Exercises for ATSSB 2014-15 Trumpet Audition Musicradbrass.com/files/ATSSBHandout_2014.pdf · Fundamentals of Tone Production Randy Adams, Professor of Trumpet Sam Houston State University

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Exercises for ATSSB 2014-15 Trumpet Audition MusicRandy Adams, Professor of Trumpet

Sam Houston State University

© 2014 RAdbrass.com

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Exercises for Gallay C Major m. 29 - 38

Play in every key.

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18 Arban and Schlossberg Octave Slur Studies


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Exercises for Gatti Etude p. 352

Voxman Page 2, Gallay, Adagio cantabileThis beautiful lyric etude is a song that can tell a story or express deep emotions. Once the nuts and bolts of rhythm and fingerings are worked out the player should begin to focus on musical style, phrasing, vibrato, tone quality and the use of rubato. Try to imagine what this song would sound like if a very fine singer was performing it on stage.

Phrasing is important in all the music we play, but especially in lyrical pieces like this one. In general the player should endeavor to keep the musical line in motion by always either getting louder or softer. There are several crescendo / decrescendo markings in the part, but many more dynamics are implied merely by the shape of the musical line. Long notes like quarter-notes and dotted quarter-notes need to always either getting louder or softer depending on their position in the phrase. Never let a long note just sit there and do nothing! Make it live. Make it go somewhere.

Rubato is another technique for breathing life into your notes and rhythms. If we spoke in monotones and mono-rhythms our speech would sound sterile and machine-like. So it is with our music as well. This etude has specific places marked to speed up and slow down, but thereare unmarked places where the music wants to do this naturally such as m. 15 going into the 2nd ending. Do a slight ritard here, then ease backinto the original tempo on the next line. With practice you will be able to hear places in the music where this wants to happen.

The use of vibrato is another way to add life and beauty to your lyrical music. Vibrato is more than just a fluctuation of pitch on a given note. Vibrato adds resonance and projection to the tone, and it changes the overall color of the sound depending on the speed, frequency variation and method of technique. A relaxed vibrato on a lyrical etude like this one will add warmth to the sound making a bright sound seem darker without making it dull.

Voxman Page 35, Gatti, Allegro mossoAllegro and vigoroso are the markings we have to establish the tempo and the style of this very technical etude. The music is unyieldingly fast and exhilarating throughout with a playful spirited style. Articulation needs to be quick and nimble and never heavy, and even though this is primarily a technical etude, phrasing and dynamics still play a key role in making this music come to life and portray a mood or tell a story.

Double tonguing is an obvious issue in this etude. Refer to Arban's pp. 175-176 and 183-186 for some especially helpful exercises related to this etude. It is important when double tonguing to keep airflow steady and not let it get caught behind the tongue. Concentrate on the vowel sound more than the consonant - the sound of the trumpet more than the sound of the tongue. Think of blowing "through" or "across" the articulation, and keep the tongue soft and pliable.

The wide descending leaps from high to low notes can be problematic. It will help to think of lengthening the upper notes ("Length is always your friend in the upper register") and blowing as much air on the way down as you have going through the upper note. The exercises in this handout are designed to help establish this technique. It can also be helpful to buzz parts of the etude, especially the wide intervals, on the mouthpiece. Make sure to play exact pitches and not just approximations. Blowing breath patterns while fingering the notes without actually playing is also a very helpful practice technique to establish free airflow and a relaxed upper register.

Feel free to contact me at [email protected] if you have questions or need help with this music. You can also visit www.radbrass.com andclick on the ATSSB link for more free exercises and trumpet help.Best wishes on your auditions this fall, and happy practicing!-RA

Lift Lift Lift

Phrase

_ _ --->

Fundamentals of Tone Production Randy Adams, Professor of Trumpet

Sam Houston State University

Buzzing - Lips alone- Begin making sounds by buzzing lips without the mouthpiece. Although this is not quite the way the embouchure functions with the mouthpiece in place, it does help to train the lips to manipulate pitches without the aid of mouthpiece pressure while at the same time warming the muscles and enhancing blood circulation. The lip buzz, or free buzz, is also beneficial in developing embouchure strength without the aid of the trumpet or mouthpiece. For example, one of the reasons excess mouthpiece pressure works is that the player uses his arms to do what the lips should be doing themselves - compress and move inward towards the teeth.

To set up the free buzz the lips must be anchored on the teeth - not each other. Form an On the mouthpiece- Hold the mouthpiece near the end of the shank with the thumb and index finger only (not all four fingers or a fist) in order to keep pressure to a minimum. Begin in the middle register (second line G) and work gradually toward the octave above and below (see Mouthpiece Exercises). It is helpful to begin buzzing without using the tongue to initiate the sound but just the air. Think of creating an open pipe in the middle of your body allowing air to flow freely through it from your lower abdomen and out across the lips. The throat should be open and relaxed, the tongue placed low in the mouth as if pronouncing the word “hope” or “Pope.” Notice that the P on the end of the word makes your mouth even larger inside by pushing the tongue down farther and applying pressure against the cheeks. Another helpful image to use is a yawn or a sigh. Allow your lips to buzz as the air moves across them and out through the mouthpiece (remember we’re not using the tongue to start the sound yet) keeping the embouchure as relaxed as possible at this point. Listen for a buzzy sizzle in the sound with just a bit of hiss or airiness. A lack of sizzle and openness in the sound indicates an embouchure that is pinched or too tense. Try not to press the air as it leaves your mouth, but rather allow your lips to ride on the moving column of air like water skis skimming across the lake. Practice buzzing both with the mouthpiece alone and with the aid of a BERP™ or Buzz-Aid™. (Information for acquiring these tools is included in this packet).

Breathing – The Two-Phase Breath- During a large breath the whole torso expands - front-to-back, bottom-to-top, side-to-side. It is helpful to organize the expansion of the torso into two primary sections or phases. Phase One encompasses the lower portions of the chest cavity and, most importantly, the belly or waist. This is the area of greatest expansion drawing in easily 2/3 - 3/4 of a full capacity breath and is the easiest, most natural area to fill with air. Phase Two encompasses the upper chest and is a little more difficult to fill, because the small muscles between the ribs, the intercostals, must be stretched and the rib cage expanded. Although this area of the body holds relatively little air and is ill equipped for effective air support, it is essential that expansion occurs here in order to provide room for optimum efficiency of the moving air column. A full and expanded upper chest opens up the air passages and enlarges the air column for a more powerful flow without the use of excess muscle force. In order to facilitate this phenomenon a full breath must be taken

1 Randy Adams, Sam Houston State University

The Two-Phase BreathAirflow

Phase OneLower Lungs

1. Diaphragm flexesdrawing air into lungs

2. Abdominal organs arepushed out to make roomfor air in lower lungs

3. Approximately ¾ breathsupply is attained

Phase TwoUpper Lungs

1. Intercostal muscles stretchas lungs expand against ribs

2. Chest area opens up makingroom for large airflow

3. Approximately ¼ remainingbreath supply is attained andupper body is enlarged formore efficient airflow

Breathe Phase-One breath for volume of airBreathe Phase-Two breath for efficiency of outflow

Blow air up and out by using lower abdominal muscles Use muscles in the region of your belt buckle, NOT upper stomach muscles

This keeps the air column large and powerful all the way up to the embouchure


from bottom to top, and the air must be moved out also from bottom to top using the lowest possible muscles of the lower abdomen (about where your belt buckle is) without collapsing the upper chest. A simple example of this, borrowed from Louis Maggio, is to think of a tube of toothpaste being rolled up from the bottom in order to get all of the product out. If the tube is squeezed from the middle, the sides soon touch and no more toothpaste can flow - even while more remains in the tube. The only way to keep the flow strong and full to the very end is to roll up from the bottom. Another way to think of this is to imagine a wedge - small at the bottom and large at the top. After taking a full breath, wedge in the lower abdomen, and allow the chest to billow up or inflate all the way up to the oral cavity. The idea here is to make the air column as large as possible all the way up to the lips while it is being moved along by some of the largest and strongest muscles in the body, the lower abdominals.

The benefits of a large air column can be realized in many areas of playing, both physical and aural. Sound, as our ears perceive it, is simply moving air. Vibrations or waves move the molecules of air through the space around us and into our ears where the vibrations are then converted into electrical impulses for our brains to interpret as various sounds. A large, dense, active air column translates into a large, dense and active sound. If the air column is compressed unnecessarily by a collapsed chest, a constricted throat, a tongue placement that is too high, teeth that are too close together, or lips that are too tight, the airflow will decrease in size and energy thus reducing both the amount and the quality of sound. A large, active air column also makes the embouchure work much more efficiently allowing you to use less mouthpiece pressure and maintain a more relaxed setting which will in turn enhance the vibrations of the lips even further. A domino effect is set up, for better or worse, all based on the way you move the air in and out of your body.

Here is a simple exercise to help develop an awareness of the two phases of expansion and support from bottom to top: Sitting or standing with good posture, put one hand on your belly (not your stomach – that’s too high) between your navel and your belt buckle, and put your other hand on your sternum. Breathe deeply with your diaphragm pushing downward against your stomach and other organs. Allow your waist to expand (or “Get fat” as Arnold Jacobs would say!), and monitor this activity with the hand you have placed there on your belly. When this phase is complete you will feel full of air. This is Phase One. Next, fill your upper chest cavity, piling more air in on top of the big breath you just took. This is Phase Two. Monitor the movement of your chest with the hand you have placed on your sternum. Since the lungs actually extend from bottom of the ribcage to the very top, you should feel the coolness of the air in your upper chest and behind your collarbones that have just moved outward and slightly upward. IMPORTANT: Do not use muscles to move the collarbones or raise the shoulders! It is the action of the air expanding the chest that will create this movement. We expand as a result of the inflow of air. Once you are full of air, both phases, bottom and top, blow the air across the room using the muscles below the navel to move the air up and out without collapsing the chest until the very end of the breath supply. Monitor this activity with the hands you have placed on your belly and sternum. One caution: although it is helpful to think of the inhale as occurring in two primary “phases” or areas of the torso, the breath is really a single event with air flowing smoothly and efficiently into the body, filling the bottom of the bag first and then progressively filling up to the top, then keeping the top of the bag open for unhindered flow while the large,


flexible muscles in the waist area move the air up and out into the room. Practice this exercise regularly. It is helpful to begin with some sort of breathing exercise daily before you make your first sounds. This exercise can also be done while lying down of the floor on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Put both hands on your belly with the ends of your middle fingers touching. As you inhale monitor the expansion of your torso with your hands and mentally scan your body making sure that you are not tensing any other muscles that are not involved in the respiration process -- larynx, shoulders, thighs, arms, etc.

Another simple exercise that can help encourage this full, two-phase expansion is to inhale and exhale through the back of a trumpet mouthpiece in time with a metronome. Set your Metronome to 60 BPM (beats per minute). Put the small end, or shank, of the mouthpiece into your mouth with the end protruding in past your teeth. Starting with empty lungs, inhale for eight counts, pulling the air in as quickly as possible. You should feel this working your diaphragm and intercostals as you fill up from bottom to top. If you are pulling the air in correctly you should be full of air by about the fifth or sixth count. For the remaining few beats continue to pile air in on top of what you have already taken in (it’s not very comfortable at this point!) being careful to keep your throat open. When the eight counts are up, blow the air out through the mouthpiece just as you took it in – as quickly as possible, trying to get rid of all the air before the eight counts are up and then continuing to blow as if trying to collapse the lungs until the end of the count. Then, immediately turn the air around and inhale again the same way. Perform this exercise three or four times, and then remove the mouthpiece and take a nice deep relaxed breath exhaling in a sigh. This breath should feel substantially better and more efficient than the breathing you were doing before the exercise. While this mouthpiece breathing exercise is really a gross exaggeration (we should never perform with our lungs either this full or this empty), it is very helpful in expanding your limits and “warming up” or “lubricating” the respiratory tract for optimum performance. This is also a good exercise to begin the day with, especially if you are feeling tight or stiff in the chest.

Posture- In order to facilitate effective movement of air for optimum tone quality, range, endurance, careful attention must be paid to posture, balance and tension. Problems with flexibility and accuracy can also frequently be corrected by adjusting posture and easing unnecessary muscle tension. Correct posture is more a matter of balance than of sitting or standing erect and rigid. Flexibility and lack of tension are primary goals. A phrase Arnold Jacobs often used was to “stand while sitting.” This will line up the spine, head and arms in such a way that there should be good balance and a comfortable feel. Some of the postural positions we commonly use such as slouching, slumping the shoulders, leaning back in a chair, crossing our feet and legs, tilting the head too far forward or backward, etc. actually create the need for more tension in order to hold the body in place. Excess tension deadens your tone quality, sapping resonance and projection from the sound and forcing you to work much harder than you need to. Tension in the arms, shoulders, hands, back, stomach, jaw, throat, face, and even your eyebrows can cause problems such as bad intonation, “cracked” notes, dull sound, poor endurance, and general discomfort while playing, and excess tension in any part of your body tends to spread to other areas as well until you find yourself tied up in a knot. For instance, excess tension in the stomach area will usually be countered by increased tension in the throat. Try tensing your stomach now. Feel the tension in your throat start to increase as a result. You may even notice


your shoulders begin to tighten just a little, and as they do your biceps will also constrict slightly. Now try talking. Notice the small, dull quality of your voice. If you take a deep breath, relax your stomach muscles and shoulders and arms and speak again you should hear and feel a different, clearer, freer quality to your voice. This same phenomenon can be observed in your playing. An excellent resource for learning more about posture and balance is the Alexander Technique. There are many books on this method developed in the late 1800’s by F. Matthias Alexander who was himself a theater performer who overcame severe vocal problems by correcting faulty posture and eliminating excess tension.

Embouchure basics- How and why- Aperture, corners, chin, cheeks, functions of top and bottom lips, teeth, jaw positions, lip position, mouthpiece position, tongue positions, diagrams (front and side), anchoring lips on the teeth as opposed to lips or mpc.

Embouchure Basics

The brass player's embouchure is a paradoxical phenomenon requiring much training and regular maintenance. The very idea that it is possible to turn a "Bronx cheer" into music with the aid of a mouthpiece and some brass plumbing with a flared end almost defies reason! And yet, with a careful combination of tension and suppleness, compression and flow the warm and noble sound of the trumpet is possible.

The most crucial area of the embouchure, the place where the rubber meets the road, is the aperture. This is the point where the air exits the body and the buzz is produced. In order for the aperture to function properly there must be a balance between firmness and softness, airflow and muscle function ("flow and flesh"). The aperture is actually a nozzle of sorts controlling the air column's size, direction, focus and rate of flow. The aperture must remain soft enough to vibrate freely, firm enough to produce desired pitches and open enough to keep air flowing proportionate to volume and range.

One of the most common mistakes we make regarding proper aperture formation is that we tend to press the lips too tightly together, especially in the upper register, thus closing off the “nozzle” and limiting the flow of air. It is important to remember that it is air passing through the lips which causes them to vibrate. If the lips are pressed so tightly together that air cannot flow through them sufficiently, they will not vibrate. No amount of pressing or straining will produce the desired tones if there is no room for the air to travel through the lips and make them buzz. This presents us with a bit of a dilemma. How are we to tighten our lips to play in the upper register if tightening them closes the aperture and stops the flow of air? In order to produce higher pitches (faster vibrations) the vibrating surface must tighten somewhat and the airflow must increase its velocity. The answer to our dilemma may be found in studying Trumpeter’s Enemy Number One: Excessive Mouthpiece Pressure. Why does mouthpiece pressure work? (And it does indeed work. The only problem is that excessive mouthpiece pressure injures the lips and causes them to swell thus cutting down on endurance). Mouthpiece pressure “works” because you’re using your arms to do what your lips ought to be doing. You are compressing the lips against the firm foundation of the dental structure and producing a firm, dense vibrating


Embouchure BasicsThe Correctly Formed Aperture

The Collapsed Aperture

1. Firm Corners2. Soft Middle3. Flowing Air

1. Lips Too Tight2. Teeth Too Close3. Insufficient Airflow

Causes Outcomes

1. Productive Airflow2. Resonant Tone3. Clear Response

1. Excess Back Pressure2. Scratchy Tone3. Poor Response

6

Randyadams, Sam Houston State University

Embouchure Side View

Airflow

Tongue

Top Lip

Bottom Lip

Lip muscles flex and compress towards teeth to achieve adequate firmness for upper register without closing off the flow of air through the aperture

By keeping the corners of the mouth firmly in placewhile compressing towards teeth, the lips form a firm padding of support under the rim of the mouthpiece

If the lips are pressed together to play upper register notes the lip tissue gets pushed into the cup of the mouthpieceand the buzz occurs on a weaker, moresensitive area of the lip. Airflow is blocked and more mouthpiece pressure must be applied to maintain firmness for high notes. Stronger lower lip pushes

up forcing top lip out into cup


surface which can react with increased air speed to produce higher frequency vibrations. What we need to learn to do is compress the lip muscles against the teeth by using the lip muscles themselves, not our arms, by “rolling in” (for lack of a better term) toward the teeth and focusing toward the center of the mouthpiece. This allows us to make the lips firm enough to produce the higher pitches without closing off the opening that lets the air pass through them. The muscle must become more dense providing a firmer foundation as well as a protective cushion or pad between the teeth and the mouthpiece. This is the “pucker tempered with a smile” referred to by Donald Fink in his “The Art of Trombone Playing,” and it is a fundamental characteristic of all effective brass embouchures. The lips come in towards the teeth as they do when smiling, but the corners stay firmly planted without stretching back as the area of lip outside the mouthpiece move toward the center of the mouth as if to grip the outside of the mouthpiece.

Great caution must be used when reading about or working on the embouchure! It is extremely easy to do too much of something and throw the whole mechanism out of balance. Use good judgment and common sense, and above all, use your ears.

The Cheeks, Corners and Chin- The cheeks are the largest muscles in the facial structure and therefore can be a great stabilizing force for the entire embouchure. Solid support from the cheeks and corners allows the aperture to stay more relaxed for buzzing and reduces the amount of strain on the center of the embouchure where the mouthpiece is placed. When ascending into the upper register, the corners of the embouchure should remain in the same place (i.e. no smiling or puckering), but they should also firm up and press in towards the teeth engaging the muscles in the cheeks that run parallel to the molars. The chin needs to remain flat and pointed down. Do not allow the muscles of the chin to push up towards the upper lip. Do not allow the muscles of the chin to bunch up and dimple. Keep them flat, and keep the lower lip “standing up tall,” that is, don’t allow the lower lip to disappear into the mouth behind the top lip. (See embouchure diagrams).

Functions of the Top and Bottom Lips- Generally the top lip handles most of the vibration, pitch manipulation and finesse while the bottom lip handles the strength and stability of the embouchure. Both lips vibrate and both need to be strong, but their primary functions are at least moderately individualized.

Tone Centering- Once the airflow is working correctly – moving freely and relaxed with no obstructions – and once the embouchure is set up efficiently – open aperture, relaxed center, firm corners, etc. – the next area to focus on is the frequency of the vibration we put into the instrument. Every different length of tubing we create by changing the valves has a specific set of pitches or overtones that want to resonate. Our job is to create a free-flowing air column with a vibration frequency that aligns with the laws of physics operating in the trumpet. Luckily, we can buzz somewhere fairly close and still get the “right note” most of the time, but if that buzz is not exactly lined up with the air molecules vibrating inside the pipe we run the risk of cracked notes, poor response, faulty intonation and a non-resonant tone. On top of all that, when we are buzzing above or below pitch center, we are also working harder than we need to. When the buzz is correct, the sound

8Randy Adams, Sam Houston State University

The Centered Sound

Overtones Buzz Frequency

Available SpaceFor Pitch (Pipe Length)

The Squeezed Sound Playing Above Center


seems to just jump out of the horn all by itself. To find the center of pitch, or “sweet spot” as it is often called, try playing a G in the staff (concert F) and moving the pitch sharp and flat. You will notice that as the pitch changes, so does the tone. The farther sharp you move the pitch, the more thin, dull and pinched it sounds. And the farther flat you move it, the more blatty, unstable and unfocused it becomes. Somewhere in the middle of these two extremes is the “center of pitch.” The pitch center is the spot where the note sounds the loudest and has both highs and lows on the sound. For most trumpet players this is lower than they are used to playing. Try this bending exercise. Listen carefully to the tone as you move the pitch up and down. Be sure to let the lips “ride” on the air and not “press” it – in other words, keep the middle of the embouchure soft and allow the air to pass through the lips without any pinching or squeezing there at the nozzle (the aperture). When you hear the sound grow in size and volume (without blowing extra air to do so) you’ll know you’re getting close. Finding this sound and being consistent with it is extremely tedious, and it takes years of careful practice and listening. Our daily warm-ups, long tones, flow studies, lip slurs, Schlossberg drills and Clarke studies are the best places to focus on tone, and we need to begin every playing day with careful attention to this very thing.

Some Final Thoughts on Practicing- I hope this short discussion on the Fundamentals of Tone Production is helpful. There is so much more to be said, and so much more that can’t be said but must be experienced. Every day you sit down to practice YOU are your own private lessons teacher. We can read and take lessons and learn from the very finest teachers, but ultimately we have to teach ourselves how to play. Just like the old saying that you can’t learn how to ride a bike by reading a book, you need to get out there and fall down a few times and start wobbly and gradually get more skill – the same goes for playing trumpet. Gather knowledge from your teachers, your friends, books, the internet, watching and listening to great musicians, and anywhere else you can find it. But when it comes to learning how to play, you must apply this knowledge to your own personal work and figure out for yourself what, or how much or how little will work for you. We are all different in our physical makeup and in how we think and perceive the world around us. Yes, there are certain principles that are pretty much universal (like the laws of physics) and certain aspects of technique that will apply to most everybody, but all these things have to be “fine tuned” for each individual player, and that can only be done by the player himself, and only with hours of careful practice and careful attention to every detail of sound, technique and musical style. Just sitting down and playing through your music is not enough. In fact, sometimes this can be more harmful than not practicing at all, because if you’re playing incorrectly or carelessly, you’re only practicing mistakes and reinforcing things that need to be changed. I love the old saying a trumpet teacher friend of mine used to have on the door of his studio, “Engage brain before playing.” This is great advice for all of us! Be your own teacher when you practice. Listen. Think. Correct problems. Then practice playing correctly until it becomes habit. There are no shortcuts, but that’s half the fun of playing – accomplishing something that at one time seemed impossible and enjoying making music all along the way.

Best wishes, and happy practicing! RA


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Exercises for ATSSB 2014-15 Trumpet Audition Musicradbrass.com/files/ATSSBHandout_2014.pdf · Fundamentals of Tone Production Randy Adams, Professor of Trumpet Sam Houston State University