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Implementation of BE



 
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HJ
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Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 387
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Sun Nov 16, 2003 6:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I would very much like to know about how other people implemented the BE exercises in their daily practice routines. I am totally convinced of the indirect quality of BE, so I kept doing gigs and all kinds of studies next to BE. A very strong point in Jeffs book is the Lesson Plan section. This was the first time I ever saw this in a method book, and made it very clear to me how to proceed. From then on I am very busy writing lesson plans for myself every now and then. In this way I can see were I am heading, but also where I come from, and keep track of the good things and the wrong turns. I also adjust the order of exercises I do and make them as efficient as possible. I think about what I do and when I do it. Also about the BE exercises.
I think one of the important things is that you know how to apply a system and Jeff has given a good example with his Lesson Plans. It is at least something to start with.

So, how did you folks do it? How did you practice your Haydn and stuff and still develop the BE? I think this is a very important issue, certainly for the players who want to start practicing BE. My time is up for now, but I think I will post some of my practice concepts sooner or later.

Bert Lochs
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mcamilleri
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 16, 2003 12:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The amount of time it takes to go through the lesson plan of BE specific exercises is quite small. After all, the entire BE CD is 25 minutes long, and goes through nearly every exercise. In the early stages, you can easily do them as your warmup, taking 15-20 minutes, and then go and play whatever you want, either on you old or new chops.

Only when you get to the advanced lesson plans do the exercises take more than about 30 minutes to do, and at that point you could probably shorten or skip some of the preliminary exercises (especially the early Advanced Lip Slurs), if you needed to, without compromising the result.

I normally warm up for about 15-20 minutes on the BE exercises, then put some concentrated time on the BE exercises that are at my limit for 10-15 minutes (don't overdo it!) and then move on to Arban and Aebersold, and whatever music I am practicing.

Heed Jeffs comments in the book about 'three strikes and you're out', and 'hammering away on high notes does more harm than good', and progress is like 'popping corn' - nothing seems to happen for a while and then Pow! Struggling on the exercises does more to reinforce old habits than it does to establish new ones.
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Larrios
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 16, 2003 9:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Totally agree with Bert that it is a sensible thing to experiment with order. I also use the BE mainly as my warm up, although I repeat a minute or so of roll-in before a next practise session. Especially when I am going to do some lip slurs, I find it supportive in finding the 'snap' and starting with a more closed position on the lower notes.

I wanted to give a little suggestion about the order of the BE warming-up itself. I've already discussed a lot with Bert privately, in Dutch, but I thought it would be nice to put some of it out here as well.
In my opinion, depending on the stage of development you're in, I think you might benefit from a different order in your warming up. The lesson plans are great, as they give examples of how different excersises can compliment eachother. However, I always had trouble with ending the warm-up with the roll in. For me, and probably a lot of others as well, the roll in is physically the most challenging part of the range of motion excersises. Therefore I now start my warming up with the roll in part. This way my embouchure is still 'fresh' when I attempt the roll in, which makes it easier for me to remember the right feel. Plus, when you proceed with the roll out after the roll in, I find it easier to get a little more edge on the double pedal sound.

There is something else about the roll in that I wanted to mention as well. I've seen many people give up on it after just a few months. My advice: don't give up! Even if it takes you more than a year to figure out a way to make it work for you, you are absolutely not wasting your time, at least not from a teaching perspective. Find different angels to look at the same piece of the puzzle untill you can make it work for yourself. Your experience will enable you to make quick and sharp observations, which is likely to benefit your students.

Ok, that's it for now. Happy this forum exists, I'm learning a lot!

Ko
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oj
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 16, 2003 11:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ko,

Great post!

I do like you, start with the Roll-In.
My reason, when first starting out with B.E. (2 years ago), was this:

For me, Roll-Out was an immediate success, but not Roll-In. I could play a decent high C with my normal embouchure, but had trouble with Roll-In as described, and I did not want to sound like the young kid on the CD (a kid with braces, so I'm not saying he is not good - he sure is for his age and situation).

When we pick up the horn, we are fresh (both in chops and mind) so now's the time to get Roll-In "rolling"

By doing this, over a period, you will experience moments when it suddenly is so easy - you can play much higher partials as well. Then you know you are on "the right track".

Be carefull not to overdo it - just a few minutes is IMO plenty.

Ole


[ This Message was edited by: oj on 2003-11-17 02:15 ]
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Larrios
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 17, 2003 6:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi Ole!

I think we've met very briefly in Olso, when I visited Rune for the Shew workshop two years ago, right? We didn't really get a chance to talk there, but I'm sure this forum gives plenty of opportunity to share thoughts.

It has taken me a lot of time to find a way to deal with the roll in. Concerning both how to do it and how to fit it in my practise routine. When I started with BE, I had had so much struggles the past few years that I even had trouble playing a proper C scale. Yes, it even took a while before I owned C2 again!

A mistake that I made in my enthousiasm when I started, was to overdo the roll in. Since I didn't have much of a normal set-up left, I thought I could learn everything with roll in. Well, that didn't work. At all. Luckily I learned a lot since my first efforts. The thing is that BE is a dynamic development system. Indirect. The excersises are done in extreme lippositions, outside the normal playing range. That means that after you've done your warm up, you should get your head at making music again, on your 'normal' set up, or if you don't have a working one, in my case, just with anything that fits you best at that specific moment. I have to credit Bert here a lot. He made some suggestions for me in a lesson plan that got me back to a stable enough setting to use when I wasn't doing BE. Since then I've made steady progress and I can experiment with BE without losing my normal playing abilities.

Jeff's simple words are indeed so true. Until it gets more stable: don't overdo.

Please send my regards to Rune, Olaf and Vera,

Ko
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trUMBet67
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 17, 2003 8:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks Jeff and you all for this forum and these comments! Roll out seemed to be easy, (some years ago i tried to start "trumpet yoga" by Jerry Callet, so rolling out wasn't new) but i found some difficults in rolling-in, and i thought to dedicate more time to roll-in... How much time do you think is right?

Umberto
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oj
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 17, 2003 10:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ko, I remember you, we shook hands at the Shew clinic in Oslo, 2002.
Pity I had to rush off before the clinic finished (I had a gig that evening).

I will notify all B.E. people over here in Norway about this great forum.

It is rather interesting that "over here" and in Holland players get together and work on B.E. and discuss and help each other.

Rune, Olaf, Svein and I had a "B.E. gathering" this summer. The other guys came down to Vestfold (90 km south of Oslo) and we played in a recording studio we have at work (at a University College).

Best wishes,

Ole

P.S.
Ko, here is my report from the Shew clinic (only in Norwegian, but a photo and some drawings can be of interest)

http://region.hive.no/ntf/schallstykket/nr1-2002/Shew2001.html
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trumpetteacher1
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 20, 2003 6:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Umberto,

You asked, "How much time do you think is right?" (for the Roll-In exercises).

Better to underdo than overdo. A couple of minutes, morning and afternoon, is usually enough at first. As you have more success, you will naturally extend the time.

Thanks for checking in!

Jeff Smiley
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HJ
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 22, 2003 8:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I promised to post some of my practicing concepts.

1. I only practice in short sessions, about 20 to 30 minutes. Not longer. I used to study hours on end, and that did not get me anywhere.
2. I practice the physically hard stuff at the beginning of a session!! This has taken me a long time to discover, because you don’t want to be exhausted after 10/15/20 minutes and not being able to play anything else, but…the alternative is that you play hard things when you are already tired, and this is asking for trouble, or not being able to practice those things at all. When I do some high register training I do it for about 15 minutes and I’ll have another 10/15 minutes to cool down, get my chops together and play some flexibility exercises. Most of the time I could do another ‘high’ session if I want to. NB. It is important that before you try the hard stuff you have a good warm-up (rool-in/out etc.)
3. I pace myself. Also in these relatively short sessions, I try not to push myself. I am a patient guy in normal life, but when I practice I become an impatient monster and this has killed my embouchure many times. One of the things that worked very well is to have an alarm clock. Set it for 10/15 minutes and stop when it goes off. Just do not play another single note and stick to that. It is so easy to force yourself and force your chops.
4. I always begin the day with some stretching exercises and some breathing (see Jeffs book). After that I just play for fun for five minutes or so. Just some licks, try a couple of high notes, play a nice tune, just to make myself happy and wanting to do it better again. This is something I learned in a Bobby Shew clinic, and I’ve done this ever since.
5. First thing after this is hold-till-empty. This relaxes the chops and makes the breathing apparatus work.
6. At least one day in ten days off the horn, just to give the muscles and the mind a chance to recuperate.

This is the concept, and when I discovered BE I just tried to work it in. Since Jeff called it a focussed warm-up it made sense to me to treat BE as a kind of warm-up. So after some stretching and playing a tune or two I always start BE.
-The first 2/3 months or so I started with roll-out 1 and 2 and found out that this was a nice warm-up. After that I tried roll-in 1 and this took me a long time to just make a very thin sound, but eventually it worked. The whole thing took about 20 minutes and after that I went on to other things: Schlossberg, studies, finger exercises, whatever.
-After the roll-in 1 started to work I added 2. Roll-out 1,2 and 3 worked almost immediately and #4 was a bit of a struggle to get past C2, but eventually got me a nice high E and some months later high G. (This was the first time I had the ‘popping kernel’ sensation, one day it did not work and the other day it just did, great feeling!). By this time the whole BE part of my daily routine took me about 30/40 minutes and I divided it in a roll-out part and roll-in with a lot of pauses, because to me roll-in was and still is, pretty heavy.
-Eventually I experimented with the order of roll-out and roll-in. I had this discussion with Ko (Larrios) about what to do first. I was afraid that roll-in was too heavy to begin with. The other thing was that after roll-out, roll-in was harder to do. So, just to make roll-in work better I started doing this right after my stretching and things. And from that moment on the roll-in started to sound better and there was more control. The roll-out also relaxes the lip ( I know that is not the purpose, but a nice side benefit) after a heavy roll-in session, and I still do it this way.
-At this point (after 1 1/2 year) I am experimenting with starting the roll-in higher. On high C for roll-in 1 and 2. After that I play roll-out 1,2,3 and 4 up to C3. This takes about 30 minutes. After a break I try to tongue the roll-in with not so much success up to now. But as some of you might have seen on the Trumpet Chops Forum I am using Callets Tongue Controlled Embouchure to make tonguing on rolled-in lips possible, i.e. for me. So this is where another quest has started and is being integrated in my practice schedule. But this is maybe for another time.

Conclusion: I have always used BE as a warm-up kind of exercise with a lot of impact on my chops. I do it for about 45 minutes a day and for the rest I play all kinds of music and exercises. Although there have been periods of instability, I have always been able to keep a certain level to perform with. And this level has gotten very much higher over the last 18 months!

One word about my preparation on a concert day. I always use some elements of BE to warm up with. I like roll-out 1,2,3 to begin with, play a very short version of roll-in 1 and 2, just to get the roll-in feel, I don’t care about how this sounds. It takes me about 10 minutes, and from the time I did this I never had the trouble I had when I was a Farkas kind of player. I had to warm-up over and over again, praying I had a good day and all. This is one of the things I am very happy about: I do not have real bad days anymore chopwise that is, haha.

Bert


[ This Message was edited by: HJ on 2003-11-23 09:24 ]
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