First, credit where credit is due. Harrisson Ball does play trumpet well and he does have a strong upper register. Therefore, it’s fair to take his advice on playing in the upper register seriously.

YouTube’s algorithm often suggests brass instruction videos to me and I guess when I look a bit at one to see what it’s about I end up getting a lot of videos from that content creator on my feed for a while. Harrisson Ball’s videos have been showing up a lot for me lately, so I watched this one carefully and will offer my comments and criticisms so you don’t have to spend 23 minutes watching it.

First, he acknowledges that he’s making this video because “it’s good for business.” If what Ball advises resonates with you then you can consider taking it to the next level and signing up for his email list or taking lessons. However, caveat emptor. More about this later.

He starts his video discussing how air should function in the upper register. He states, “more air does not equal high notes.” This is absolutely correct. A lot of players will misunderstand air “support” for “more” air with the upper register and they end up overblowing. Playing in the upper register actually requires less air than an equivalent dynamic down an octave or two, but it does require some additional air support. Ball’s aerosol spray can analogy is a good one. His advice to help a student work on breathing for the upper register here is to use a hot water bottle.

I’ve used away-from-the-horn exercises for some time now, but not all are created equal. In this case, I can see how blowing up a hot water bottle the way Ball demonstrates can help a player learn the feeling of support for the upper register, but I suspect it’s more of an overtraining exercise than “the same amount of energy” to get from high G to double C. I don’t have a hot water bottle, so I’m not able to try this out on my own right now, but they’re not very expensive so it might be worth a shot for someone who wants to try it out. If you do, let us know in the comments how well it works for you.

At 3:21 into the video Ball comes so close to offering a good description of functioning brass embouchures, and then drops the ball (pardon the pun). If you’ve read enough of my blog you understand already how air stream direction works on a brass embouchure and why it’s important. Ball says it’s important because “If you don’t know where the air stream is you don’t know where to put the vibrating surface.” He then proceeds to demonstrate how to determine where the air stream is going by simply hissing with open lips and finding where the air goes. That’s not remotely how air stream direction works when playing a brass instrument and it absolutely doesn’t tell a brass musician whether or not they should be an upstream or downstream player.

Ball then demonstrates the pencil trick exercise wrong. Or at least in a way that I don’t think is useful. Ball wants students to bite down on the pencil, form your lips around it in something like a buzzing position, and then blow air around the pencil. “Congratulations,” Ball says, “you’ve just discovered your first isometric exercise where you can work on the musculature driving a car…” No! Do not put a pencil in your mouth and drive! Not only will it distract your attention from your driving, but if you get into even a mild fender bender and the air bag goes off in your face you’re risking a serious injury. And since Ball’s pencil exercise doesn’t really work as well as the traditional pencil trick exercise, I would advise you to skip his version.

By the way, I don’t really use the traditional pencil trick exercise all to much any more either, for what it’s worth. I think there are better ways to work on developing the strength, control, and feel for where to put the muscular effort.

At 5:03 Ball tells us he’s going to show us “the biggest mistake trumpet players do on the internet.” To demonstrate this he first rolls his lips in, sets the “mouthpiece” (in his video he’s using scissor handles as a mouthpiece rim visualizer), and then purses his lips forward. I agree, this isn’t a good embouchure formation. Then we get to see a “cross section” of the “vibrating surface” in this graphic.

Huh? That’s a mouthpiece cross section. There’s nothing in that image that would be vibrating.

Now that Ball has told us what the “biggest mistake” is, he advises us to follow the Maynard Ferguson Protocol. Follow that link to see the video demonstration by Lynn Nicholson of what the MF Protocol supposedly is, but here are a couple of screen shots. First, what Nicholson calls a “conventional embouchure.”

And an “unfurled embouchure.”

First, I wouldn’t describe the later image as “unfurled,” I think that it’s putting the embouchure effort more at the corners, rather than clamping the lip center. In this case I think the wording is important because it can lead to someone doing something wrong and potentially damaging. Ball misunderstands and shows us the vibrating surface of his lip here.

OK, so the inner membrane of the lips will vibrate too, but I strongly discourage you from following this advice. Ball even comments on the scar tissue he’s developed here, so that’s one strike against it. Scar tissue doesn’t vibrate well. Nor should you be developing scars from playing a brass instrument, if you’re playing correctly. The outer area of the lip vermillion tolerates pressure just fine, however the inner membrane (oral mucosa) is much more prone to damage due to pressure.

Here’s Ball’s “unfurled” embouchure formation.

Compare that to Nicholson’s demonstration of the same “unfurled” embouchure formation. While I do allow for individual variations due to a player’s anatomy, this is different from what Nicholson was describing. Watch Ball’s demonstration when he goes to set the rim on the unfurled lips and notice how much micro adjusting he has to do before he gets it into position. When he goes to demonstrate the wrong way to play the instrument at 9:53 he tells us “most people” will just be blowing air and not actually playing a tone. Again, huh? Most people when they play the trumpet actually play the trumpet, they don’t just blow air. Even beginners sound better than this. He’s just pinning his lips open with the mouthpiece rim on purpose.

Ball also gives us a math equation to help out. We need “energy in ≥ energy out by at least 5%. Write that down.” That’s it, no discussion on where he gets that number and what it means for a player, it’s just there. While I don’t know for sure that Ball figured this out for real, I suspect that it’s just an equation he made up to bolster his claims and make them seem more scientific.

At 13:39 Ball again gets so close to giving good advice. Ball demonstrates that when he moves the bell up or down the pitch will shift higher or lower. I actually use this test all the time with students, not just up and down but also left and right (in Ball’s defense, he very briefly demonstrates circling the angle around in a way that’s closer to how I use this at 16:40). The angle change that happens is a result of maintaining the stable surface of the teeth/gums underneath the lips/teeth as we push and pull the mouthpiece upward and downward to change registers. Think of it sort of like a ball and socket joint. Ball just mentions this important part of our embouchure technique in passing and doesn’t point out that in this area what works for one player can be exactly opposite for another player. It seems that on this particular topic he has come across enough knowledge to be almost correct. The embouchure motion is what causes the different surface underneath he lips/rim resulting in the correct horn angle change for the particular player. It’s a package deal and I believe they should be discussed together.

Following the too short discussion on horn angle Ball mentions excessive mouthpiece pressure, then on to Bobby Shew’s wedge breath technique. Watch Ball’s demonstration of what this looks like on the trumpet at 15:02 and notice the hesitation between his inhalation and when he starts blowing. While that’s something that I sometimes struggle with too in the upper register, it’s something to avoid and the wedge breath technique seems to encourage that moment of bottling up the air just before the exhalation. Wedge breathing may be a good thing to try out, but be careful to not bottle up the air like this.

At 18:02 Ball again comes so close to giving accurate information and then fails. He states, “Remember, you have the option of being downstream, upstream, type one, type two. You can have both lips active, singular lip active, or both.” First, he doesn’t define what he means by “type one” or “type two,” but I’m guessing he thinks of one as being downstream and the other upstream. That’s fine, I prefer to not discuss that phenomenon that way but as long as you’re communicating clearly it’s not a big deal. But to describe it as an “option” is wrong. Your anatomy dictates which embouchure type will ultimately work best for you, it’s not an option you can choose. Furthermore, both lips do vibrate regardless of air stream direction. It’s true that the lip that is more prominent inside the mouthpiece vibrates with more intensity and the other lip serves somewhat as a more stable surface to vibrate against. But to describe this as one lip vibrating or both is not a good description of what actually happens.

Ball advises us to put the bulk of the mouthpiece pressure (60-65%) on the “non-vibrating” lip. The upper lip is thinner than the lower lip and is less able to tolerate mouthpiece pressure than the lower lip. I recommend that all players, regardless of embouchure type, put a little more weight on the lower lip.

His discussion of how to hold the instrument is fine, although I think there’s plenty of room for individual variations here. For example, I might advise one student to take their right pinky out of the ring if they are using it to pull back, but in general the right hand on the trumpet shouldn’t be used to hold the instrument anyway, it’s the left hand grip that is the “guardian” of the embouchure. The trumpet player’s left hand grip can be personal and depend on the size of the player’s hands and other factors. As long as the left hand grip is consistent and allows the musician to smoothly create the embouchure motion and accompanying horn angle changes I don’t think any one left hand grip is “best.”

“People overcomplicate the trumpet,” Ball says at 20:58. Playing any musical instrument is complicated. As he points out a few times in his video here, there are a number of things that need to coordinate together for efficient playing. The solution isn’t to pretend it isn’t complicated, it’s to break down those playing factors in manageable chunks and address them one at a time. Ball breaks it down in this video to supple lips and compressed air. He again then throws a number out of nowhere, this will fix “90%” of your trumpet playing. Again, I believe he’s making up a statistic to give his video the veneer of science without having to actually go through the hard work to collect data and actually do the math.

Before he wraps up Ball encourages us to go to the link in his video description (go to YouTube to grab it, if you want) for a free masterclass. I didn’t sign up, you need to give him your email address, but I did find a PDF on one of those horrid sharing web sites that steals people’s copyrighted content (I won’t link to it). Assuming that this is his free masterclass, it looks like a corporate motivational slide show with no actual exercises or discussion on how to play trumpet, followed by some practice logs, ending with a link where you can go to get a “free strategy session” (what’s a strategy session, is it like a free lesson?), where I assume he will try to sell you books, videos, and lessons.

Ball started his video by saying that giving away his system for upper register playing is “good for business,” and I’m going to end this post by looking beyond his videos and seeing what other folks have to say after signing up for his free “masterclass.” In that Reddit thread a trumpet player commented that after sending Ball his email for the free PDF he decided to not contact him for a “strategy session.” Afterwards he got the following email from Ball:

Quick Question….. Hey [Name Redacted], A few days ago, you signed up and watched my free training on 3 Ways to Improve Your Trumpet Playing—helping you play beautifully with less effort and maximize your practice time. During the session, I introduced an exclusive program for trumpet players, where many have already achieved remarkable results, including greater range, improved ease, and consistent performance—all while being part of a supportive community. But you didn’t book a chat… I’d really love to know why you didn’t book a time to speak with us. It will help me improve my messaging in the future. Feel free to adjust any part to better match your style! If you take a moment to fill out this [survey link] on your reasons for not moving forward, it would really help me out. Everything is anonymous so you can be as honest as you like. I’m also going to throw in a free training worth $100 for your time. I have sold this exact training for $100 in the past and people have told me it was the best $100 they ever spent and I am going to give it to you for FREE!!! After you submit the answers, you will be able to access the $100 training for free anonymously.   You can fill out the [survey link].

Thanks for reading my emails,

Your biggest fan, Harrisson

Another reviewer on the Reddit thread said that he didn’t even remember signing up for Ball’s PDF and got a phone call from Ball giving him a hard sell for purchasing his course. Another similarly got a call from a telemarketer. There is a video review from a younger trumpet player that is quite glowing about studying from Ball, so perhaps once you commit to his lessons he is a good teacher. However, it’s hard to find any positive reviews of his lessons that aren’t posted by Ball himself. If you’re curious, watch that video review and notice how she constantly looks over to her left as she talks, reading the prompts that she’s supposed to say. There’s nothing wrong with writing a script if you’re making a video, but her script doesn’t ring true to me. “He’s always checking up on every single one of his members,” she says. That sounds like something Ball told her to say.

I’ve watched a number of other videos Ball has posted on his YouTube channel and they are all about the same. There’s some solid advice (nothing really unique), but there’s also some advice I would advise against. Plenty of times he describes brass technique and starts off with something that sounds so good, but then he veers off and demonstrates that he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about in certain areas.

Again, Harrisson Ball does appear to be an accomplished trumpet player and he seems to be working in L.A. His success as a teacher, on the other hands, seems to be more due to his marketing and abilities at cranking out social media content rather than solid pedagogy. Then again, maybe I’m wrong and I’m just the pot calling the kettle black. Let me know in the comments if you’ve studied from Ball and give us your honest review.