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Graysen Winters New Member
Joined: 08 Feb 2019 Posts: 10 Location: Lake Jackson, Texas
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Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 1:07 pm Post subject: Favorite tone development book? |
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Just looking to improve my tone a little bit. Any suggestions? Thanks |
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Richard III Heavyweight Member
Joined: 22 May 2007 Posts: 2654 Location: Anacortes, WA
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Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 1:23 pm Post subject: |
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Listen a lot to a player you really like and play like that. Seriously. If your question was a real desire to improve your tone, you have to listen, really listen and hear what is happening. Both with them and with you. _________________ Richard
King 1130 Flugabone
King 12C mouthpiece |
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kehaulani Heavyweight Member
Joined: 23 Mar 2003 Posts: 9007 Location: Hawai`i - Texas
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Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 1:29 pm Post subject: |
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Concone Studies
Chicowitz Flow Studies _________________ "If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." Bird
Yamaha 8310Z Bobby Shew trumpet
Benge 3X Trumpet
Benge 3X Cornet
Adams F-1 Flghn |
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Didymus Veteran Member
Joined: 19 Dec 2017 Posts: 306 Location: Minneapolis, MN
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Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 3:12 pm Post subject: Good Advice, One Lingering Question |
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I will not question the advice given, that an important part to developing a good tone is to listen to trumpeters/cornetists who have exactly that. When I was younger, it greatly helped me to listen more to professionals like Wallace Roney and Hakan Hardenberger and less to the high-note hero peer sitting a few chairs away from me in band.
It also helped to take lessons and have a professional musician playing right in front of me for an hour a week, showing me in real time how it is done.
A lingering question remains. Have pedagogues found an efficient way to guide a student once the student has found a model to emulate? Or are the physical factors involved still considered too complicated or mysterious to give any guidance beyond, "Try to sound like what you are hearing."
For example, years ago I noticed that Charles Colin sold a method titled, "How To Develop Your Sound". I never had the opportunity to browse it, much more buy it and use it the first time I tried to do the comeback trumpet player thing. However, it makes sense to assume that it went beyond simply giving student-level players a list of musicians to listen to.
Perhaps that is a part of the question OP had in mind: Once you find the sound you want to emulate, what's the best way to go about emulating it?
Has someone written an outline or systematic guide to achieving the goal once it's in the mind? If the student's teacher doesn't have a clear answer, is there someone out there who does? _________________ Enjoy the journey. |
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JayKosta Heavyweight Member
Joined: 24 Dec 2018 Posts: 3298 Location: Endwell NY USA
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Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 3:47 pm Post subject: |
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kehaulani wrote: | Concone Studies
Chicowitz Flow Studies |
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I use the Concone 'Legato' and 'Lyrical' studies. The legato is primarily for french horn, but many can also be played on trumpet (french horn low range goes lower). The lyrical ones are all fine on trumpet.
A key 'performance' consideration with the lyrical ones is that even tho some seem very simple, really strive to make them musical so they 'sound good' - yes it can be done! Don't just 'play the notes' - make phrases that connect together into something enjoyable to hear.
Both can be found downloadable online (pirated copies?), and orderable from various sources.
In any case, you first have develop the ability to easily 'play the notes' without undo concentration or effort. After you 'have all the notes', you can work on tone, phrasing, dynamics, lyricism, etc.
Jay
Jay _________________ Most Important Note ? - the next one !
KNOW (see) what the next note is BEFORE you have to play it.
PLAY the next note 'on time' and 'in rhythm'.
Oh ya, watch the conductor - they set what is 'on time'. |
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JoseLindE4 Heavyweight Member
Joined: 18 Apr 2003 Posts: 791
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Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 5:03 pm Post subject: Re: Good Advice, One Lingering Question |
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Didymus wrote: | A lingering question remains. Have pedagogues found an efficient way to guide a student once the student has found a model to emulate? Or are the physical factors involved still considered too complicated or mysterious to give any guidance beyond, "Try to sound like what you are hearing." |
I don't think it's necessarily a question of being too complicated or mysterious but rather emulating can be the most efficient way of achieving the goal. There obviously can be other issues that can introduce unwanted tension into the system that might be addressed more directly, but the mind's ability to lead the body to the desired result is pretty astounding. Think of it as the way artificial intelligence learns based on rules and lots of repeated trial and error. It can be incredibly efficient.
To the OP's question:
Imagination
1. Listen to great trumpet players until you can reproduce their sound loudly, vividly, and at will in your imagination. This will take you a lifetime.
2. Listen to great singers until you can do the same. This will also stop when you pass on.
3. Listen to great instrumentalists until you can do the same. Your mind's ear is the most powerful tool you have.
4. Read Bruce Adolphe's The Mind's Ear and practice the exercises. Your imagination is key.
Awareness
5. Practice things which allow you to really listen to yourself: flow studies, long tones, lyrical studies. Spend some time just listening for the harmonics in the sound. You should be able to pick out the octave above your note, the fifth above that, the next octave, the third, and so on. Look up the harmonic series if you're unclear. You should observe each of these harmonics and learn how to bring them out to color your sound. Think of it like balancing an ensemble.
6. Record yourself regularly. Play, record, listen back, adjust, play again...
Wind
7. Eliminate unwanted tension from the breath. The Jacobs breathing exercises are a nice way to learn how your body breathes well. Jacobs taught to imagine breathing in and out from the lips. Breathing exercises work best when the goal is observation rather than building some unknown breathing muscle.
8. Keeping with the breath, find ways to visualize the wind. Blow pieces of paper, pinwheels, all of the Jacobs gadgets, on your hand, etc. It's hard to really feel what good use of the air feels like and what we feel can be misleading, so externalize it so you know it's working.
If there's something broken about the way you address the instrument (embouchure, etc.) and you have a teacher you trust, listen to them, but many players - even "broken" players - can accomplish their goals using the above approach. |
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MrOlds Heavyweight Member
Joined: 25 Apr 2003 Posts: 722 Location: California
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Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 9:05 pm Post subject: |
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Deep and detailed listening is the key. Listen to the masters of the instrument. Listen at all levels. Listen for all the big and small details of how they make musical statements. Listen for all the big and small details of how they make the instrument sound.
Then learn to vividly hear all those details in your own musical imagination.
Before you play an exercise or a piece of music try to imagine in the richest detail possible how the masters of the instrument would sound playing it. Every detail from the musical content to the technical details.
Then let your own mechanism do what it needs to do to match the model you have in your head.
The sound comes from you rather than a book or exercises. You just need to fill your tank.
Listening is hard work. But don’t stop. |
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timothyquinlan Veteran Member
Joined: 07 Jun 2007 Posts: 267 Location: Victoria, BC
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Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:54 am Post subject: |
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There is some extremely interesting stuff in here, in case you have never seen it ↓
Thieck's Common Sense Lip and Tone Development _________________ Check out qPress for the largest selection of trumpet books on the internet. |
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roccotrumpetsiffredi Veteran Member
Joined: 04 Jul 2015 Posts: 169
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Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:14 am Post subject: |
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You will not develop tone from a book |
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jhatpro Heavyweight Member
Joined: 17 Mar 2002 Posts: 10204 Location: The Land Beyond O'Hare
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Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 1:25 pm Post subject: |
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Forget the book. Just play, listen, play, listen. Record yourself. Experiment with your sound by playing the same notes with different dynamics.
Strive to, as Wynton Marsalis says, "Get the metal out of your sound."
Listen to his playing and also players like Hardenberger, Nakaraiakov, Lee Morgan, and Blue Mitchell and find the sound you like best and make it your own. _________________ Jim Hatfield
"The notes are there - find them.” Mingus
2021 Martinus Geelan Custom
2005 Bach 180-72R
1965 Getzen Eterna Severinsen
1946 Conn Victor
1998 Scodwell flugel
1986 Bach 181 cornet
1954 Conn 80A cornet
2002 Getzen bugle |
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Tpt_Guy Heavyweight Member
Joined: 16 Jul 2004 Posts: 1101 Location: Sacramento, Ca
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Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 2:07 pm Post subject: |
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Here's a good exercise:
http://jayfriedman.net/articles/trompete_
Jay Friedman's site is a goldmine of great information about brass playing. Peruse the rest of his articles to see what you can find.
If I ever make it out to Chicago, I would not hesitate to look him up for a lesson. _________________ -Tom Hall-
"A good teacher protects his pupils from his own influence."
-Bruce Lee |
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Matthew Anklan Heavyweight Member
Joined: 12 Jun 2007 Posts: 1085 Location: Cincinnati
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Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 2:23 pm Post subject: |
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Books can offer the “what to play,” but the “how to play” is far more important. Listen to great trumpet players live as often as possible, and listen to recordings of great trumpet players every day. _________________ Matthew Anklan
www.matthewanklan.com
Patrick Mouthpieces Artist |
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Jay Lichtmann Heavyweight Member
Joined: 08 Apr 2005 Posts: 659 Location: Avon, CT
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Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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kehaulani wrote: | Concone Studies
Chicowitz Flow Studies |
Concone with accompaniment and it's free:
http://www.wwjdo.com/concone/ _________________ In his retirement he had become that most dreaded of former athletes, the one who always remembered how much harder it was in his day "when ships were made of wood and men were made of steel."
Samuel Abt on Eddy Merx |
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jmcclaymusic New Member
Joined: 14 Jan 2019 Posts: 5 Location: North Carolina
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Posted: Sun May 26, 2019 5:48 pm Post subject: |
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Flow studies. Clarke studies. Adams.
I like focusing on playing clarke studies 1-3 playing as musically and beautifully as I can focusing on maintaining a good sound, articulation, and timing at whatever tempo and I will always slow down an exercise in order to master playing it with a better sound and increase the speed slowly.
Also when playing flow studies or Adams exercises, do plenty of air/breath attacks (light "p" articulations) to help focus the clarity of your normal articulations. It helps with response and getting to the core of your sound faster. Tom Hooten spent some time on this at a clinic a few months ago where after asking what the secret to good sound was and providing his answer of a good articulation. A bad articulation can get in the way of your good sound. So just my 2 cents |
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