Kevin Hilman

Hi Manny,
I've been playing through a lot of excerpts lately and I've noticed something that concerns me. I'm fairly confident on a lot of the faster, louder, technical excerpts but the slower, more lyrical 'Academic Festival Overture' is giving me grief. I'm having difficulty maintaining a nice open sound on the sustained, soft notes. At the beginning of the excerpt there is a skip from a second line g to a fourth space E and I notice a little double buzz creeps in while sustaining the e. Do you know how I might go about eliminating the double buzz?
Thanks,

Kevin Hilman

Manny Laureano

Kevin,

Keep your corners down and forward during these softer excerpts. It's easier and slightly more natural to do so for the loud tunes but when we go to play softly we tend to compress and play tighter. You are likely going to a tah-ee approach without realizing it and it's messing with your stability. Be a little more conscious during your warm up about how much you go in and out when you play with your lips. Your corners need to be stable in order to play with a consistently symphonic sound.

Think "Tooh tooooooh too too toooooh tooh, tooh toooooooooo tooh tooh toooooh..."

You'll notice almost right away that the sound is more beautiful and consistent.

ML

Kevin Hilman

Thanks Manny. I will give it a try when I practice tonight!

JackD

Manny - just want to say I tried out your "toooh" thing today. I was doing the Hindemith and some excerpts (Mahler 5 in particular) and wasn't feeling comfortable, so suddenly thought I'd give it a shot...

WOW! I don't know why, and I'm not sure how much of this was mental, but the sound seemed MUCH better! I don't think I've ever got such a full, big (and loud!) sound before. Definitely going to continue practising that one, cheers!