially the oral cavity resonance). With the lip position what you want to do is think of the air column as a string. To go up an octave, you use the tongue position to “cut the air column in half.” He discusses a “half whistle,” which I like to describe as a pitched hissing instead.

Tongue position is an important part of the puzzle, and his idea of a “half whistle” is similar to something that I’ve been using in my own practice and teaching as well. But is it the “secret” to high notes for all players or does it depend on what the student is already doing and what direction they need to move towards? I think that in order for this concept to have such a dramatic effect the musician will need to have other things, like the embouchure and breathing, already pretty well in place.

By the way, my best guess for his embouchure type is the Very High Placement type.

In this video we learn a bit about how the brain is plastic and changes as we learn new motor skills, but it can adopt to incorrect technique as well as correct technique. So we need to practice correctly in order to reinforce efficient playing rather than incorrect playing.

Regarding the embouchure, he describes his as having an “open aperture.” The concept of an open or closed aperture to play a brass instrument is sometimes brought up, but people often use the terms differently and neither really describes what happens as a tone is being played. The aperture actually opens and closes throughout the playing. Regardless, he makes the connection between aperture size and dynamic (larger aperture for louder notes, smaller for softer) and range (smaller aperture for higher notes, larger for lower).

According to this teacher, we can create “compression” at three points in the playing apparatus; the lips, the tongue, and the glottis. Of the three, we don’t really want to do so at the glottis as that tends to cause playing issues. The tongue is used to create a resonance in the oral cavity to match the pitch being played, as described in the previous video. He briefly discusses a “modified yoga breathing,” which he describes as a process to breathe in first at the abdomen, then the intercostal muscles, and then then “claviculary” (at the clavicles). The goal of all of this is to remove excess tension, so I guess that’s the secret he’s talking about.

For descriptions and instructions on breathing I think I prefer to avoid the three-step process he advocates. I lean more towards how Arnold Jacobs would prefer to get the student taking a natural breath, using the sensation of moving air instead. Perhaps you could use those three regions as a guide for the teacher to use to see if the inhalation is working correctly, but Jacobs famously pointed out that you can imitate this body movements without moving the air correctly. It’s not the body moving that creates efficient and relaxed breathing, but rather efficient breathing that causes the body to move in the manner we associate as correct.

I can’t really guess his embouchure type from this video. Every time he plays the camera focuses on the bell of his trumpet and we can’t get a decent look at his embouchure. Probably one of the downstream types.

What’s the point of going through contrasting discussions on playing well in the upper register? Particularly since they cover some different things? Some players could definitely follow the advice of any of these videos (or the myriad of other videos purporting to offer the “secret”) and find something that clicks. But again, it really depends on what other playing factors are already in place and what needs adjustments.

With my personal interest in brass embouchure technique and pedagogy it’s very easy for me to break down the “secret” to opening up the upper register there. If I were to take it more personal, I might even advise all players to put as little upper lip inside the mouthpiece as possible and play upstream. But that particular adjustment that worked so well for me might be exactly opposite of what another player needs to do.

Ultimately the best way to open up the upper register is to get the coordination of all the different playing factors working together. It can be very helpful to isolate something in particular (tongue position, mouthpiece placement, breathing, etc.) because it can help us to both diagnose what needs changing and make the corrections. But these things must interact with the other playing factors in order for things to work efficiently.

I’ve discussed (quite a while ago) how I dislike it when brass teachers describe things as “secrets” to unlock your potential. It always seems that when that’s the rhetoric the advice is either pretty much already acknowledged as an important part of good playing mechanics or something really unusual that I wouldn’t advocate for. Most of the time I think well-intentioned teachers describe what clicked for them personally and then transfer its importance on to every student.

What do you think? Is there really a “secret” to good brass technique? Do you think that it’s OK to describe corrections as a “secret” and I’m being pedantic? Or do you agree with this pet peeve and think that brass teachers need to stop being so over-the-top in their sales technique? Is it just a way for these teachers to get clicks on their videos, drive traffic, and hawk their books and lessons? Let me know in the comments if I’m being a curmudgeon.