I’ve been revisiting Donald S. Reinhardt’s “Pivot System For Trombone,” frequently referred to by former Reinhardt students as “The Manual.” The book, now out of print, contains 11 different groups of exercises in the trombone book (9, I believe for trumpet, because Reinhardt added a couple of groups that deal with slide technique). One of the things that makes it difficult for someone just to pick up the book and work out of it is that Reinhardt intended his students to practice out of this book in very specific ways. Originally, the student was to play one group each day, moving on to the next group the next day until the student completed the entire book, then start from the beginning and repeat. After each day’s group, the student was to jump to the back of the book and practice his “Form Studies,” which are scale and chord arpeggio exercises with different articulation patterns.
My teacher, Doug Elliott, studied extensively with Reinhardt. Doug has mentioned to me a couple of times that by the time he was studying with Reinhardt that he had abandoned this specific approach to using this book and was assigning students particular groups according to what he felt they needed to work on. Reinhardt also had lots of other exercises that aren’t in “The Manuals” that he would use for a particular student, depending on what their strengths and weaknesses were.
Furthermore, much of the specific instructions in these books that Reinhardt assigned weren’t included in the text writeup in the book. For three of the daily groups, Reinhardt instructed his students to do something during rests that I have not come across in any other brass method.
During the rest in the second measure Reinhardt instructed students to not breathe and to not let up on the mouthpiece pressure in the slightest. “In short, stay like a Sphinx for 4 beats.” He was adamant that the student shouldn’t move the head, instrument, or anything at all. There are several sets of similar slurs starting on different pitches and going to different pitches all through the first three groups of “The Manual.”
Other brass pedagogues have come up with similar exercises where during the rests you keep the mouthpiece on the lips, with the embouchure firmed and the mouthpiece pressure consistent as with playing, and then breathe through the nose. Reinhardt had exercises where he instructed students to practice that way. What is unique about this particular instruction is that you don’t take in another breath and attack the pitch after the rest with only the air that is left from where you left off. He wrote, “During the rests d not breathe, or raise the mouthpiece pressure; this develops control of the breath.” (my emphasis)
The concern I always have when I both practice these exercises myself and when recommending them to others is that there is a strong possibility that during the rests you can stop the air by closing off the glottis and then have to open it again when beginning the pitch after the rest. Developing that habit would be very contrary to good brass playing and folks who do this usually struggle with initial attacks after a breath and you can sometimes hear them grunt just before playing. You have to consciously keep the glottis open and stop the pitch through the breathing muscles. I think this is probably what Reinhardt was thinking of when he wrote that this develops control of the breath.
Depending on how full a breath you take to start the exercise and how much air you’ve already expelled you may need to stop the air by either relaxing the muscles of expiration or even engaging the muscles of inspiration at a point of balance. Consider that when your lungs are full of air the air pressure alone should be sufficient to commence blowing. All you need to do is relax the muscles of inspiration and you begin to exhale. It’s not until you’ve exhaled enough air that the air pressure equalizes that the muscles of exhalation become more necessary (this is an overly simplistic explanation, since factors like the range and dynamic being played, as well as the average flow of the instrument you’re playing come into play). At these rest points you have to find a point of breathing balance and freeze there.
Coincidentally, I recently caught a lesson with Doug Elliott and we talked about this group of exercises. We both have noticed how hard it is to get folks to practice this exercise correctly. Perhaps the hardest thing for players to do is to keep the mouthpiece pressure and lip position frozen in place as if playing. You have to imagine that you’re still blowing and playing the pitch during the rests, the only difference is that you’re simply not blowing. Everything else in your body, including the embouchure formation and mouthpiece pressure, is exactly the same as if you were playing. It’s really easy for students to not do this correctly. If you watch yourself in a mirror, look to see if you’re relaxing the mouthpiece pressure or otherwise adjusting your embouchure formation during the rests. If you video record yourself, turn the sound off and see if you can tell when you’re resting. Ideally, you want it to be hard to tell.
Whatever the ultimate reason why Reinhardt instructed students with these exercises, I always find that after playing these groups for a day or so that I feel very strong. There’s something about these groups that really helps me build my chops up. It’s certainly possible that they would be just as effective with nose inhalations, and I would certain recommend that for a student who is struggling with keeping the glottis open. Perhaps in the future I’ll try some experimenting and practice them with nose inhalations to see if I notice any difference.
