One of the finest trumpet players alive today, Jon Faddis, talks about how your stance is extremely important when approaching the upper register. He states, that you should stand as tall as possible, as if someone had a string pulling your head up. I couldn’t agree more, if I try to play in any other stance, my range and endurance suffer. My thought on why this is so has to do with how our breathing apparatus functions. My approach also involves pulling the chest up high and the feet placed a bit further than shoulder width apart, with a slightly squatty stance as well. Jon also stresses the importance of being able to hear in your head what it is you want to play in the upper register. Moreover, he emphasizes listening to other masters of the stratosphere, such as Maynard Ferguson and Dizzy Gillespie. Of course, the TrumpetDude strongly suggests you listen to Jon Faddis!

The great teacher, Arnold Jacobs added to this aspect of playing by focusing on the size of the air column too. He said in almost every instance when players came to him wanting help with their embouchure, he would end up pointing out that they simply were not supporting the embouchure with enough air, that the air column was too thin. This brings me to my other aspect of playing well. Our throats must be open WIDE!! An open throat is imperative to achieving the large air column necessary to play well in any register, to have endurance, and of course, to be able to play high notes. Much of this, of course, is MENTAL. Trumpet playing is a physical sport but one that is done with more mental energy than say weight lifting. If the mind is not right, the body will NOT follow. Sometimes we are just too tired to concentrate properly, other times we are just too UPTIGHT. When we are uptight, because of performance anxiety or just because we are stressed about whatever, our throats close up, it’s just a natural bodily reaction to the stress. So, one approach that Arnold Jacobs taught was to think and ingrain in your head OH for inhalation and TOH for exhalation without any hesitation in between. OK, what do the chops do? They vibrate and the mouthpiece captures the vibrations. Nothing more. Nothing less.

In sum, to play trumpet well, you must have your MIND right, your AIR full and unrestricted and your CHOPS vibrating! Sounds easy enough, but of course some days you just want to throw the horn out the window because you just can’t get it right. Well, perhaps it’s good that I delayed the writing of this article. Because, what I came across may help all of us with achieving the sweet spot in our playing everyday!

A trumpet player named Glenn Bengry wrote a brief piece on TPIN putting forth his distillation of what his friend Emil Gowatch gleaned from the infamous Raphael Mendez. Mr. Bengry says, ‘the chops come to the mouthpiece, not the mouthpiece coming to the chops.’ I think that is so very true, although, invariably, as impatient people we confuse this.

I believe the warm up approach that Mr. Bengry describes has a great deal of merit and should be tried in anticipation of implementing the other notions of playing issues I have presented above.

Glen says, “Blow gently through the mouthpiece, lips in a general mmmmmmm position but very loose, mouthpiece very lightly touching the lips (barely) NO SOUND YET, all you impatient trumpeters, WAIT. You don’t want to get a sound until you’ve blown in this fashion probably between 10-20 times give or take a little. (Mendez says to blow 2-3 minutes just air) You want the air to FLOW THROUGH the mouthpiece as easily as any exhalation Repeat this step with a VERY SMALL increase in air speed. Hold the lips together a LITTLE more firmly. Each time, you will be a little faster and firmer. the lips will gradually begin to gently “grip” the mouthpiece with somewhat equal contact around the whole circle of the mouthpiece. The mouthpiece does NOT hold the lips in place (our biggest hurdle perhaps). The mouthpiece “catches” the vibrations. So the chops come TO the mouthpiece, not the mouthpiece TO the chops (and usually too much against the chops). The trumpet beast makes us press too hard. The horn is only a resonator and amplifier essentially. It amplifies what it catches from the lips. At some point as you make these tiny adjustments the speed and firmness will be at the point where a vibration will spontaneously happen. It may only be a short vibration, which will disappear right away. You are now extremely close to a balance/efficient point. Now speed up your air a little more and you will likely get a longer buzz (it’s tempting to abandon your perfect spot and immediately go back to the “old way”. Resist if you can. Once you get here, you are real close to YOUR magic spot. You should now be real close to being able to maintain this easy, flowing, light pressure sound as a long tone. See if you can maintain the balance between air speed, embouchure firmness and mouthpiece contact/pressure. This is the basis for your own tone production balance (you have to find that spot every day).”

Keep jamming fellow Trumpeters!!

Trumpetdude

Just like the lungs and lips, the mind needs to be warmed up and focused too. You might want to begin thinking about your playing throughout the day, without your horn in hand, and practice visualizing various scales and other musical idioms. This approach will get the mind thinking about your musical desires and also help you to practice planning out your musical efforts in advance of a session. It will also make the physical aspect of your playing come easier when the actual time comes to either practice or execute.

Back to my thought about Louis’ eyes, I also recommend getting in the habit of thinking about a passage before you play it. You will be surprised as to how much this will improve your execution. In addition to the mental visualization thing, I recommend singing whenever possible. This also will greatly assist with the physical side of playing.

Scat singing might be a way for you to simply practice your singing ability, regardless of any particular passage. Scatting will aid you in opening up your throat and of course relaxing!

Speaking of athletes, since the Beijing Olympics are being conducted as I write, an excellent topic comes to mind. A very famous brass instructor left us with a book I would strongly advise each of you to purchase immediately, entitled, ‘Musical Calisthenics for Brass.’ This book was out of print for a period, but I presently have it included within my Trumpet Superstore.

Although I did not have the good fortune to study with Mr. Caruso personally, my former teacher, Jack Thompson did. As youngsters we witnessed Jack’s playing transform itself during his period of traveling to New York to study with Mr. Caruso. The improvement was phenomenal. A short time later, my good friend and fellow trumpet player, Michael Manthey also proceeded to travel to New York to study with Carmine. Imagine a thirteen year old traveling to Times Square to take lessons from a person who didn’t even know how to play a brass instrument. That’s right, Mr. Caruso was a woodwind player. He, however, had developed an intuitive sense of the problems that brass players faced and developed a system of instruction and exercises that is amazing. In his own words, Carmine said this, “when playing an instrument, the musician is dealing with numerous body motions. It’s the synchronization of these motions that produce the desired results. Synchronization requires perfect timing of all muscular movements. Therefore, timing is of the utmost importance.”

Carmine’s approach worked well. Michael Manthey is now one of the best players on the scene today, as are several other of Carmine’s students such as Lew Soloff, Marvin Stamm, Chuck Findley, Randy Brecker, among many others, including, Charly Raymond. Mr. Raymond has kindly set up a memorial site in honor of Carmine Caruso. Please check it out, it will help you get a glimpse of the master’s mind and help you when you begin working through his book. In particular, read what former students had to say about Carmines’ approach. Great site, http://www.carminecaruso.net/.

Of course, I didn’t touch on the musician aspect of trumpet playing in this piece, but we have to start somewhere in order to handle the disorder of our “personality.” As a former Caruso student aptly stated, “Carmine’s powerful callisthenic approach and his rules of implementation were the tools that he used to bring out the musical soul of the student.”

Purchase Carmine Caruso’s book, by either clicking the link below, or by entering my Trumpet Superstore link on this page. Breath deep and enjoy your journey, fellow disordered ones.

Trumpetdude

The ability to ‘track,’ while learning to develop our phrases is of utmost importance. I encouraged you all to practice developing one bar phrases, and resting a bar in between those thoughts. Although I didn’t instruct you to move on from one bar phrases, I’m certain you all did anyway. That’s ok, because I want you now to focus on two bar phrases. After you think you have that down, move on to three bar phrases, or statements. Now in practicing building your phrases as statements, however, I want you to be strict in stopping at the end of the third bar. This will help your mental discipline in planning and developing phrasing abilities while keeping track of where you are within a chart.

Meaningful conversations can be emotional, and I hope they are. In order to express the thoughts and emotions you may think and feel, you will need to be able to draw on your jazz vocabulary.

To develop our jazz vocabulary, we must begin to become fluent on our instruments. What do I mean by becoming fluent? Just that – ‘fluent’, like you verbally speak your native language or other speaking languages that you have mastered and become ‘fluent’ in. My exposure to this concept came from the late great Oscar Peterson. In his words, in order to truly play jazz you had to be ‘fluent’ on your instrument. As instrumentalists that means we have to have committed all of the scales and their chord relationships to complete and utter memory. To begin we must master all twelve of the major scales and two of their basic modifications.

MAJOR- C Scale C D E F G A B C Chord Relationships CMaj., CMaj.7, CMaj.9

Practice these stopping on the seventh, eighth and ninth note of the scale. Know your Major scales and the rest is a snap!!

DOMINANT- C Scale C D E F G A Bb C Chord Relationships C7, C7/9, C13

Practice this scale pattern in all twelve keys. Think of this scale as a major scale with the 7th note lowered a half step.

Minor C Scale C D Eb F G A Bb C Chord Relationships Cmin., Cmin.7, Cmin.9

Again practice in all twelve keys and play the scale to the eleventh note of the scale to sound the ninth of the chord. Think of this VERY popular scale as a major scale with the 3rd and 7th note down one half step.

Now although I want you to work at practicing these scales so they can become ingrained where you can play them in your sleep, I recommend that you conduct your improvisation sessions as a separate time period of your practice.

Finally, have fun, begin to spend time each day simply ‘doodling’ on your horn, playing whatever you can think of and whatever note sequences you decide to string together. Don’t worry about the rules when you’re doing this, just play and listen. You’ll discover some things that sound really cool and begin to develop ‘licks’ that you really like. When you come across something you dig, transpose it to the other keys.

Keep jamming!!

OK, let’s start off with some basic approaches as to how we should begin to approach our practice of improvisational skills. First off, jazz improvisation is an art form that has evolved somewhat in a fairly short period of time. Jazz performers have always played what musicians term melodies. Traditionally that was something that someone wrote and thereafter others played. Louis Armstrong is one of the first to take liberty with that approach to melody. He would take the melody line and modify it slightly while soloing. Since then, artists of improvisation have taken larger and larger liberties with the original melody when creating improvisational passages or presentations. At the core, however, is creating melodic improvisation. This does not merely involve learning great technique, memorizing patterns and playing the ‘right notes.’ Rather, it is about learning the language of jazz and its style. It involves developing skills in phrasing control and utilizing creative design and intent.

When we perform jazz improvisation we do it with other musicians and hopefully in front of an audience. The improvisation itself is, however, performed within a chosen chart’s predetermined chord progressions. So, one of the first things we as improvisers have to learn is how to track our playing location within the territory we are journeying through. A good tool to practice this is to begin playing along with jazz recordings or to use recorded play-along pieces, such as those available by Jamey Aebersold. The twelve bar blues progression tracks are a good starting point to practice with. Begin by playing one bar phrases, resting a bar, playing a bar and so forth. Start and stop on the bar, don’t play beyond. To do this, I highly recommend that you tap your feet in a way that allows you to keep time. This will help you to develop your ability to track your location within a chart’s progression. Of course while doing this, begin to apply the style of jazz by adding inflections and rhythms whenever possible.

Jazz improvisation can be thought of as having a conversation with an audience. However, you’re the one doing all the talking. In conversations, we communicate, we tell stories. We ask questions and receive answers. Practice asking and answering questions and think of stories to tell your audiences.

A great book entitled, ‘Constructing Melodic Jazz Improvisation,’ written by Brian Kane goes into great depths on this topic and is one you probably want to have in your reference library to help you become a jazz superstar sooner than later. It is available through the link at the end of this article.

In addition to Brian Kane’s book, you likely will want to begin acquiring other instructional-aids as well. A good start would be Jamey Aebersold’s book entitled, ‘Volume 1, How to Play Jazz and Improvise.’ All of Jamey’s great books are available through the link below to Amazon. Buying through my site doesn’t cost you anything, but will help me continue to provide this site to the trumpet community. Keep making great music!

In order to properly play the trumpet a certain amount of tension is required in the facial and abdomen areas, however, all other physical components of the body must be focused yet relaxed, especially the mind. This is a very difficult thing for most of us to do.

In his book, ‘The Art of Brass Playing,’ Phillip Farkas wrote, “in order to produce a sound on a brass instrument we must vibrate the lips into the mouthpiece by means of the air-stream. In order to create this vibration, certain muscles must be tensed.” Farkas goes on to describe this as a combination of tension in both the cheek and chin muscles simultaneously. These two must compliment each other – as Farkas says, “smile and pucker balance each other, resulting in puckered smile.”

In the process of producing the forced respiration necessary to sound our trumpets and directing it to a tensed embouchure, we may actually impede the air-flow because of tensed torsos, shoulders, necks and throats.

As I mentioned earlier, it is a natural tendency to tighten the throat. This phenomenon is known as the Valsalva maneuver and is defined by the medical community as a natural bodily function in which “…the throat closes simultaneously with respiratory muscle contraction” (Breathing for Musicians, Scott A. Nelson, DMA). While this may be a natural part of respiratory muscle function, as Dr. Nelson points out, “it is devastatingly disastrous to speaking, singing, and wind instrument play.”

So, if you want to become a top-notch player, you have to learn to control this issue. Remember, more air can get through if you keep your throat OPEN and blow easily through your lips. Practice scales, and anything else for that matter, without the horn on your face. Rather, finger the notes on the horn and blow the notes with your lips in a whistle, singing type manner. Afterwards, play the scale or passages with your trumpet. Alternate back and forth in this manner being cognizant of an OPEN throat. These alternate blowing sessions are referred to as “wind patterns” and are extremely helpful in reducing throat tension. Do a lot of wind patterns!

It is also possible that the throat pressure is caused by tension in the hands, arms, shoulders and neck, which translates into a tight throat. Hold the horn loosely as possible. You may also want to adopt one of the recommendations of Claude Gordon and, “lift the fingers high and strike the valves hard.” This may relieve some of the tension in your hands and arms.

Of course, this is the sort of thing that won’t cure itself overnight. You will have to be diligent and become conscious of how you control and direct your air energy.

There are several books available on the balance of tension , air-flow and relaxation. Some of my favorites include: