Free Buzzing?

[imperialbari]

I do most of my buzzing on mouthpieces to make the lips get the feel of the rim before playing a given instrument. I don’t however dismiss free buzzing. I even have attempted to play simple tunes in free buzzing.

There is as you say an element of making oneself aware about lip activities, but aside of demanding the lip muscles work in a dedicated way, I think the most important effect of buzzing is the increased bloodstream in the lips.

The German baritone singer Herman Prey once told that he never warmed up before rehearsals or performances. He used some yoga style exercises to increase the blood circulation in his throat area.

The sounds in your ears may have specific medical reasons beyond my horizon. However my immediate reaction tells they are caused by the high or low pressure in your inner ear. Are your Eustachian tubes clogged? Anyway a doctor should be consulted.

Klaus

[Ken Herrick]

From my direct experience of studying with Jake, I would say he definitely disapproved of "free buzzing" as a form of practice. About all I would ever use it for would be on a really cold day, for a couple seconds only, to loosen the lips a bit when they are half frozen. Over use of free buzzing can lead to problems as the muscles just aren't working as they do in a properly formed embouchure with a "rim" defining its boundries. I think the extra long tone practice would be the source of improvement in ones playing.

Jake's use of the "practice rim" was mainly as a visual aid rather than a real "practice" tool.

What he did strongly advocate was practice with the mouthpiece. The prime goal was to build the mental and physical links. The natural tendency is to let the horn play the player, ie to drive pitch control. The goal of mouthpiece practice is to turn the lips into "external vocal chords" with the players pitch sense directing the embouchure to work at the correct tension to produce a given pitch in response to air passing in between the lips. It comes down to literally "singing" with the lips rather than the vocal chords. This is the essence of "song & wind". Jake said to practice playing any music and especially the hard bits on the mp so that when you played on the instrument you were "playing your mental recording with the instrument acting as an amplifier". It is amazing how many tuning problems are solved by mp practice.

His advice was to have a mouthpiece with you as often as possible and perform on it as often as possible, such as when walking, or waiting for a traffic light to change. His directive was "become a mouthpiece virtuoso"!

This makes me think Rick Denny could easily improve the standard of tuba playing by programming traffic control systems to force all tuba players to spend more time at red lights

[Ken Herrick]

Hey, Joe, what would you do while running in a three legged race?

A lot of things can be practiced away from the horn or even mouthpiece. Double and triple tongueing are a couple. Another good one is to actually sing as it helps build one's pitch sense though it might not be adviseable while scuba diving.

I remember the first time the Northwestern Uni marching band tried a drill to "Bluesette". A LOT of people could not march two steps to 3 beat music.

[MaryAnn]

It's a separate skill from playing an instrument; zero resistance. I think that if you wanted to get a better idea of whether you can nail the exact pitch with your chops, without help from the instrument in forcing the buzzed pitch into an existing slot, that free buzzing can be of use.

I can play entire tunes with free buzzing, but it doesn't help me play my brass better. Right now I'm still trying to learn to incorporate some new concepts into my embouchure using free buzzing, in the hopes of some day being able to play horn again. We'll see.

MA