Whistling and the Trumpet

jamesswilcox · Regular Member Joined: 22 Apr 2010 Posts: 70

Evening all...

One of reasons I took up the trumpet 2 and half years ago, after many suggestions, was due to my whistling prowess. Without blowing my own trumpet, I have a really super whistle. All the things one would want from trumpet playing really. Range, tone, and very musical. I and others love to hear me whistle.

Sadly, my progress toward playing the trumpet to the same level as I whistle has been slow. Most especially my musicality. I've a perfectly good tone, my range gets progressively better, but I really struggle to sound musical. It's very frustrating!

Any ideas? Is it just a question of control? This is what I think.

Best,

Kael Seoras · Regular Member Joined: 16 May 2010 Posts: 63

It could be control. Would you be willing to post a recording of yourself playing so we can hear what your struggle to sound musical sounds like?

Interesting comparison between whistling and trumpet playing. I've never been able to whistle myself

and I got my BM in trumpet

jamesswilcox · Regular Member Joined: 22 Apr 2010 Posts: 70

Well I see no reason why not. I'd be happier to post a vid of me whistling than playing the horn. I'm proud of the former, but embarrassed by the latter.

veery715 · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 11:24 am Post subject:

Musicality is going to suffer whenever the physical demands of playing are great enough. The comparison with whistling is often used to help us understand the function of tongue arch, but that is where it stops. The vibration of the lips entails a much different physical demand than that required to make the air column vibrate when whistling.

Don't be discouraged, though. It takes time to develop trumpet skills enough to perform musically when playing. It will come if you keep working for it.
_________________
veery715
Hear me sing!: https://youtu.be/vtJ14MV64WY
Playing trumpet - the healthy way to blow your brains out.

cbclead · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 11:37 am Post subject:

Just like when you were learning to whistle, the fundamentals come first, then musicality develops later. It takes having the fundamentals so totally ingrained that you can concentrate solely on the music.

I am of the opinion that whistling correlates well to playing the trumpet, especially when it comes to range. A lot of the same small tongue movements used to change pitch while whistling feel, to me anyway, the same as some things I do when I play. And, again for me, concentrating on those has really allowed me to improve and become a more relaxed and efficient player.

The biggest thing you can do to increase your musicality is listen to professionals and try to emulate their sound. Once you have a sound concept in your head, and can hear the way you want it to sound before you play, it's a lot easier to translate to the horn. Then with practice, just like with fundamentals, musicality and expression become second nature.
_________________
Yamaha 8310Z
Stomvi Maurice Andre C
Kanstul 1025 Bb Flugel
Kanstul 920 Bb/A Piccolo Trumpet

solo soprano · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 4:12 pm Post subject:

The action of the tongue in whistling is exactly the same action you must produce when you play the trumpet. Play a low C on your horn, then slur up to G. With these two pitches in mind, take the horn away and whistle the same notes up and down. Notice how the tongue moves as you do this. You cannot move from one note to another up and down on your horn without the tongue moving either.
Go back to the whistle for a moment and analyze the position of the tongue. It should be as follows: the tip is pressed lightly against the lower teeth, and the sides are touching the back up teeth. This position forms a "wind tunnel" inside the mouth that we can make smaller and larger by moving the tongue up and down. When the wind tunnel is narrow (the tongue is up), the wind pressure is greater, the same as when you put your thumb over the end of a garden hose to make the water pressure greater. Then, as we allow the size of the wind tunnel to increase by lowering the tongue, the wind slows down.
Herbert L. Clarke said it this way: "The tongue rising in the mouth to make the mouth shallow is the knack of playing high notes."
Bill Knevitt

MikeyMike · Heavyweight Member Joined: 06 Nov 2007 Posts: 1680

related question/informal poll: do good whistlers have an inherent advantage in playing the trumpet? are poor whistlers destined to be poor trumpeters?
_________________
Ahh... that old case smell.

Ed Lee · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 5:55 pm Post subject:

I think I was whistling before I played any brass instrument and mostly such was songs my Mother played on piano. I was often stopped on the street and asked where/how I learned to whistle such and such song as they were mostly songs that were once popular long before I was even born. To my wife's chagrin I still whistle, and often when I'm shopping for music I'll whistle the song. Too, sometimes I whistle a song I've heard on the radio that I like and would ask the clerk in the music store if they had it. Long ago, I would get very good results where the clerks knew the music they had ... but in recent years such isn't so any more. Hands please if anyone on this forum knows the Merry Widow Waltz. If you don't know it, I suppose you didn't see Titanic. As a Sousa nut, one of my favorites is Under the Double Eagle. Sousa's band is reputed to have played it but he didn't compose it. Told you, Sousa was dead before I was born. The one very old song, c. 1857 that I can't whistle is often played today, and many of you have heard it, but can't name it. It's a song played at RB & BB Circus when the clowns enter the ring ... Julius Fucik's Entry of the Gladiators aka Grand Marche Chromatique. So it is that now I play my Schilke picc, one of my Bb trumpets or cornet, a mellophone and a euphonium perhaps a little better than I whistle, for at least I can play Fucik's Grand March Chromatique as I've been doing in and since high school.

royjohn · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 6:07 pm Post subject:

I agree that the tongue arch in whistling and playing the horn are very similar and whistling can be used to find the proper position for the tongue. I also think that the feeling of a good flow of air in a good whistle is similar to a good air flow for playing the horn. However, as others noted, there are many other issues in playing trumpet. If you wanted to talk technique, the air pressure and abdominal support are much greater, there's an embouchure placement, which must be correct for the person, an embouchure motion, a correct horn angle, muscular development of the face and lip muscles and tonguing movements.

I want to go back to the OP's issue about musicality. I would think that if your whistling is musical, there are technique issues impeding your playing of the horn. You have a musical idea, but are frustrated in realizing it on the horn. But it isn't clear to me from your comments what's missing. It could be flexibility, phrasing, etc. You probably need to get more specific in your thinking before you can figure out what technical issue you need to improve on. If you could tell us what part of musicality is missing, maybe someone here could give a better answer.
_________________
royjohn
Trumpets: 1928 Holton Llewellyn Model, 1957 Holton 51LB, 2010 Custom C by Bill Jones, 2011 Custom D/Eb by Bill Jones
Flugels: 1975 Olds Superstar, 1970's Elkhardt, 1970's Getzen 4 valve
Cornet: 1970's Yamaha YCR-233S . . . and others . . .

Bruin · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 6:11 pm Post subject: Re: Whistling and the Trumpet

kalijah · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 8:12 pm Post subject:

kalijah · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 8:15 pm Post subject:

solo sop cut and pasted:

Bruin · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 8:29 pm Post subject:

solo soprano · Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 12:38 am Post subject:

roynj · Heavyweight Member Joined: 19 Oct 2002 Posts: 2065

kalijah · Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:20 am Post subject:

Jerry Freedman · Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 1:25 pm Post subject:

I am a good whistler, got range, can double tongue, nothing transfers to trumpet

Richard III · Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 1:34 pm Post subject:

When I learned how to use my tongue level and air to control the notes, my whistling became much better. The knack seems to be the same or at least similar.

CG concept words intentional.
_________________
Richard

Conn 22B Trumpet
York Eminence Model 4028 Cornet
1903 Conn The Wonder Cornet

percivalthehappyboy · Heavyweight Member Joined: 05 Mar 2010 Posts: 731

jamesswilcox · Regular Member Joined: 22 Apr 2010 Posts: 70

Thanks to all for the useful replies. Picking up a few of them:

Bruin: Indeed, I can not play the trumpet like I can whistle, so while I can whistle musically, I can not play the trumpet musically.

Roy: You hit the nail on the head. I have a solid sense of the musical idea, but am indeed frustrated at my difficulty in realising it.

This also got me thinking in a little more detail about what the precise diferences were between my whistling and trumpeting. So I whistled a few sections from Clarke and did the same on the trumpet and tried to figure out what the differences were. The main ones were; inconsistent pitch on the horn compared to the trumpet, esp not hitting the correct pitch instantly and having to correct. And, poor transition between partials when slurring on the horn. And lastly,as one does not really 'tongue' when whistling (my whistling is all slurring) very choppy articulations on the trumpet.

All relatively subtle things to do with finesse and control that I suppose all go toward generating a musical sound....