Quote:
Originally Posted by Trumpet Trooper  Hey, guys and gals.
I've not been in an organized group in awhile and my gigs are mostly honor guard related, ie Taps and National Anthem. I'm not playing in front of people more than 5 or 6 times each month. The rest of my playing is solely practice.........scales, tonguing exercises, and technical work.
Does anyone have some suggestions on how to help build my upper register?
I've played most of my life on a Bach 5B or 7C mouthpiece (high school and college). These mouthpieces have not been really helpful in facilitating higher notes. I've recently added a Bach 3C and a 7D. My stamina is better with a 3C and my upper register is greatly enhanced with the 7D.
What are your suggestions? What kind of drills do you practice and/or how much do you rely solely on the mouthpiece for upper register work? |
TT,
the first thing that you need to attend to is your signature. Louder, faster, higher..... is the definitive way NOT to do it. The second, for me VERY disappointing thing is that you make no mention of practicing MUSIC, rather only scales........ All of that technical stuff is ABSOLUTELY MEANINGLESS without musical context. When I adjudicate competitions, I hear the results of this type of approach: nice tone, range, technique and no groove or soul. Young players do get praised for their technical prowess, but do NOT get enough criticism for lack of musicality. That is really tough to bang into someones head after 5 - 10 years of misdirection. I often get a great deal of heat here at TM for lack of political correctness because I really dig in on amusicality. To be honest, if more attention were paid to musicality, we would be harder to replace with a keyboard or midi stream! High notes without musical context constitute NOISE POLLUTION!
What needs to happen to play high? The lips need to vibrate faster. How do we accomplish this? Get the pressure off of the upper lip first, get our breathing together second and then develop a custom daily routine that matches our playing but does not beat our face up.
It is helpful to define what type of high note playing that we need as there is a difference between a smooth classical tone and a white hot lead trumpet sound.
I think most self help attempts at developing range fail because if the player hasn't been there, they do not know what to look out for. Most try and take high notes to the public WAY too early and end up mashing their chops up. We need brains not brawn to do this right!
My upper octave training is Clarke technical studies up an octave - but still pianississimo and Irons lip flexibilities, also as stress free and relaxed as possible. My practice routine is breathing, long tones, a couple of slurs, then tunes (mostly what is coming up next in my concert schedule), THEN technical exercizes and chop builders. I NEVER practice music on chops beat up by heavy duty exercizes - EVER. I personally feel one should NEVER comprimize music.