Manny Laureano

Long tones certainly have their place in what we do but I think the biggest problem is people playing them automatically, reflexively without really knowing why. Someone told them they should play long tones and they did. I think long tones are good when you have a specific purpose. Here's a perfect example:

I rarely ever play long tones. I play a melody that has some sustained notes and then move on to scales. The other day I was practicing and felt that my endurance for a long etude I was playing was down from where I like it to be. I wasn't getting that nice secure from my corners that I like so I said "Time to do some long tones". For the next couple of days I started my warm-up with about a minute or two of long tones and it brought back to focus. I continued with my usual stuff and focused on rapid single tonguing from my Clarke's Characteristics and mixed in 125 from Arban. I kept pushing the tempo (in fact that's what I've been doing this morning, the A major study from Clarke's Characteristics... started at 126 and practiced for about 30 minutes until it got up to 144). By the time I was done with all that and some other studies everything was where I like it to be.

So, that's the grand point... if you want to play long tones or anything else like that, have a reason. Have a plan, an ideal that the long tones are supposed to fix. That goes for any technique you play. Have an idea and a plan. For the most part I think long tones are extremely overdone by most trumpeters.

If you're playing long tones and notice that the pitch and sound go screwy on you, you need a different sized mouthpiece in my opinion. Something is out of balance and either it's too small or too big, the hole is too small or the backbore is out of whack. If you have to fight the mouthpiece to get a solid, straight sound you need to try something else that just lets you play and forget about it.

ML