Range Practice

[Bassoontyphoon]

I have heard that you can't play high unless you can play low. I have practiced long tones on every note that is comfortable for me to play. Low F# to 4th line D for about the past month. I see no progress what so ever in my range and it gets very frustrating. How long before I can play a "Beginner Exercise" in Arban? The 5th exercise goes to an E, then F in the 6th and G in the 9th... do I just practice the first 4 exercises for the next year? It's not a concept that I understand that much because you can sit someone down with a Bassoon and put their fingers in the correct position and eventually they can play the highest note with maybe a few tries. What can I do because these "beginner exercises" are frustrating? Should I rest a few days because maybe my embouchure is so worn out going from 14 years of Bassoon to 1 month of trumpet? Maybe I'm pushing myself too hard? I get wore out after maybe 30 minutes of playing... and it's not even hard stuff that I'm practicing. Thanks in Advance.

[Bill_Bumps]

[Tpt_Guy]

Of course it's necessary to practice skills and techniques you haven't mastered in order to improve. If you never work on what you're unable to do, you'll never grow as a player.

The idea is to not neglect an aspect of your playing in favor of another.

Over-emphasizing the upper register could be very destructive of the low register. With the right approach, a very solid low register can help ensure a fuller upper register sound.
_________________
-Tom Hall-

"A good teacher protects his pupils from his own influence."
-Bruce Lee

[Dayton]

The best way to minimize your frustrations is to work with a teacher. You obviously don't need help learning music given your 14 years of experience with the bassoon, but you probably need help learning trumpet.

As an aside, Arban's method contains a wealth of outstanding practice material -- it is widely used for good reason -- but isn't ideal for an absolute beginner as the range of many of the exercises advances too quickly.

You'd probably be better served by using "My First Arban" or David Hickman's "100 Progressive Lessons." You could couple that with Claude Gordon's "Physical Approach to Elementary Brass Playing" to help you develop your range.

Another option would be comprehensive method such as Harold "Pappy" Mitchell's "Mitchell on Trumpet" or Bill Knevitt's "Getting Started Right on Trumpet" (followed by Knevitt's "The Developing Trumpet Player").

A teacher could help you sort out what/how to practice to best meet your needs.

Good luck!

[Eliot]

FWIW

From one amateur to another, take a look at this video clip. You will need to invest a wee bit of time to get through the whole clip.

I found his warm up exercises helpful. By going the half tones through the range of the trumpet you may find that gradually you will increase your range. That's been my experience, and I haven't been too worried about range, but the increase in range for me, is a bonus.

The other area I consistently practise is scales, one octave at a time going chromatically from F# below the staff to as high as I can comfortably go, usually to A above the staff, sometimes higher, major and minor scales.

Keep trying. If no joy with the above, find a teacher for maybe only one lesson to check out and advise on your embouchure.
_________________
Eliot
Rank amateur, still upright and trying hard.
Yamaha YTR6335RC
B&S 150A Alto-Tenor Horn
Yamaha FZ8n (motorcycle)
Conn 83B (trumpet)

[gwood66]

"I have heard that you can't play high unless you can play low."

Depending on where you heard that saying, it could be referring to two things. The first is that a trumpet player need to build solid fundamentals in the lower registers of the horn before attempting to move above the staff and play those notes. The second is in reference to pedal tones (notes played below low F#). Several prominent methods/teachers advocate that practicing pedal tones with strict form can improve playing in the upper register. This is mainly due to the lip set, relaxation and control of air needed to produce these notes. My personal experience is that both of these are true.

If you are just playing long tones alone, it could be making you stiff and adding to your issues. Rather than practicing single note long tones by I would recommend practicing "moving long tones" such as Clarke Technical Studies. Start on an exercise (#1) in the middle of your range and spider outward by play the exercise a half step higher and then a half step lower and continuing this until you reach your limit on both ends. Start by playing them at a comfortable volume and focus on keeping steady air flow as you would for a long tone.

I would also recommend buying a lip slur book. You could initially start with Embouchure Builder by Lowell Little and graduate to Irons 27 groups after a couple of months. Lips slurs will keep you flexible and improve embouchure coordination.

Lastly, when it comes to practicing the trumpet you should rest as much as you play. This means removing the mouthpiece from you lips between lines/exercises and waiting the same number of beats before playing the next line. This allow you lips to stay fresh while practicing. The minute you feel your mechanics starting to get out of wack due to fatigue you should stops and rest for as long as it takes for your lips to feel fresh again.

After a couple of months, when you start to get a handle on you normal register, you could add in some lip bends or pedal tones.

[Beyond16]

It's completely normal to see no high range improvement after a month or two. Playing a horn is a very unnatural thing to do in terms of lip strength, in my beginner opinion. I have been practicing nearly a year and finally I notice a definite, but not huge, improvement.

[JayKosta]

[krell1960]

[Bassoontyphoon]

Tom,

I tried the Lead Pipe Buzzing and the guy went from G in staff to Middle C so I attempted it, and C won't even come out no matter how hard I try. So I guess if I can't get a C out in the leadpipe, then there is something wrong with my embouchure and buzzing, It was a cool exercise to see what the problem was... so now I have to figure out how to fix it. Haha thanks!

Also, I have no idea how to quote little segments of someone's reply so I hope you see that I have replied to your comment.

Tyler

[Lionel]

[Bassoontyphoon]

[JayKosta]

[Lionel]

Roy Stevens used to speak of those students he worked with who because of their physiology couldn't push their jaw forward so that their lower teeth went past their uppers. He described this as a possible disadvantage.

My problems with playing on a receded jaw embouchure wasn't that I couldn't push my jaw out. Rather I'd just been playing so long on the receded jaw formation and had so many commitments to keep playing that way that I never had the time to make the full conversion over to the forward jaw embouchure. I did however gain much from adopting the two aperture theory on my receded jaw chops. OMG did that ever make a difference! Almost overnight I stopped having endurance and power problems on my chops. Also within a few weeks after adopting the two aperture theory I stopped needing to reset my chops while ascending. This is a very important correction. As with certain types of music there isn't the time to reset the embouchure in order to continue the phrase.

Another thing that prevented me from converting completely over to Stevens-Costello was something I had to figure out for myself. That was that the Stevens-Costello embouchure is too powerful to be used on normal sized mouthpiece inner rim dimensions. Wow this took me a long time to figure out. In fact I had to learn to operate my own metal lathe and start fabricating my own mouthpieces until I found a suze that finally fit.

Even Roy Roman used large mouthpieces and he was the poster boy for the whole system. I have it on good authority that Roman used a mouthpiece rim comparable to a Bach 1C. Pretty doggone large considering how unbelievably high he could play. Before retiring after a long career on lead trumpet Roy Roman could play double C's all day long.

His mentor of course was Roy Stevens who could usually play up to a Quad C and even higher depending upon the kind of shape he was in. And yet regardless of this and his numerous powerful students Roy was often put down by the rest of the trumpet world. I think that this was due to two reasons. One most teachers are what I call overly invested in some form of the Evolutionary Approach. After all low notes are much easier for the beginner to develop. Unfortunately those who choose to play this way from the very beginning tend to have serious range limitations. Like all of us have or had.

The other reason was because Stevens didn't understand that some trumpet players who convert over to his system will find that stock mouthpiece inner rim dimensions are far too small to get best advantage out of this powerful embouchure.
_________________
"Check me if I'm wrong Sandy but if I kill all the golfers they're gonna lock me up & throw away the key"!

Carl Spackler (aka Bill Murray, 1980).

[krell1960]