Manny, as you might remember, I recently purchased a Schilke B6 with the thought that the lighter, tighter, more-lively trumpet would be a much better horn to use for the rock and roll party band that I play with. I have now owned the trumpet for a little over three weeks and with 2 gigs under my belt with it, I’m still trying to get used to how it blows, and the gig last Saturday was ROUGH, in spite of the fact that I am practicing more now than I have in months! I was pretty much chopped out by the end of the second set with a full set left to go, and I’m not sure how I got through the 3rd set. You can imagine my frustration, especially considering the "better" trumpet and the additional practice.
So, back at home in the practice room, I decided to try to get back to square one. To do this I started with checking my posture and body alignment and blowing a soft long tone on a G in the staff as relaxed as I could possibly play it.
My thought was to see how focused my chops were and I was shocked by how much pressure I was using to simply produce a note! I started the G, and then gradually tried to pull the mouthpiece pressure (which was considerable) from my chops. I didn’t get very far before the tone degraded into a nasty double buzz, and from this I have concluded that I have been trying to force and muscle this horn. For the last several days, in 30 minute sessions, I have been doing a lot of soft playing, much of it long tones, much of it articulation, and a few easy lip slurs – all in an effort to get my chops to focus again without mouthpiece pressure. I even did a lot of this work in the dark and with my eyes closed so that I could better focus on what my chop were doing and how they were feeling, and I could focus on the sound coming from my bell. At this point I don’t want to work on anything off of a page and I’m choosing instead to play long tones, scales and arpeggios, and a few memorized exercises such as Clarke’s 2nd study.
At present, my sound seems to be opening up and has a more solid core, and I can pull so much pressure off of the mouthpiece that air will start to hiss from around the edges and I can actually hear the buzz of my lips, but the tone will remain and only occasionally if I remove too much pressure does it break down into a double buzz. Of course the true test will come tomorrow night on the gig, but I think that I have improved the situation greatly from what it was just one week ago.
So Manny, at this point, in your opinion, do you think I should continue to follow this line of thought and practice? So far, it seems to have helped, but if there is something else that you think would help even more, I am totally open to it. Sorry for the long post everyone!
