extreme hesitation on initial attack

[abontrumpet]

Definitely liked Hickman's response, I would add one thing in the same vein:

Make sure you are taking a full breath...the air will desire to escape more than in a shallow breath.

[thesplitmeister]

When I was at college there was a fellow student who had identical problems to yourself. Sadly they never fixed it but it has caused me to look into the matter and develope my own theories. After an embachoure change you turn a process which has always been natural into one where you have to think about mouthpiece placement or angle, therefore adding another process into the mix. This stops it for being natural and can seemingly cause the process to crash altogether. The obvious and easy solution would be to look into Caruso exercises and teachings. Once the mouthpiece is placed you don't move it again taking this out of the process, with a breath attack you don't have to worry about tongue movement and with the foot tapping you are distracting the muscles in the body away from your chops. In short you are simplifying the entire process to either ease the diagnosis or to solve it simply by doing.
I hope this helps.
Jim

[JUD]

I still suffer from this problem. More notably the valsalva manouver. The tongue gets in the way. The caruso has helped and could help you. From a personal perspective it all stemmed from playing lead trpt on ships and relying on compressing the air before playing, then it creeped into my overall playing to this day.

I have found that playing just the leadpipe helps as it eliminates the 'oh god I hope the note is going to come out properly'.

All the best in your endeavours.FWIW your not alone.

Cheers mate,

Jud

[connltd]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vmHBpyAIgc

[JobyMF]

breath attacks exercises (soft volume breath attacks along with sustaining the tone helps!)

[JohnO]

Rather than start a new topic, I wanted to revive this one as I am similarly afflicted. No one has really brought the tongue into the discussion. My mechanics are that I use Clarke's K tongue modified to articulate, not the tip of my tongue. When I inhale I d so with a really open throats as if about to jump under water. This draws my tongue back and down. So on the exhale the tongue has got to shoot forward at the proper level and then pull right back after the attack.
Is this correct as it seems that's a lot going on?
When I leave my tongue forward on the inhale so that it can release Ike a valve, I often have too much tongue forward. The extreme has been like a person who stutters. I've watched a friend who does stutter when he really is stuck, and I see he's got a lot of tongue showing probably with pressure behind it. That can't be the way to achieve a clean attack.
So, where should the tongue be during inhalation and this first note attack?
Thanks.

[Andy Del]

You tongue should be where it allows you to inhale (anywhere) and where it needs to be so you can effectively articulate the first note, just like every succeeding note.

I would suspect you are overthinking this by a country mile. Stop the analysis, and work on some very basic skills: the Schuebruk exercises for basic attack are great for this. Trumpet to lips, inhale, tongue 1 note, remove trumpet, and repeat.

cheers

Andy
_________________
so many horns, so few good notes...

[JohnO]

Just ordered it - will give it a good effort.
If that sequence is in fact the case where the horn goes to lips first, then you either have to inhale from corners or through nose. That will change things for me as I take a nice gulp through a relaxed open mouth and finish it through the nose as my lips come together. I will give it a solid effort. You weren't the first to mention Schuebruk in this topic.
Thank you for your help.

[musk6868]

Mr.Hickman's diagnosis is dead-on. I had the same problem, also like you, right after an embouchure shift. I would have to "conduct" myself in any time I needed to play by myself. Breath attacks were the only thing I could get going, so it seemed the major issue was with the tongue. Some leadpipe work made it much easier to just "let it go" so that turned out to be a good way to begin to free myself. Ultimately, just like was said it went away just as abruptly as it came on. Just stick with it, focusing as always on the sound you want to create instead of the mechanics of the latest thing that is giving you headaches regarding your trumpet playing!

[Bflatman]

I agree but wish to get to a root.

Fear

A major change leads to uncertainty and unfamiliarity compounds this. Mr Hickman was on the nail and what he said is important, the body is trying to cope with unfamiliarity.

The other contributions focus on relaxation and building good habits and taking thinking out of the equasion, all of these approaches deal with fear and its effects in different ways and are all good.

Fear leads to tension tension leads to failure failure leads to fear

Build good habits, try to stop being concerned about failure relax breathe out tension, practice good attacks, so many good things have been said.

When you are more familiar with your new setup than your old the problem can go away, but if you havent dealt with the fear it may linger.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

[MelBEN Trumpeter]

Your description of this issue is the closest to my experience I have read thus far.

I am a full-time military musician with a ‘Jazz’ background. I’ve never had the strongest range or endurance, and as so many do, a few years ago I tried to overhaul my equipment to help me meet the demands of the job. This in turn (as far as I can recall) brought on the ‘fear of first note’ as I have heard it called before, to which I am yet to find a proper cure.

My Symptoms include extreme hesitation, mainly when playing solo in the practise room or without band accompaniment, when the band is chugging along I don’t seem to notice it most of the time, however in slower tempos and more exposed sections it tends to rear its ugly head. I have no issues breath attacking, and once my lips have sounded a note I’m all good, but tonguing a note from nothing is traumatic at best. I miss been able to just softly tongue a note from scratch. In most cases, I go to play, I know exactly what to do, but my body just freezes, and I either hesitate for a good time, or over-attack, or make a strained lip sound before I actually connect with the first note.

One way I ‘cope’ with it for example is when I play the last post bugle call for high pressure commitments (as I very often am required to do) I will breath attack the first note, which is not ideal. Other bugle calls I have to set up a tempo in my head and count myself in, but this is not fool proof.

Basically, the worst advice I’ve heard time and time again (whilst I understand people want to help) is that “You’re just overthinking it” or “Just don’t worry about what comes out”. This is not because they are wrong, but because any person suffering anxiety related issues like this already know that, and reiterating it isn’t helpful, and often counter-productive.

I am hoping to see methods/exercises that people have found helpful, and I mean proper exercises, not ‘just don’t think about it and it will go away’ sort of stuff. Most people I have spoken to suggest they learned to deal with it rather than fixed it, I hope this is not the only solution. I have good days and bad days but it’s always there.

Feel free to PM me if anyone has any advice, and if I find an answer I’ll be in touch.

[dstdenis]

[trickg]

I was looking at this just tonight - David Vining has overcome focal dystonia. He's written about his journey through it to the other side to where he could play well again.

Check it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HsF-K5Qei0&t=461s
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