iainmcl

I'm currently teaching 2 students at a tertiary music school (performance jazz) here in New Zealand. 1 of them I've been having a lot of trouble with.
He puffs his cheeks when he plays!
He's only 19 and hadn't really been well schooled in the basics ie: long-tones, flexibilities, and sound production. I told both students that I wasn't there to teach them jazz, but to teach them to play the Trumpet. They get enough of that from their other classes...although we do listen to a lot of Clark Terry.

So, he's been slowly responding to the flexibility studies we've been through, but he still puffs his cheeks, leaking a little air as well. He plays a Bobby Shew Yamaha setup (horn + mpc) and his sound is kinda.....blatty. He doesn't play loud, but it doesn't have a core to it. IMHO I think that setup is one that he should have graduated to after working on a more generic range, but I don't think it's the only thing that may be holding him back.
He practices a lot, but it doesn't seem to be getting him very far. He's 2nd year and I'd hate to fail him for his chosen instrument, but I may have no choice.
Any thoughts/exercises would be appreciated. I'm near the end of my ideas

Thanks,

Iain >-iii-

ecarroll

Iain,

Thanks for posting this. I'm sure others will comment as well.

I'd recommend that you take him off the trumpet for a bit and concentrate on playing the mouthpiece alone, guessing from afar (very!) that he will struggle with this at first. I suspect that he's able to half get away with weak corners due to the natural resistance of the horn. Asking him to set his corners before he buzzes the mouthpiece and then buzzing long tones might help.

You might supplement this later with Caruso exercises.

Watching here with interest,
EC

Vulgano Brother

While we didn't consider it puffing, all of Gerald Webster's students did allow their cheeks to "relax" in the lower register. It looks pretty cool, actually.

Above C in the staff, however, those relaxed cheeks will give a kind of bugle quality to the sound. Not cool at all.

I do like Ed's suggestion of the mouthpiece alone, and while I'm not a huge mouthpiece freak, the Shew model isn't ideal for all styles (unless you are Bobby Shew, playing Bobby Shew gigs!)

On occasion, Webster would confuse our chops by making us play a bunch of different mouthpiece sizes one after the other--bam!

I don't know if he did that for just the fun of it (he loved getting inside our heads and staying there!), but there is some merit to learning that we buzz our lips, and the container we do it into doesn't matter that much.

If you can get your student to do a good clean buzz (no overlapping lips or any of the cheating stuff), without the mouthpiece, that might help too. Way better than failing someone.

Good luck!

__________________
www.letsbuildhope.org

bigtiny

I think Ed's suggestion is a good one. When he's back on the horn, I'd get him doing lip slurs probably in intervals of 2nds to 5ths very slowly and make sure he concentrates on not puffing and not letting the corners of his embochure loosen more than normal. if you have to, spend a few lessons, doing nothing but this and long tones (same thing about the cheeks and corners) to drill it into his head.

I'm not one to subscribe to a lot of the standard thought about trumpet playing. I think if a player does something really weird, but can still function that way, then it's probably okay in the long run. I mean, I know it's a cliche, but Dizzy played pretty good with puffed cheeks. However, it sounds like the additional symptom of the leaky corners means that your student just hasn't correctly developed his embochure and will probably never develop a decent sound this way....good luck.

Pedal C

I was also going to suggest some mouthpiece playing, but everyone else beat me to it! I've used that with some students and it's always worked pretty well. I'd suggest simple tunes and not technical excersizes and start out slurring and add a little articluation when he can play a tune without puffing. I don't know why, but people often stop puffing if they just play the mpc. Maybe since there isn't any real "tone quality" to worry about, they just blow and let the chops react to the air...

__________________
"The oboe's A is to make sure we still play it 1 and 2" - Bud Herseth

"One way or another, every patient stops bleeding." - Scrubs

iainmcl

Hmmm, I like the sound of these suggestions. It's a performance course, so I can't take him away from the Trumpet entirely, but I think will be able to focus on a few things such as mpc buzzing.
I have the Caruso book buried somewhere in my room too. I'll break it out and have a read. Any particular exercises from that, or just start at the front?

__________________
Zeus Olympus 1000ABL
Courtois Flugel (Older model)
GR 66M Fatboy mpc - Trumpet
GR 66FL Chase Sanborn model - Flugel

misty.sj

I am not a teacher by any stretch, but when I started trumpet in 7th grade I had trouble with this. My band director helped me by having me make sure I could feel my teeth with my cheeks. Not that I was sucking my cheeks in, but that there wasn't space there. I had to do scales and scales like that! I broke myself of it to the point that I can't store air in my cheeks for circular breathing now, though I have tried and tried to learn it.

__________________
--Misty
Hit it hard, and wish it well. -- Claude Gordon

1925(?) Conn Cavalier Bb (s/n 14142)
2007 Barrington Bb student trumpet

iainmcl

Thanks for that. I was thinking of something along those lines too. His lesson is tomorrow, so I'll see how it goes.
BTW: I'm not really a teacher either. I'm only in this position, subbing for a friend of mine who is in NY doing his Masters. I have been playing professionally for the last 12 years though, so I've got some "real-life" and gigging experience to share though.

__________________
Zeus Olympus 1000ABL
Courtois Flugel (Older model)
GR 66M Fatboy mpc - Trumpet
GR 66FL Chase Sanborn model - Flugel

ecarroll

Iain,

Have him work on the mouthpiece.

Best,
EC

mahaberio

Hi Iain,

Markus Stockhausen has five exercises from Caruso in pdf form on his website. He has his own annotations and makes it really accessible. It's really nice for people who just want some of the basics of the benefits of Caruso without getting into the who book.

Notendownload

-Matthew