back to Trumpet Lessons                  Frequenty Asked Questions                           

Here I will discuss some common problems, and will also answer any questions that you email to me.

I am having a hard time articulating the way you describe.  How do I make it feel easy and natural?

     Start off by playing a long tone.  Once you have the sound started take the tip of the tongue and tickle the roof of your mouth, making sure that the tongue stays relaxed and that you maintain good airflow.  Do the same thing several more times, but now touching the back of your bottom teeth, your molars, and your cheeks (this should also give you an idea of how far apart your teeth should be).  None of this should feel like your tongue is working hard.  With this same approach, touch the tip of your tongue to the bottom tip of your top teeth, and make sure that you do not let your air stop.  This should stop the sound, but if you are keeping your tongue relaxed, your airsteam should knock your tongue out of the way after your articulation.  Now just make sure that you are moving your tongue quickly, and you should now be able to do a clean, relaxed articulation.  For more staccato notes, just leave your tongue at your teeth longer.

How do you do slurs that span wide intervals?

      There are a few important things to keep in mind. First, make sure that your air never stops; you want to blow between the notes and always make sure that you are playing with your best possible sound. You also want to make sure that you play the first note its full value without starting to adjust at any point in the note. It is a common tendency to make little adjustments before the actual slur, but these will kill you. Make the slur instantaneous. This is something that will take care of itself if you listen very closely to your tone at all times. If you do these things you will find that you only need a very slight change in embouchure to achieve an octave slur. As far as your embouchure goes, I find it helpful to think about pulling my lips apart to ascend. This is not because you actually want your lips to come apart, but because you already have a habit of closing your lips to ascend, so you don't have to worry about that part. What you do have to worry about is your closing lips completely cutting off the air, so when you feel like you are pulling your lips apart, you are really just balancing the forces in your lips to keep from shutting completely. To descend, a common problem is backing off of the air too much.  You want to maintain an steady airflow, and keep the intensity up as you slur down.  Don't worry, it all feels less complicated than it sounds.

How do you double tongue? 

     When you double or triple tongue, you are utilizing two parts of your tongue to articulate.  It is generally taught that the articulations are "tu" (a normal single tongue) and "ku", so that a series of double-tongued notes would be articulated tu-ku-tu-ku.  It is the "ku" that gives people trouble, but it does not have to.  The problem comes when you take the "ku" too literally and actually articulate as though you are saying "ku".  This makes an articulation that is in or near the throat, and tends to be tense and it closes off the inside of the mouth.  What you want to do is move your "ku" as far forward as possible so that you are using closer to the middle of your tongue and striking on the roof of your mouth.   I try to aim my "ku" at my front teeth.  It is important to keep the mouth open, the airsteam steady, and the tongue relaxed.  The excercises in the Arban book are good ones to practice.  

     Many people have problems double tonguing up high.  These problems are usually associated with at least one of the following (many times all three): the inside of the mouth closes too much as you ascend, the tongue pulls back and up in the mouth, and the tongue gets tense.  Many people see a big benefit by just keeping their mouth more open.  Aim your tongue forward and low.  For the tension, make sure that you start off relaxed, which I cover in my How to Play Trumpet page. 

I do everything you say, but I don't sound good.  What's wrong?

     Within every method of playing there are a wide range of possible outcomes, with some being desirable, and some not.  My method, and almost every other method is designed to just give you the tools you need to achieve the sound that you want.  The most important aspect of getting the sound that you want is listening.  That means first listening to great players so that you have a concept of what a great trumpet sound is.  Then when you play, your focus is on listening vey intently on your sound and focusing on making it sound the way you want it to sound.  You can't just blow and hope that you sound like Bud Herseth.  You have to hear him when you play (or whatever it is you want to sound like).  The thing that separates the great players from everyone else is that not only can they play all the right notes, but that it is always in the context of focusing on making a beautiful sound.  It does not just happen.  

It seems like everyone I talk to tells me a different way to play.  How do I know who is right?

     Nobody can tell you the one right way to play because there isn't just one right way.  All I try to tell you is what works well for me and what works well for my students, but there are some seemingly drastically different methods out there that also work well for many people.  A good method is simply one that works for you.  There are some things that apply virtually all good methods, though.  First of all, the trumpet requires steady airflow.  It doesn't matter what you do with you lips or you tongue if you don't have constant and steady air.  Make sure you always fell it moving through your lips.  You also want to use as little effort as possible, which means that you need to rid your playing of extraneous jaw and lip movement.  Steady airflow through relaxed lips requires very little effort to change notes.  For an example of what is possible watch the video in the Listening Room of Matthias Hofs playing with the German Brass.  If you are working more than him when you play you are working too much.  Finally, a good method is simply a means to an end, which is making music.  Anything that you have to do that does not lead to making better music is taking you in the wrong direction.

I'm a little unclear about your statement One of the most common problems that I see, and one that I struggled with for years is the tendency to pull the tongue back and/or arch the back of the tongue as you ascend. Think forward and low in all ranges. The tongue is just for articulation; pitch is determined solely by air and embouchure, as it is just exactly the opposite approach to playing in the high register that I was taught. I don't quite understand how you can compress the air sufficiently to play in the higher register without arching the back of the tongue. My experience has been that the higher notes come easier by arching the tongue and when I have failed to do this I end up relying on a strong arm approach.

      When I wrote that, I would have told you that the air compression from the tongue is simply unneccesarry, because if the air is steady and relaxed, it takes very little lip manipulation to change range.  So, arching the tongue may help with range, but to the detriment of a better sounding approach.  I did some experimenting though, and realized that arching the tongue actually does nothing for range.  The reason that arching the tongue increases range because of other things that happen when the tongue is arched; the corners of the lips come together and the teeth close.  If you arch your tongue but do not allow your lips or teeth to do anything, nothing will happen.  You should be able to move your lips the same way without arching you tongue, and since that was what was increasing your range anyway, it should not be a difficult transition.  The hardest part of the transition will be that since you will not be interrupting the airsteam with the tongue, it will take much less effort to play.

 I have been playing for 38 yrs. I can triple tongue but never got double tonguing down. When I try to double tongue I get tongue tied. Any suggestions? Any tricks to make it click? Or just keep practicing slowly and stressing the Ka syllable?

     I think that it might help to stop stressing the Ka syllable.  I find that what cleans up many people's multiple tonguing is to accent the "tu"s.  This is something that usually helps people that get tongue tied going from double tonguing to triple tonguing.  Have a metronome going on each "tu" concentrating on articulating with the metronome and just let the "ku" happen in between.  I also think that it is very important to hear how it should sound while you are playing so that it does not seem like randomly alternating syllables.