Personally I found the CG method helped me develop a fuller tone and encouraged good breathing habits (already in place from study of Caruso). I spent at least 18 months on CG. Diligently working on it. I had lessons with a CG players (not personal students of like John, but students of the method) and a lot of what they said and what I worked on helped - some - of my issues. These lessons were in person by the way.
Given there are 1000 ways to the top, and given I consider myself a fair player: I practice to a Eb + above double C daily and consider a B just below double C reliable enough on a gig, my reading is excellent when in practice (right now is a little lacking because I read easy music a lot), I transpose well when I shed that (rare enough in my work), my sound I am told is good but to my ear I can do nothing but shed sound because I am incredibly self conscious about my tone and I - to be frank - find I am pleased by my tone on an only bi-annual basis, I work hard to improve intonation and attacks.... I shed less than I would like, but the least I ever shed is 10 hrs a week, but somewhere between 15-30hrs shedding a week is more normal. I spend probably 1/4 of that on range, 1/2 on sound and note production and the remaining 1/4 on music. On weeks where I try to record something I tend to spend the majority on playing music and many hours can pass while tracking a project. This is when I am most happy. Until my chops burn out and my tuning starts to suffer. Anyway - this is a little personal information an apologetics to help me relate to you and soften the nature of my message.
The CG method helped me develop my sound, but it did nothing to promote the coordination I needed to play in the upper register. I learned to over blow and my upper register stagnated and diminished while I studied CG.
You see, there's so many people with their own issues. And for some CG will be the answer to open the upper register, especially if the player cannot generate enough "wind power", but that was not me. I needed to learn how to coordinate air, chops and tongue. I was over-doing the air, and everything else was getting broken because of that fact. Air power was NOT the answer for me. It was the PROBLEM.
I write this to potentially help people. Balance is the answer to the playing equation; too little air, you suck, too much, you suck!! It's a balancing act; you need air pressure (support) but you need nearly NO quantity.
In 2013 I took a lesson with Roger Ingram. He identified the problem in 5 minutes flat. I'd read all methods then. Roger, like a surgeon, nailed my issues. He NAILED them. I can't recommend his teaching highly enough. Bryan Davis and Chris LaBarbera since then have been wonderful in helping me further my knowledge.
Like I say: I consider myself "fair". But I made huge progress after the above. I had years of no progress... Then in Nov 2013 things turned around.
Hope this perspective can help some folks; I'm not saying CG is bad, I'm just offering an experience of CG. In the same way I freely say Bob Odneal's "Casual double high C" taught me a totally different chop set and set my development back 10 years. Hey - it wasn't his wish to do that, but it happened. I don't begrudge him; I learned a LOT figuring out how to fix my chops, but the reality is that it destroyed me for 10 years. CG was along my path to salvation..... I've read anything on chops.... I've taken a lot of lessons... I'm FINALLY making progress.
Kind regards, and respect to all you CG folks!
Reference: imperfect sound and tuning, to prove it is not faked
Joined: 14 Nov 2001 Posts: 2368 Location: SF Bay Area
Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2017 6:07 pm Post subject:
Grits Burgh wrote:
Quote:
Eric Bolvin posted:
Also, in my 6 years of lessons with Claude, we never began with pedals.
I'm so confused. I'm just a simple hacker trying to follow instructions.
On page 8 of Systematic Approach, it states the following:
"The pedal routine, therefore, is the first thing we play every day. There is no need to warm up or play preliminaries before."
Every lesson in the Claude Gordon Systematic Approach begins with pedal tones. I thought (perhaps quite incorrectly) that it was important to follow the lesson exactly as published.
So, does it matter what order you do the exercises? Does it make any sense to do the high register exercise before the pedal exercise? For that matter, does it make sense to do anything before the pedal exercise?
Warm regards,
Grits
And you should continue to follow them. However, if you feel the need to do a bit of a warm-up before Part 1, you won't be violating any sacred principle.
Joined: 13 Nov 2001 Posts: 9830 Location: Chicago, Illinois
Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2017 6:40 pm Post subject:
Concerning when to do the Systematic Approach Part One and Two exercises (that begin with the Pedal Note exercises), in later years, from the mid '70's onward Claude tended to put these routines toward the end of the daily routine, but not always.
Note that to this day, the first routines Arturo Sandoval does each day are basically Parts 1 and 2 of Lesson Two from Systematic Approach (the basic Maggio exercises).
In my experience as a player and a teacher, where I tend to place the Part One and Two exercises in the daily routine is according to the player's main goals. If someone is most interested in building range as quickly as possible, it makes sense to place the Systematic Approach material at the beginning of the practice day, when the student is fresh and will most likely be able to get up a bit higher in the Part Two section and therefore acclimate to the knack or feel of how to play those notes. If the player desires a more rounded type of development, and/or if the players day schedule precludes being able to rest a full hour toward the beginning of the day (after playing the Part Two exercises), then doing the Part One and Two sections as the very end of the practice routine each day makes sense.
One other thing: Concerning query from someone about the "blow stronger as you go up and back off as you go down", and "never get below half empty" concepts, these subjects are explained in full, easy to understand detail in Claude's book Brass Playing Is No Harder Than Deep Breathing. The idea of blowing strong on high notes and easier on lower notes is to get the feel of how to let the air do the work and not pinch off the sound straining to get high notes. At first one will be playing louder on the high notes and softer on the low notes. With time, one learns to control things, so even though one is blowing harder on high notes, one can do so with control and play high notes softly. Trying to play high notes real soft at first usually leads to pinching off the sound.
Concerning "never get below half empty", we have the most power available when our lungs are full - and playing any given note at any given volume requires less effort when our lungs are full. Therefore we can significantly increase our endurance and too some extent our range just by getting in the habit of always taking a full breath and staying at least half full (except for when practicing the Part One sections in Systematic Approach, or when musicality occasionally requires that a long phrase be played with one breath).
Hope this all clears everything up.
Cheers,
John Mohan
Skype Lessons Available - Click on the e-mail button below if interested _________________ Trumpet Player, Clinician & Teacher
1st Trpt for Cats, Phantom of the Opera, West Side Story, Evita, Hunchback of Notre Dame,
Grease, The Producers, Addams Family, In the Heights, etc.
Ex LA Studio Musician
16 Year Claude Gordon Student
Joined: 04 Oct 2015 Posts: 805 Location: South Carolina
Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2017 7:13 pm Post subject:
Mike, Eric, John, Thanks to all of you for your very generous assistance.
Mike, I get what you are saying. Different individuals can have different issues. By the way, I enjoy the audio and video clips you post. The 12 tone Christmas one in particular I thought was very clever and very well done. I totally lost it when I read the annotation on the score "the flugels had been drinking."
Eric and John, you have both helped me quite a bit. If I get to your neck of the woods, lunch is on me.
John, you have confirmed something that I was thinking. I don't move on from one lesson to another until I more or less master the one on which I am working. Lately, it is the Clark exercises that are the ones taking the most time to master so I have begun to do them first to ensure that I get to them that day and also so I can practice them longer. Playing above high C is not really all the important to me.
Though playing in the upper register is not my style of playing, I keep working on the high notes because, well, I am the kind of guy whom Mike poked fun at in the end of his Christmas music with all of the screaming trumpets. Basically, the kid in me enjoys screaming on a trumpet even if it is in a very unmusical way. Hey, I just do it out back on my deck, playing to the squirrels, raccoons, foxes and deer and as near as I can tell, I am doing harm to neither man nor beast (the deer actually come to feed in my back yard while I practice the trumpet - I practice daily so I guess they just kind of got used to it).
Warm regards,
Grits _________________ Bach Stradivarius 37 (1971)
Schilke HC 1
Getzen 3810 C Cornet
King Master Bb Cornet (1945)
B&S 3145 Challenger I Series Flugelhorn
Life is short; buy every horn you want and die happy.
Hey, I just do it out back on my deck, playing to the squirrels, raccoons, foxes and deer and as near as I can tell, I am doing harm to neither man nor beast (the deer actually come to feed in my back yard while I practice the trumpet - I practice daily so I guess they just kind of got used to it).
Joined: 13 Nov 2001 Posts: 9830 Location: Chicago, Illinois
Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2017 9:17 am Post subject:
thehedge wrote:
Grits Burgh wrote:
Hey, I just do it out back on my deck, playing to the squirrels, raccoons, foxes and deer and as near as I can tell, I am doing harm to neither man nor beast (the deer actually come to feed in my back yard while I practice the trumpet - I practice daily so I guess they just kind of got used to it).
Mike, I get what you are saying. Different individuals can have different issues. By the way, I enjoy the audio and video clips you post. The 12 tone Christmas one in particular I thought was very clever and very well done. I totally lost it when I read the annotation on the score "the flugels had been drinking."
Thanks for the kind words! I'm glad you saw that... I recorded it and shifted those parts out of time to make it sound more uneven!!
Yeah you understand where I am at and why I posted.
Kind regards!
Mike _________________ Maestro Arturo Sandoval on Barkley Microphones!
https://youtu.be/iLVMRvw5RRk
Based on my discussions with John Mohan it appears that Claude was like other great teachers. Although he had a order that lesson typically followed, he would change it based on the needs of the individual.
I am sure that John Mohan, Jeff Purtle, Matt Graves, and Eric Bolvin would be able to shed more light in that area.
In 2013 I took a lesson with Roger Ingram. He identified the problem in 5 minutes flat. I'd read all methods then. Roger, like a surgeon, nailed my issues. He NAILED them. I can't recommend his teaching highly enough. Bryan Davis and Chris LaBarbera since then have been wonderful in helping me further my knowledge.
Like I say: I consider myself "fair". But I made huge progress after the above. I had years of no progress... Then in Nov 2013 things turned around.
Hope this perspective can help some folks; I'm not saying CG is bad, I'm just offering an experience of CG. In the same way I freely say Bob Odneal's "Casual double high C" taught me a totally different chop set and set my development back 10 years. Hey - it wasn't his wish to do that, but it happened. I don't begrudge him; I learned a LOT figuring out how to fix my chops, but the reality is that it destroyed me for 10 years. CG was along my path to salvation..... I've read anything on chops.... I've taken a lot of lessons... I'm FINALLY making progress.
Kind regards, and respect to all you CG folks!
Reference: imperfect sound and tuning, to prove it is not faked
Joined: 04 Oct 2015 Posts: 805 Location: South Carolina
Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2017 6:59 am Post subject:
To update my progress, I finally got lesson 8 down sufficiently enough that I thought it time to begin lesson 9. Yesterday, I looked it over and was a little intimidated. My the actual thought was, "THIS IS NUTS; YOU CAN'T PLAY THIS STUFF." I really didn't think that I would be able play exercise 2; I mean, 5 double high C's in succession?
Well, I began struggling when I got to the Ab above high C and dispaired that I would have to go back to previous lessons to work up to this lesson . However, to my utter amazement, I was able to play the exercise. Also, I was happily surprised to discover that the corresponding Clarke exercise was easier than I had anticipated. The time spend on Clarke lesson 5 greatly facilitated mastering the fingering for Clarke lesson 6. Hopefully, it won't take me as long to master SADP lesson 9 as it did lesson 8.
I learned something useful. Getting through SADP in a year is (at least for me) a pipe dream. It isn't going to happen. However, that's okay. My tone, endurance, range, dexterity and flexibility are all improving. You don't have to finish the course to experience benefits. Good things happen all along the way. Knowing this helps me fight my impatience.
Which brings me to another insight:
I stumbled on a technique for mastering difficult fingering and scales in the quickest manner - do it exactly as your teachers have been telling you (sometimes we just have to learn the hard way). Put your metronome on a sufficiently slow setting that you can play the scale perfectly. Then, one click at a time, increase the speed until you make a mistake. Then, back off a click or two until you can play it perfectly again. Play it a few times correctly and then quit that scale for the day. The next day, repeat. Gradually (unfortunately) your speed will improve. If you practice at a speed even slightly too fast so that you make mistakes, you actually loose ground. Impatience is your enemy. Had I followed this routine from the beginning, I would have mastered lesson 8 a lot quicker than I did.
Yesterday, was the first time I had tried to sight read through lesson 6 in Clarke's Technical Studies. I had to start out at less than 50 beats per measure. I worked on the lesson for about 90 minutes, doing a lot of fingering without playing, and by the end of the lesson I was able to play all of the exercises at about 72 beats per minute. It tries your patience to play so slowly, but haste definitely makes waste.
Regards,
Grits _________________ Bach Stradivarius 37 (1971)
Schilke HC 1
Getzen 3810 C Cornet
King Master Bb Cornet (1945)
B&S 3145 Challenger I Series Flugelhorn
Life is short; buy every horn you want and die happy.
Joined: 20 Apr 2016 Posts: 1063 Location: New Glasgow, Nova Scotia
Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2017 7:06 am Post subject:
John Mohan wrote:
Well I most certainly care! A lot!!!
Glad to hear about your progress. Stick with it!
Cheers,
John Mohan
Same here. Congratulations ! _________________ GeorgeB
1960s King Super 20 Silversonic
2016 Manchester Brass Custom
1938-39 Olds Recording
1942 Buescher 400 Bb trumpet
1952 Selmer Paris 21 B
1999 Conn Vintage One B flat trumpet
2020 Getzen 490 Bb
1962 Conn Victor 5A cornet
Joined: 14 Nov 2001 Posts: 2368 Location: SF Bay Area
Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2017 8:27 am Post subject:
Grits Burgh wrote:
To update my progress, I finally got lesson 8 down sufficiently enough that I thought it time to begin lesson 9. Yesterday, I looked it over and was a little intimidated. My the actual thought was, "THIS IS NUTS; YOU CAN'T PLAY THIS STUFF." I really didn't think that I would be able play exercise 2; I mean, 5 double high C's in succession?
Regards,
Grits
You're only supposed to go as far as you can. No one gets the dubba C at first and most don't get it at all. If they did, they wouldn't need the book.
Joined: 04 Oct 2015 Posts: 805 Location: South Carolina
Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2017 9:15 am Post subject:
Quote:
EBjazz posted:
You're only supposed to go as far as you can. No one gets the dubba C at first and most don't get it at all. If they did, they wouldn't need the book.
Oh. NOW you tell me.
Seriously, when you just look at the book, you get the impression that, "oh, just play these exercises and in a week or two you will be popping out double high C's." Well, I started on the SADP less than 2 years ago, but have only begun to practice seriously since the end of last October, really November. Amazingly, in that period of time, I have been able to complete the exercises including the double high C. I can't always do it and I never sound like Wayne, but that I am occasionally able to do it at all amazes me. It is a real motivator.
But so is being able to play a scale exercise in Clarke at 144 beats per minute.
For me, playing a double high C is not the primary benefit of SADP. Rather, it is the improvement in tone, dexterity, and the ability to play G above the staff to high C without a strain in tone. SADP is a comprehensive curriculum. It is a systematic way to improve all aspects of your playing. But yeah, playing high notes is nice side benefit.
It was only a couple of months ago that I read on TH about anchor tonguing. I am convinced that is the secret to improving, but I have a long way to go. Really, my tonguing is pretty bad. In fact, it stinks. To me, personally, tonguing is more important than notes above high C.
Warm regards,
Grits _________________ Bach Stradivarius 37 (1971)
Schilke HC 1
Getzen 3810 C Cornet
King Master Bb Cornet (1945)
B&S 3145 Challenger I Series Flugelhorn
Life is short; buy every horn you want and die happy.
Thought you guys in this board might think this was cool...
From the giant estate sale i bought this weekend... Besides the horns, I got all the sheet music. (two pickup truck loads!)
Joined: 04 Oct 2015 Posts: 805 Location: South Carolina
Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2017 3:08 pm Post subject:
Yeah, pretty cool all right.
Regards,
Grits _________________ Bach Stradivarius 37 (1971)
Schilke HC 1
Getzen 3810 C Cornet
King Master Bb Cornet (1945)
B&S 3145 Challenger I Series Flugelhorn
Life is short; buy every horn you want and die happy.
Joined: 13 Nov 2001 Posts: 9830 Location: Chicago, Illinois
Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2017 9:42 am Post subject:
jiarby wrote:
Mine now!
It came from the estate of Dwight Hall, from San Mateo.
Notes in the book look like he was there in early 1971
Wow, what a find! What instruments did you procure?
I just checked Jeff Purtle's list of CG students, and while no Dwight Hall is listed, there is a Bill Hall on the list. I wonder if they were brothers, or perhaps a middle name is being used.
It's almost eerie to see that close-up of Claude's writing in the Clarke Second Study. For a second I though, "How'd my Clarke book get posted on the Internet?!"
Also kind of strange to start to see Claude's students beginning to pass away. We've really got to do as Clarke and then Claude admonished us to do. Herbert L. Clarke told Claude Gordon, "Claudie, you've got to take this farther than I did." Claude told me (and also my CG student colleagues), "Don't stop where I left off - keep it going." I've been doing that, but not enough. That's going to be changing, starting this summer.
Best wishes,
John Mohan
Skype Lessons Available - Click on the e-mail button below if interested _________________ Trumpet Player, Clinician & Teacher
1st Trpt for Cats, Phantom of the Opera, West Side Story, Evita, Hunchback of Notre Dame,
Grease, The Producers, Addams Family, In the Heights, etc.
Ex LA Studio Musician
16 Year Claude Gordon Student
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