| Thanks, Bear!
Great point, Bear!
Ok, NOW we are getting more and more into the realm of the individual. The inital post is dealing the with basic physical acoustics model of what the lips are doing. Also, the string model is VERY loose! The lips surround the the vibrating lip aperature in a sort of oval, not a stretched out string. So, I see it as a combination of controllng the lip aperature with a bit of tension. However, when I say tension I want to be careful to NOT suggest the idea of stretching the lips (a problem that I struggled with early in my career).
As to air, I personally have to include lip aperature again and tongue position. As I mentioned earlier, when I play low, I have my lower lip down a bit (bell up) and as I ascend, my bell drops as my lower lip comes up to close up the aperature. But hold on! There is a point of diminishing return for that whole closing up thing. You can close it up all together and stop the sound entirely, so Bear's point is well taken. One can pay very high but with a thin sound.
I balance with another way of thinking about volume. As I play louder, the lip aperature is bigger as I play softer it is smaller. So I need to balance the pitch driven aperature size with the volume driven aperature size. For example, if I want to play a soft high G on a picc, I'll use a lower volume of air and keep the aperture smaller. However, if I want to scream out a big one on a jazz tune, I move more air and let the aperture enlarge, but at just the right rate to keep the note. One problem some player have wqhen they go for a high note is that they blow the whole thing open and the note quits (airball). If I'm gettin pooped out, I'll go for it a bit mroe softly and then swell the volume up a bit once I've got the grip, and even then I make sure I don't just blow it all away.
One expression that comes to mind is "pinching the notes out." To me this means severely closing up and restricting the aperature fora hign note, but with a thin sound. You can tell you are doing this if you hit a high G, say, and then try to put a crescendo on it. If, instead of getting a crescendo, you feel like your head is going to explode and the note, rather than growing in volume in a satisfying way, just teetersm and still sounds thin, you're probably pinching. Another aspect of pinching is too much pressure on the lips. You see, some folks (the old me for example!) might set up a small aperture to hit a high note and then just plant the mouthpiece around the aperature and really cram it in there to make sure the hole doesn't blow open when you let it go. However, as the volume is to increase you NEED to let the aperature get larger.
Now, I haven't talked about the tongue, and I need to to finish this train of thought. Also, Bear mentioned pitch center and acoustics. We'll need to get some ideas there, as well.
However, my mom is coming by today for the holiday, so I need to get out of my AP Physics lab and home, so more later!
Feel free to jump in! I have NO doubt there are many realy cool thoughts waiting to come in here from all of you!
so for now....
D/&out |