| Re: Piccolo problems
Since I actually know your playing I can say that it has to do with what we dealt with in our last lesson: the overactivation of the swallowing action and the closing off of the throat that comes as a result.
This is an extremely common syndrome we trumpeters go through and easy to cure. It'll take a lot of the Cichowicz style flow studies to get you to maintain a clear, unimpinged passageway for the air to move out. When a trumpeter can do that sort of thing, transitions to another instrument like the piccolo merely become conceptual rather than physical.
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For example: yesterday a student came in and I hadn't warmed up. I played through Yellow Bird and the opening of marriage of Figaro in about 6 or 7 keys and, boom, ready to go. I payed a couple of examples to help her on the Bb and the next thing she asked me about was playing the Brandenburg. I went downstairs, grabbed my piccolo and started playing some of that for her, remembereing how important it is to stay open and full blooded but NOT bombastic. My vibrato changed, articulation became a little more peppery... all conceptual stuff because the physical part of what I do is healthy.
The more health we have in our playing the more room we make for a musical approach.
ML |