MahlerBrass

Hello all, I was wondering if there was a specific way any of you guys achieve a clean large lip slur, like an octave slur for instance. I've been trying real hard to get the noise in between the notes out but no success thus far, any suggestions?

trumpet blower88

It's all about useing air pressure and the big muscles down in your abdomen, not the litle muscles in your lips. Toung placement is important too, it should be like you are wistleing, as you go higher raise the tip of your toung but try to "arch" if you will, the back of your toung, this will rais your soft pallet.

Alex Yates

I would also suggest playing the lower note repeatedly until you get two in a row that sound really sweet. Then, just increase the air for the octave while keeping the same feeling. If your first note is in the right place and has no audible tendency going toward the octave, it will pop out with very little garbage in between and should feel almost the same on the lips. In otherwords, make sure to stay true to the last nano-beat on the first note with no anticipatory tension or rising in pitch before the slur. The sensation will feel as though these notes are very close together and not as far apart as you may think (and therefore might be making adjustments unnecessarily). TB88 also touched on what makes this possible - the tongue.

MahlerBrass

Ok, so let's step backwards a bit now. When I practice my lip slurs, these are the main things I focus on: making every note sound the same (which usually requires very little movement in the oral cavity), making no indication in sound which direction I'm moving to, and keeping my air as consistent as possible. So far this has been pretty effective, my lip slurs for the most part sound pretty good if they're from one partial to the next, but when I skip partials is where the problem lies, am I going about lip slurs the wrong way?

Manny Laureano

MB,

I wrote a post to Rogerio (I think) who was having a problem with that and it was extensive. PM him and see if he can find that. I only mention it because he said he was having reasonable success with my Rx.

Good luck,

ML

trumpetmike

An exercise I use on a daily basis, in my own playing, and one which I use with my better students is smething that was taught to me as bouncing chromatics.
The idea is that you start off by slurring a small interval (C, C#, C), then you ascend through the chromatics (C, C#, C, D, C, D#, C, E, C, F, C, F#, C, G etc) - the aim is to keep every slur as smooth and even as the previous one.
My general advice is to keep it slow and steady. If you get to an interval that is problematic, go back a few notes - to where it last sounded easy.