One of the things that I experience when I attend masterclasses with really great players is the absolute overload of information that occurs! This same thing happened to me when I listened to David Krauss in Denver and then went right into the Michael Sachs clinic. Too much content! I feel like that Far Side cartoon with the one student who’s head is half as big as everyone else’s. He raises his hand and says, “May I be excused? My brain is full!”
With a few days under my belt to reflect on what I learned, and looking at my notes, there are a few other things that are worth sharing. I have two more thoughts from the Lindemann masterclass and a couple of things from Allen Vizzutti’s class. I’ve also included some pictures that my friend Tim Moke took.
This is a topic that I have written about in quite a bit of detail myself, so I just enjoyed the slant the Jens presented. The word the struck me about this concept was the fact that he chose the word Irony to begin the discussion.
He said that it is ironic that we have to learn to take a really full, open breath on the trumpet, when the fact of the matter is that we don’t really use that much air to play the instrument. A simple way to convey this idea to students, especially if they are ascending in register – even if it’s just a G on top of the staff where they start to push and fight against the instrument. He said to show them this...
Take the tuning slide out of the instrument and put one tube back in so that the other side of the tube is pointing back towards them. Play four of five ascending notes (C, C, G, C, E). There’s a lot of air coming out of the pipe on the lower notes, but by the time you get to the 4th or 5th note, there’s hardly any air moving through the pipe. With that simple visualization, it will start to dawn on the student that they don’t actually have to blow so hard. It seems that with their enthusiasm to make something happen, they’re overworking (or overblowing). This example is a tangible way to simplify the process of relaxing the body for better results in the process of sound production.
During the Vizzutti masterclass, he brought up a similar concept related to the leadpipe. He said that he picked this up from Anthony Plog. With the tuning slide removed from the instrument, he blew into mouthpiece (no vibration), and then slowly inserted the mouthpiece into the leadpipe as he continued to blow. When the mouthpiece was fully inserted, the pipe began to buzz. He took the mouthpiece slowly back out of the leadpipe and there was no buzz, only air. This is the idea that the lips don’t play the horn, the horn plays the lips. I like it when players that I respect describe sound production in this way.
After the question that I asked about hearing the sound in your head clearly before you play, Jens recalled the first time that he heard Phil Smith (Jens said he was 13 years old). He said that Phil played a cornet solo at one of his school functions, and Jens said, it sounded something like this...
I was amazed at how I was transported back to that school function. Jens’ conception of Phil’s sound was so strong that he said he could remember it in vivid detail. He couldn’t recall the name of the solo that he played the phrase from, but it didn’t matter. The sound image was etched in his mind with clarity and intensity. Really cool!
During the Vizzutti class, Allen was speaking and said, "who was the person that asked the question about musical imagination?" I raised my hand and he wanted to follow up on this question. He said that many players will not be intently aware of the sound that they are producing. We must all really focus in and listen in great detail to our sound. This next idea was very interesting. He played a G in the staff for about 10 seconds and said, "I hear a least three elements in that sound. There is a white noise element, a sine wave (the pure quality of the sound), and something that’s human in there – that’s moving. If you start to really listen to those elements, then with the goal in mind that you have set for yourself (the imitation of a great sound model) and your musical imagination you can begin to move incrementally closer to this goal".
My notes started getting really thin at this point, but this last thought was fascinating to me. Allen said that he had traveled to Japan many times over the years. He said that the Japanese language is very percussive in nature (requiring little air flow) and languages like English and the romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish) are "smooshy", where everything runs together, requiring constant air flow. He said that he has had many Asian students that have had challenges with sound production due to this ingrained approach to language.
I hope I get this example right. He said that the present tense versus the past tense in Japanese is developed at the end of their words. Here are two words and the way that they sound in Japanese (my apologizes if I got too many syllables in here!):
Born: aTataKati
Was born: aTataKaTaka
Then he said that he asked people randomly on the street if they could say, TKTK TKTK TKTK T and TTKTTK TTKTTK TTKTTK T at an extremely fast tempo. Everyone could do it. No problem!
The opening to Vizzutti’s class just floored everyone (an incredible version of Carnival of Venice that was beyond belief). It was a clear case of shock and awe! These are my last thoughts on the classes. Great stuff!
