Jay Bertolet wrote:... manipulation of the airstream with tongue placement is unnecessary if you're managing your embouchure aperture properly.
I don't agree with this. Not adjusting your oral cavity to the range you are playing in is like trying to jam a 4 inch block in a 2 inch hole.
Adjusting the size/shape of the oral cavity to accommodate range or desired timbre is not the same as manipulating the airstream with tongue placement.
Yes it is, exact same thing. I've read your comment about twenty times now and I am still having trouble understanding how you could find a difference and see no correlation between these two particular ideas.
Jay Bertolet wrote:It just goes to show that there are plenty of ways to skin the proverbial cat. Will, if you've found an effective method for you, that's great. To me, the method I've outlined makes sense, and it works for me and my students. Changing the oral cavity will change the quality of your sound. I haven't found any way to avoid that. Therefore, if you're changing your oral cavity as you change ranges, you're also changing the quality of your sound. This is a bad thing in today's world of spotless, consistent audition playing. That's why I teach the technique I describe.
I understand your point and actually, I think we are achieving similar results through different means. By controlling the embouchure aperture, you are producing the very same effect that you described in your building analogy. By making that aperture smaller, you are increasing the airspeed. Of course, the trick is to do so without using too much physicality that might make your embouchure less responsive.Also, by not changing the oral cavity, you are (hopefully!) keeping your sound consistent throughout the ranges of the instrument.
We probably should have discussed this point in the embouchure mechanics thread we had going a while back. It certainly is relevant to that discussion. In any event, the important thing is to find a method that makes sense and works for you.
Hey Jay,
Regarding Sound quality between registers:
Not to open a pandoras box on sound, but there are many factors that influence sound; Sound quality is sculpted with the oral cavity/jaw/throat, embouchure/aperture and air stream. The oral cavity is ALWAYS changing throughout our registers (ex. play a low Bb then play a high Bb). If you have the exact same oral cavity in every range you just will not be as efficient and productive with your air, sound, range and energy as possible. Ideally, to keep sound quality consistent, we have to be able to have the control enough to maintain the integrity of all of the particular factors and shapes that influence your desired sound throughout the registers, including all of the ever-changing mouth positions.
With that said, I do not believe changing mouth positions detracts from our quality of sound but does quite the opposite, makes our sound more efficient and productive.
It is exactly the myriad factors that effect our sound that is the focus of my logic in embouchure mechanics. With so many variables playing a role, and knowing that changing any of them will change our sound to some degree, it becomes really important to minimize the changes as much as one can if one wants to produce the most consistent product on the horn.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I appreciate the opportunity to learn new perspectives. Great discussion!
My opinion for what it's worth...
Principal Tuba - Miami Symphony, Kravis Pops
Tuba/Euphonium Instructor - Florida International University,
Broward College, Miami Summer Music Festival
jsmn4vu wrote:Adjusting the size/shape of the oral cavity to accommodate range or desired timbre is not the same as manipulating the airstream with tongue placement.
Yes it is, exact same thing. I've read your comment about twenty times now and I am still having trouble understanding how you could find a difference and see no correlation between these two particular ideas.
My comment was excessively brief, a habitual thing, I'm afraid.
Try this, then: even when the mechanics are the same (as they might or might not be), the motivation is what's different.
John in Atlanta
Eastman EBC632
Wisemann DTU-510
Conn 88H
Bach Strad LT16M
1972 King 3B
1955 Olds Ambassador trombone
King Flugabone
Tom McCaslin gave an excellent master class on upper range expansion at the recent Army Workshop. I looked to see if it was recorded for download, but I only see live streaming links, so I don't know if recordings will be posted in the future.
In any case, if I can summarize what he said, he talked about air, aperture, and direction. There was no pivot, which people think of as changing the angle of the mouthpiece with respect to the face. But there was a change in the angle of the airstream. For the high range, he showed how the airstream transitions to a downward direction. Now, how does one do that? By tucking in their lower lip, as Roger Lewis suggests. When Tom was talking, a closeup demonstration of Roger's embouchure (from last year) was in my mind--these two descriptions are absolutely consistent.
Doing this has two effects: 1.) As Roger describes, it brings to bear the stiffer part of the lip, and more stiffness means higher frequencies of vibration. And 2.) it reduces the aperture.
When people depend on "embouchure strength", they usually put that in practice by pulling their lips out of the mouthpiece--the dreaded "smile" embouchure. This is seen, incorrectly, as a strategy for reducing aperture. But it also undermines sound--sound is better when there is more, rather than less lip vibrating in the mouthpiece. My sound has improved tremendously by thinking of the role of embouchure as pushing more lip into the mouthpiece.
Now, if I'm pushing more lip into the mouthpiece, and also tucking in the lower lip, my teeth had better be maintaining a sizable gap, or there won't be any place for that fat lip to go. Thus, trying to reduce aperture by reducing oral cavity is a dead end--and a dead end I've explored fully over the years. So, I'm with Jay and JC on that one. Incidentally, if the teeth are far apart, using high pressure becomes really difficult, so that crutch for squeezing out a high note is also a dead end. Aperture is controlled at the lips, not at the teeth or tongue.
The advice of playing low notes to improve upper register is aimed at correcting flawed fundamentals. Tom talked about air, and his instruction on that mirrored Jacobs: Breathe through the lips. If we seek the sensation of much air passing the lips as we inhale and exhale, everything else will do what it is supposed to do without micromanagement from the conscious part of our brain. If we are not moving air, everything suffers, including the high range. Playing low is a way to train us to move air, perhaps, or at least expose the fact that we are not doing so, but it is not a way to teach the embouchure action that happens when we play high. If we are already moving air appropriately, playing low is NOT a way to learn to play high. Only playing high will teach us to play high. (When I play low, which I do poorly, I find that I must lower my jaw, but that is not the principal action. It is a byproduct of projecting my lower lip out--the opposite of what we do when playing high.)
Now, to Tom's exercises. I have only implemented the first of these, and he described several. I'll let others add those. The first one is to start on a the top note of the tuning scale (Bb or C on the staff for contrabass tubas), and slur up an octave and then back down. The intention is to hit every partial on the way up and back down. The only way to hit all those partials is to maintain a smooth, and maybe even increasing, air flow, as we tuck in the lower lip going up and project it back out coming back down. If we cheat by trying to increase air speed behind the lips (using teeth, tongue, whatever), we will struggle to fuel the buzz sufficeintly to smoothly slide through all the intermediate partials. The trip up takes about a beat, and the trip back down about a beat, but we should hear all the partials in both directions as a validation the we are using air properly and controlling the aperture at the lips and not further back.
Then, we do it again, up a half step. No fingering takes place during these, of course. We repeat these octave slurs, going up in half steps, until we top out, and then come back down.
With this exercise, I can routinely work my way up to a double-high Bb. Does that mean I have command of all the notes up there? Nope, of course not. But as I improve, it will go higher, and maybe by the time I get to the triple-high F above that, the octave above the staff will attain real solidity. (I can play that high normally, as long as I don't have to pick pitches out of the air.) Consistency--I now do some of this in every practice session.
Much of my difficulty in nailing notes in the upper register has more to do with hearing them and buzz accuracy than with the sheer ability to make the note. That's where Tom's other exercises came in. There was one that he got from Roger Bobo that worked up and down using really unconventional intervals, as a means of training accuracy. I'm not ready for that one, yet. But I do play music that high, routinely.
By the way, Tom started his class with examples of current literature that goes very high--well above middle C and in some cases above the octave above middle C. He said that we all have a point above which we get scared of our ability to make the note, and he justified learning to play higher as a means of eliminating that one barrier to playing whatever music we want to put on the stand. That resonated with me, and I'm a second-rate amateur. I don't know why a music educator should care less about this than I do.
