Bill Adam and Pedal Tones

[Atomlinson]

I don't seem to have read any reference to Pedal Tones in relation to Bill Adam.

What was his attitude toward them?

Andrew Tomlinson

[PH]

I first started studying with Mr. Adam around 1970. I had previously studied with 2 or 3 of his former students in my hometown, beginning when I was about 13 years old. I did not study with him through the late '70s (when I was working with Caruso). When I began graduate study at Indiana in 1982 I also resumed my work with Mr. Adam.

Mr. Adam never gave me any pedal tone studies. However, I know that he did give pedal studies to many people back in the '70s. At least one of the Adam students I studied with assigned me pedal studies as a "warm-down" at the end of the day and said he had gotten them from Adam. Adam gave one of my high school buddies pedals in a couple of spots his daily routine. At least one person I knew was assigned to extend his long tone studies down into the pedal register.

The exercises my friends were working on were photocopies of hand written exercises from Maggio (not from the Maggio book!) and from Stamp (again, not from the book).

I do not personally know of any instances of Adam assigning pedal studies to anyone in the last 20 years. That doesn't mean that he hasn't done so. I just know that if he still uses pedal tone studies with some people that it has become a pretty rare thing.

There are a number of other things that Adam regularly did in his teaching in the '70s (such as opening up the throats on mouthpieces) that he didn't do when I came back in the '80s. There were other things that had entered his pedagogy (like playing the leadpipe) by the '80s that weren't on the screen back in the '70s.

[ This Message was edited by: PH on 2002-06-03 23:59 ]

[Atomlinson]

Thanks Pat, that's cleared that one up.

You say that the use of the lead-pipe didn't come into Bill Adams pedagogy until the 80's.

Did Bill Adam actually invent this or did he get it from somewhere else?

I can't think of anyone else who taught this before Adam and it does seem to be a unique
feature of his teaching philosophy.

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I've just had a check on the article from the Bill Adam Tribute Web Site "1975 Clinic Address" and he says "I have utilized old leadpipes." Then what he says after this is a bit ambiguous in that he seems to say to "just place the mouthpiece in the lead pipe and think of moving your air through that tube." Presumably he is talking here of using an old lead pipe because he doesn't mention anything about removing the tuning slide or sounding any particular pitch.

So it looks like these ideas were "germinating" in the 70's.

Andrew Tomlinson

[ This Message was edited by: Atomlinson on 2002-06-04 03:52 ]

[ This Message was edited by: Atomlinson on 2002-06-04 04:37 ]

[ This Message was edited by: on 2002-06-04 04:40 ]

[PH]

I do remember some Adam students with leadpipes that weren't connected to the horn (either from old beaters, or sometimes I think Adam used to buy them from the Bach folks). Before that I think that he had some people playing on lengths of garden hose. I don't think that experiment lasted very long and it wasn't the same kind of response because it didn't utilize the Venturi effect the way a trumpet leadpipe and mouthpiece does.

He was definitely heading in the general direction of the leadpipe playing thing in the '70s. I don't know when exactly he got to the point where he used it with virtually everyone.

[Pat]

I seem to recall that in his video Mr. Adam says that playing pedals may help some players learn to keep everything (the vowel?) forward and toward the front.