Reinhardt for Beginning Band?

[donovan]

Hey Folks,

My wife is a middle school band director (and a good trombone player). She’s been listening to me talk about Reinhardt for the last year, and she’s seen what a difference it’s made for me. We are wondering how you (and Doc) would advocate for starting and working with beginning through middle school brass players.

Obviously, you can’t type each student in a classroom setting, and she doesn’t yet have the knowledge to type anyone anyway, but what would you recommend she do to get young brass students started “the Reinhardt way”?
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Donovan Bankhead
donovan@erniewilliamson.com
www.erniewilliamson.com

[kehaulani]

My opinion? Too much information for a beginning player.
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"If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." Bird

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[abontrumpet]

[JayKosta]

Conventional mouthpiece positioning on lips.
Conventional lip positioning, conventional aperture.
No 'tight smiles' or 'stretched lips'.

Demonstrate Billy's leadpipe process -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxTb2gEaTU4
Buy some clear flexible plastic water tubing from Home Depot / Lowe's and cut pieces to suitable length to simulate the leadpipe - a piece for each new player.

Later on, keep reminding the brass players that the lip needs to be ABLE to vibrate, and that both the upper and lower lips can/should be used to support the weight and pressure of the mouthpiece. Mention jaw awareness.

Much of Reinhardt's teaching and methods is for individuals to find and tailor specific details about those 'basics' that work best for themself.
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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'.

[kehaulani]

" . . upper and lower lips can/should be used to support the weight and pressure of the mouthpiece. "

If you follow this, I would be very careful in how it's said and monitored.
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"If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." Bird

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[Steve A]

I'm not trying to suggest that handing students the Reinhardt Encyclopedia on day one would be the ideal approach, but there's something about this that has always bugged me.

I think there's a huge, mostly unspoken "survivorship bias" in the way we approach trumpet teaching. We largely repeat the same teaching models again and again, and point to all the people who succeeded as proof that the methods work. And, they do, at least for a certain percentage of people, but the thing is, most students in most classes, throughout all levels of musical education, struggle significantly. Sure, there's the odd exceptional class or teacher, but I think most of us would agree that probably at least 75-80% of people who start playing never reach the level of competency to play in tune, with a good sound, and with reasonable dynamic range and control through the standard range you find in the Arban book.

This is chalked up to a lack willingness to work, or lack of talent, or who knows what, but pretty much every eventually struggling student I see starting out is excited and makes an honest effort, at least at first, and only start withdrawing when others get better and they don't. Some of them persevere, despite the frustration, but lots of people try to do what they're told, and don't really get better, and just repeat that until they give up. I don't think just anyone can play like Rafael Mendez, but I think anyone who's willing to work at it should be able to play comfortably through a range of two octaves or so, and with a decent sound, but, even in adult community bands where most of the people still playing were among the more successful ones when they were in school, this is a comparative rarity.

I'm not convinced the mainstream teaching methods actually work very well for an awful lot of students.

[kehaulani]

There has certainly been an evolution in pedagogical techniques over the years and it can definitely be advantageous to know. In my comeback and because of increased knowledge, I went from a consistent A above the staff and a playable High C, to a consistent E above High C to and a playable Double High C.

I didn't do this, so much by micro-analyzing the why but concentrating the how. That's not to imply ignoring advances in pedagogical knowledge, just underscoring that, instead of concentrating on the minutia, I concentrated on the music.

I would be very careful about giving beginning students more than the can (or will) handle too soon. And the average band teacher's hands are full enough, as it is, to monitor something like this.
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"If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." Bird

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[Jaw04]

I think the best teachers assimilate a ton of different pedagogy and understand the why and how, the acoustics, the mechanics and anatomy. A good band director is going to understand what is a good embouchure and the right way to play without necessarily telling the students all of this information. We have to remember that we are serving unique individuals and each kid is going to need different things. One size does not fit all. Knowing that in itself is why learning about Reinhardt is very good for someone who teaches beginners even if they are not "typing" and giving track routines to each student.
Some students might need to be told to buzz their mouthpiece. Other students might need to be told to blow just air through the mouthpiece. Lip buzzing might be a good thing for some kids to work on, but not helpful to others.

[JoshMizruchi]

Donovan, I’m glad you started this topic.

I have over ten years of experience working with K-12 players, many of them beginners. Do they benefit from Reinhardt? Absolutely!

But here’s the catch: most of them, especially those who have been playing for two years or less, are not developed enough to practice most of Reinhardt’s material. So how does Reinhardt make them improve?

The PRINCIPLES.

As Steve A said above, most kids first starting out are lucky to get a second rate level of instruction. This is unfortunate, but true. I will give you one of an unbelievable number of examples I could list.

I had one student who couldn’t play a low C. He had a nice sound, okay range, but actually couldn’t play below G in the staff. His band director tried to help him, couldn’t, and gave up. Another teacher did the same. I said, open your aperture a bit more, and had him play down the scale. The low C comes out. Now he’s playing low C no problem and his high register improved as well.

First step? No mouthpiece buzzing. Getting the mouthpiece buzzing out of the way has given a lot of students I worked with an edge because now they’re not spreading their chops, and they’re saving practice time. Reinhardt understood this.

Other points? Place, inhale, play. A student inhales before placement? I stop it right away (although Reinhardt said, “No and don’t should be eliminated from the instructor’s vocabulary at first with beginners). So, I don’t say, “Don’t inhale, place, play.” I say, “do this” (place, inhale, play). Or, form, place, inhale, play, if they’re ready to do that (most aren’t, so I don’t overwhelm them).

Final point I will make for this post: tonguing between the teeth and lips and smiling to ascend are bad. When I was in fifth grade, they taught us to tongue between our teeth. I refused (because it felt wrong) and got in trouble. Yes, you read right (this may be better for another topic). Anyway, any Reinhardt student knows that’s wrong, so I teach the kids that when tonguing, the tongue strikes the back of the upper teeth or higher. Guess what? They ALL get it. And they play better.

I taught kids Reinhardt principles like this without a single exercise assigned many, many times. And they do great. I’m going to brag a little and I apologize in advance, but I remember at one time I had ten students (mostly trumpet players, one baritone) and they were all first chair in their respective middle school/high school bands, even the kid who practiced two or three days a week (although I wish he had practiced more...). The band director doesn’t know why their trumpet section has improved so much, but they are happy. They think I’m a genius, but the truth is I just knew how NOT to play, and steered the students away from that. That’s basically all you need to do with players like that, especially if they are not looking to do music professionally.

By NOT teaching the students the wrong things, they get better. Next step is finding the equivalent ”Reinhardts” on other instruments, to get the other sections up to speed. That’s something I’m still working on.

So as a band director, how do you help the kids? I’d say, teach them all of the stuff mentioned above (it can be done in classroom setting because it works for everyone). Then, basically just don’t teach the students to do anything wrong. The less the teacher interferes with misinformation, the better the students do, so simply by not doing that, you have an edge. There are other Reinhardt principles that help kids besides these. Keep studying the encyclopedia and your advice will come to them. When the teacher has a good attitude, the students pick it up and it inspires them. Anyway, that hopefully at least helps a little. Obviously in classroom setting you don’t have as much time, but you don’t need a lot of time if you know how to approach it.
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Josh Mizruchi
http://www.joshmizruchi.com

[Doug Elliott]

Yes. Those basic principles are helpful to every player, at any level, including and maybe especially beginners.

[HaveTrumpetWillTravel]

Josh's response is very helpful. I hadn't thought about placement/breathing, but those are both important.

I think you could add in some of the exercises on brass (free buzzing, pencil) if you wanted to. I have two kids on brass now and I'll have them try Reinhardt things (playing wet, pulling down to go high for our embouchure, etc.). I think simple slurring exercises in many of the intro books also seem Reinhardt-friendly.

[JoshMizruchi]

Thank you, guys.

HaveTrumpetWillTravel, have you tried those exercises with younger students? I honestly was always afraid to assign the pencil exercise to them. It’s very strenuous and can cause problems if not done properly and carefully. But I would assign it to any student who could benefit from it.

Buzzing I haven’t done much with younger students, partially because I admittedly didn’t learn to buzz until late high school, and partially because I have been trying to just get them to play. But this could be an oversight on my part. I’ve had a couple older students and they benefited greatly from buzzing. One of them was a beginner and I worked with her on and off for ten years. She works 40 hours a week and takes a train and two buses to work every day (90-120 minute commute one way), so she only has like a half hour a day to practice. At one point at work, she goes from one building to another; about a ten minute walk. She decided to make that her “buzzing” time and does it every day. Her playing really improved when she started doing that. I should probably encourage younger students to do the same. Thanks for the reminder.

There is a book called Reinhardt For Beginners. I need to take another look at it, myself. You can find that here: https://www.boptism.com/boptism-music-store/reinhardt-beginners-trumpet-cornet-flugelhorn-donald-s-reinhardt/
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Josh Mizruchi
http://www.joshmizruchi.com

[abontrumpet]

[Destructo]

This is such a great question. I really hope someone will make a Reinhardt book that is aimed at players in the first couple of years of playing.

I have unfortunately had the situation where students in a primary school were just given an instrument and played in the school's brass band, and had lessons with the director. The guys is apparently a great lower brass player and also plays trumpet very well. But the students coming from there into high school are a mess. about half of them have embouchures that will never develop into anything without more or less starting over. I had one kid that had been playing for a few years and was still puffing his cheeks and blowing raspberries to play, he could not play more than a handful of notes without it turning into a awful double buzz. Another kid plays okay-ish for where he's at but has totally hit a wall because he is rolling his lower lip out and setting on it with it turned out. Another kid is again okay-ish sounding to D in the staff, but everything is just completely mouthpiece pressure. The half that are within that right ballpark of a functional embouchure are there purely by luck, but they are still mostly doing stuff by mashing the mouthpiece into their face.

And it's a pretty frustrating place to be as a teacher because I have to try and get them on the right path without them completely relearning how to play or forcing a direct embouchure change.

For example, the kid who is turning his lower lip out, I've had him doing some very small amount of lip buzzing (which requires that lower lip to be positioned correctly) and reinhardt style "walking in" and when that lip comes in, it's like a whole different player. The sound is better, his flexibility improves, his range jumps up like a 5th. Everything just gets better.
But 2 minutes later, he'll go straight back to rolling the lower lip out and setting on it, because that's the habit he's had from years of useless instruction.

I honestly can't imagine how talking about mechanics could possibly have made things worse. Not talking about it at all, which is clearly the case, has created probably a 90% failure rate without correction/intervention.

I get the point, that you don't want to bombard them with information that they aren't smart enough to apply. But you should at least explain more or less how the lips are postured, which is the same regardless of embouchure type.

[Wilktone]

Josh's post is great. All I have to add is that I think that teaching a student to have good posture and hold their instrument correctly and consistently is extremely important to good embouchure development. On trumpet, for example, the left hand grip is going to provide the stability and support of the mouthpiece on the lips. If the left hand is too loose, wrong, or not consistent then the way the mouthpiece contacts the lips is going to not be consistent or correct.

I don't think this is a Reinhardt sheet, but Dave Sheetz (long time Reinhardt student) gave this to me, I think.

http://wilktone.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/A-Comparison-Between-the-Traditional-Approach-and-the-Reinhardt-Approch-To-Beginning-a-Brass-instrument.pdf

This sheet is from Reinhardt. It seems to not really be about teaching raw beginners, but rather beginners to the Reinhardt's approach. That said, there's some suggestions in there that I think will apply.

http://wilktone.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Beginner-suggestions.pdf

Dave
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[gwood66]

Rich Willey has a book on his website Reinhardt for Beginners. I would recommend taking a look at it.
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[kehaulani]

From my perspective, if we are talking about beginners in a mixed-ensemble setting in limited school hours, this is way too much information.

There are other different situations for sure, but in my observation, there are band classes and there are private lessons, two separate situations.

I suspect Reinhart is too unique to be used universally. IMO, beginning band students are too inexperienced to worry about choosing Rheinhart, Caruso, Maggio etc. They don't need compartmentalizing at this stage, just fundamentals that are common to all styl's of pedagogy.
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"If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." Bird

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[gwood66]

[JayKosta]

[kehaulani]

So, if I read this correctly, this is not especially "Reinhardt". So, we're back to square one.
https://www.boptism.com/boptism-music-store/reinhardt-beginners-trumpet-cornet-flugelhorn-donald-s-reinhardt;

Just to be clear, while I do not use it, I am not anti-Reinhardt. Just that I think it's too early for beginning, en-masse students to "get with the program".
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"If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." Bird

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