Over shooting notes

[Tubadork]

Hey,
I have a student who has been over shooting after he takes a breath, mostly in the mid-register (bottom of the staff to about the top of the staff). He tenses up and then the front of the note is overshot and then it settles in. (Splee-ah) Any suggestions, I've got him to buzz (which almost seems to make it worse) breathing exercises (real simple ones, blowing out into a breath bag or balloon) slurring up to the notes in question and breath attacks etc...
Any better ideas?
Bill

[tubashaman2]

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[The Jackson]

I have this problem and I find that making sure my attack is no stronger than it has to be (as in, a very light and unobtrusive tongue) as well as making sure that my air flow is steady and straight help a lot.

[Tubaryan12]

Maybe not the case, but make sure he isn't shifting his lips on the mouthpiece when he breathes. If it doesn't happen when he breathes through his nose to take in the air shifting too much may be the problem.

[Tundratubast]

Roger Lewis and several other players method books, gives a technique to simply, start a slow warm airstream, adding intensity to the airstream until the lips begin their own buzz and forms the note. By not using any attack or tongue to initiate the note, this allows the airstream to establish the lips vibration and from the pitch in your head. Great exercise for practicing the pp/ppp entrances.

Roger, how about jumping in with an added comment here, please be more specific and knowledgeable than I, with my lame ***, amateur opinion.

[mceuph]

Bill,

try having them air play single notes, then buzz them on the mouthpiece. Try it with a metronome on at a slow pace, to help get them in a groove. I had a problem a few years ago with my high Gb's, a stuffy note on the horn. Every time I have a problem with this, I use this method and it helps.

[Tubadork]

Bill,

try having them air play single notes, then buzz them on the mouthpiece. Try it with a metronome on at a slow pace, to help get them in a groove. I had a problem a few years ago with my high Gb's, a stuffy note on the horn. Every time I have a problem with this, I use this method and it helps.

Air play? Is that breath attack?

Maybe not the case, but make sure he isn't shifting his lips on the mouthpiece when he breathes. If it doesn't happen when he breathes through his nose to take in the air shifting too much may be the problem.

Shifting lips, can you explain more? I've never heard of this.

Thanks everybody,
Keep 'em coming
Bill

[imperialbari]

If there is and ever so short holding of the breath at the end of the inhalation, the tension may lead to uncontrollable acceleration of the first part of the exhalation.

The human breathing isn’t a low tension bung cord, but one should strive to make it work that way. Breathing in rhythm or breathing in the phrase is a good way of thinking, even for “emergency” breathing, which we can’t avoid. Rather we have to plan them.

Klaus

[Matt Walters]

Bill,
Have your student play a different horn to see what happens. Prove it's not the equipment before going to great lengths to change his embrochure, articulation, and air. I was having the same problems while playing the King CC I was building. Becasue it had a shorter leadpipe than my custom built York CC, the way it was laying in my lap made the leadpipe point up towards my nose putting excess pressure on my bottom lip. That's what you do when you lean forward to help slur up. Once I repositioned the leadpipe so that the angle was more even on my embrouchure, the problem went away.
Once you prove it is not the equipment, you can go onto things like LJV and the others suggest.

[Tubaryan12]

Maybe not the case, but make sure he isn't shifting his lips on the mouthpiece when he breathes. If it doesn't happen when he breathes through his nose to take in the air shifting too much may be the problem.

Shifting lips, can you explain more? I've never heard of this.

Just a slight shift of the lips on the mouthpiece when you take in air may cause him to feel uneasy when he starts the note again and that's where the blip might come from. It happens to me whenever my upper lip doesn't quite feel right on the mouthpiece....just a hair off, if you will.

My worse fracked note ever in a performance was actually the 3rd note I played because I shifted the horn in my lap because it didn't feel "quite right". I put my lips back on the mouthpiece, wasn't quite where I wanted them, and the rest is recorded history.

[MileMarkerZero]

What the student is doing (letting the air out in the same way that it comes out of a balloon when released) seems like the "natural" way to exhale. Stopping that from happening (and exhaling with an unnaturally even air stream) seems to me to be an "unnatural" way to exhale.

Demonstrating a normal exhale and an abnormal exhale (you know...the abnormal one required to play a wind instrument) seems like probably about all you can do for the person until they "get it".

That's exactly what I was thinking. Breathing is natural, but the breath we use to play the horn is decidedly UN-natural. You don't see people standing around the water cooler filling their lungs in a fraction of a second and exhaling steadily over a period of 5-30 seconds.

But there might be a couple of other things at work, too. The first one that comes to my mind is, how do the corners of his embouchure look? They should come set a fraction of a second before the note is sounded. If there is any laxness (or over-tension) there, it's going to encourage fracks - even overshooting.

The way I would approach it (and you don't know me from Adam and I've never seen your student play, so take it for what it's worth to you) is to have him take a full breath. Fill up completely. Then play the note around a mf. Have him hold it with a good sound and notice what his air is doing and what his embouchure is doing. Now have him take a full breath and attack the mote mp and hold it. Once he can do that, move on to quarter notes, tongued, at about MM=72, also mp. Then increase the dynamic.

I know that paying attention to the "feel" of playing the note flies in the face of Mr. Jacobs entreaty to play by sound and not feel; don't think too much. However, you have to get to the point that you can do that without thinking about HOW you produce the sound you want to hear. Make sense? He has to get to the point that he feels exactly how much tension needs to be in the embouchure and how his air needs to be moving before he can do it without thinking about it.

Also, you mention that he "tenses up" and overshoots the note. The ONLY tension there can be is in the corners of the mouth, creating the proper tension of the lips for the given pitch. ANY other tension (shoulders coming up, throat constricting, etc.) is usually counter-productive.

[Roger Lewis]

Just something to look at, but I find that when a student is overshooting notes it's a sign that the air is too strong. Have him back off a little on the exhalation and it should settle in. But, then follow LJV's recommendation and learn to control it. Find the point where it doesn't happen and then go one notch further until you find the critical mass point.

The one thing many of us do not realize is that there is a complex matrix that we learn that is probably the hardest thing we encounter. If you play a note at ppp you have a specific type of air and oral cavity setting and attack that you use. At fff it is completely different, as it is at just about every step in between those extreme dynamics. There are about 7 different settings per note, based on the dynamic being played. If you have a 3 octave range that's 37 notes each with 7 settings for a grand total of 259 different settings that need to become instinct. That's a lot to get your head around.

Usually I aplaud my students when they miss a note on the high side as it is a sign that their air is working well. When they miss a note on the low side, then we have a little chat.