How To
Play Trumpet
Most importantly, listen to great trumpet
players
. You can only sound good on
trumpet if you have a good idea of what you actually want to sound like.
Get that great trumpet sound ingrained in your head and focus on that at all
times. Any time you are not thinking about playing with the best possible
sound you might as well put the horn away and find something else to
do.
Your question now is probably, "Okay, now that I know what I want to sound like, how do I go about getting a good sound?" In reality, every part of playing trumpet needs to work together for the system to function properly, and I will first explain how to do everything together. I will then break it down into three parts: breathing, tonguing, and embouchure (the formation of the muscles around the lips). Just keep in mind that the physical objective of these things is to have a relaxed and steady stream of air put the air in the trumpet into vibration. You will notice that most things that I say have to do with getting rid of unnecessary tension or constricting of the airflow. I think that the most important portion of this page is "The Beginning". Also, after "The Beginning" much of this page goes into more of a physiological explanation of playing trumpet than I generally go into with my students, and I'm almost tempted to take most of it down (my playing and teaching have changed much more dramatically since I first wrote this than the page has changed). For a better, though less structured idea of how I like to approach the trumpet please visit my blog.
The
Beginning
Start by just closing and relaxing your
lips. Without changing your lips at all just put your mouthpiece on your lips.
Doing this without doing anything to your lips is quite difficult for most
people, and I would recommend doing it in a mirror to make sure that you are not
moving or tightening. Now just let it sit there. A few seconds of this will
probably feel like a very long time, but just let yourself get comfortable
having the mouthpiece sit on your relaxed lips. Don't even think about playing
at this point. Now you are going to breath, still without thinking of playing.
With your lips firmly on the mouthpiece open your mouth (pull the chin down)and
take in a deep breath. You are not thinking of playing, so there should be no
urge to tighten the corners, pull the lips back, or anything else that you have
a tendency to do when taking a trumpet breath. The lips stay in contact with the
mouthpiece the whole time, but when you open your mouth the middle of your lips
will come apart. Do this a few times without playing. Now you will actually play
a note, and will start off exactly the same as before, so for everything up
through the end of the inhale you are not even thinking about playing trumpet.
We left off at taking a deep breath with the mouthpiece on the lips, but with
the middle of the lips parted. Before you feel like you are done with your
inhale spit the air back out. You don't have to think about blowing, forming an
embouchure, or tonguing if you just act like you are spitting something off the
end of your tongue. In that motion the air will be redirected without the
tension causing gap between inhale and exhale, your lips will focus (though not
shut), and you will articulate.
This process takes patience at the
beginning and trust at the end, but will lead to a much more relaxed approach
which will improve all aspects of your playing.
Breathing
The importance of a good breath before every
attack cannot be overstated. There are
several characteristics of a good breath:
· Breathe in rhythm. Have a pulse (hopefully the pulse of the song you are playing) going in your head before you start. Give yourself a count off, and if your entrance is on beat one, breathe on beat four. Inhale evenly for the entire beat, and exhale immediately on the downbeat. There is no time in between the inhale and the exhale. This can of course be adjusted based on tempo and location of your entrance, just make sure that you inhale all the way up to the entrance. I actually like to think about the note interrupting my inhale instead of thinking about inhaling and then playing
·
Breathe deeply, as though you have a fat PVC
pipe running from your mouth to your stomach; dont let the air stay in your
chest or throat. This should feel kind of
like a whispered haaaaa in reverse.
Try to get good expansion around your stomach and then up into your
chest.
·
Relax.
While inhaling keep your lips, tongue, neck, and chest completely
relaxed. If you are tense up during your
breath you will be tense when you play
·
Breathe evenly.
Breathe at the same rate through your entire inhale. There is a common tendency to start strong and
then back off; you will get much better results if you inhale at the same rate
all the way to your exhale. On the exhale
there is also a tendency to start strong then immediately back off. Even this out by not giving such importance to
the beginning, and then following through with your air through the remainder of
the note or phrase. It may help your
follow through to think of blowing an energized stream of
air.
· Inhale copious amounts of air. Make your breath count. Merely opening your mouth and hoping that enough air will enter will not give you enough air to play. Make sure that when you are inhaling you can actually feel the air moving, and take in a lot of it. We get the power of our exhale from our lungs being squeezed by surrounding organs, and the more full our lungs are, the easier it is to use this to our advantage.
·
Exhale
steadily and relaxed. The most important characteristic of a good
exhale is that it is steady. From the
initial attack all the way to the end of the phrase never back off the air. This means that between notes, even if you are
tonguing, your air needs to keep going as though you are just playing a long
tone. You also do not want to feel like
you are trying to cram too much air into the trumpet. The exhale should feel easy. Backing off the pressure of the exhale and
concentrating more on steadiness of air will solve many
problems.
Keep in mind
that you have known how to breathe from the time you were born. Breathing when you are playing the trumpet
should not feel very different than your normal breathing. It is more controlled, but should still feel
comfortable and natural. It is a good
idea to practice breathing as it applies to trumpet playing, and there are some
great breathing exercises to practice here.
Tonguing
Your articulation should feel completely
natural and relaxed. Whisper to and
feel how relaxed your tongue is and how you do not have to pull your tongue back
in your mouth beforehand, or in any way prep it to do this. Also notice that your tongue strikes quickly
and immediately pulls back to the bottom of your mouth just behind your bottom
teeth. Articulate exactly like this when
you play, and just make sure that you have air moving behind it. If you have trouble doing this while playing,
focus not letting there be any space between your inhale
and exhale. When
doing this, think about not allowing any air compression build up behind your tongue
at any point. The air and the tongue start together just like when you
speak. Think about pronouncing all of
your notes . You'll notice that if you put your hand in front of
your mouth and try to say "to" without any air moving it is impossible. No
matter how hard you try you cannot say "to without moving air, yet there is a
common problem in trumpet playing of the air not moving perfectly with the
tongue. Don't think of them as separate events; you are simply pronouncing a note,
which will make you unconsciously move your tongue and air simultaneously.
Many people, when playing repeated articulated notes will stop there air between the notes and pull the tongue back in preparation for the next articulation. This is something to avoid for two reasons. First, you want to always keep your air moving. This will sound more musical and will get rid of the uncertainty that is involved in restarting your air. Second, pulling the tongue back will almost always cause it to tense up; in fact, the reason many players pull their tongue back is precisely to tense it up, in order get what feels like a more secure attack. Your tongue is one of the strongest muscles in your body, and it extends back into your throat. Because of this, tension in your tongue leads to tension in your throat, which blocks the airway. Tongue tension also slows the tongue down and causes inaccuracies in attacks.
Good tonguing, like all other aspects of
trumpet playing, can only be achieved with absolutely steady air. Even in staccato passages you should feel like
you are constantly blowing, even though your tongue is actually holding the air
back in the spaces between notes (this is different than the example I
illustrated above because in this case the tongue stays forward to stop the air
and the feeling of exhaling does not stop).
Once you can get a clean articulation, it is
important to think about the different musical ways to use it (legato, staccato,
etc.). Dr.
Tom Gibson has a good approach to expanding your palette of different
articulations. You will see that he says
some things different than me. I have
found that his method of articulating (dah instead of
a whispered tu) works very well for me on trombone,
but not nearly as well on trumpet. It
would be a good idea to try both ways, but whichever way you find more effective
for you, you should still find the rest of what he says very helpful in
broadening your musical vocabulary.
Multiple tonguing will be much easier with a
relaxed tongue. Just whisper tu-ku-tu-ku and try to move the k as far forward in your
mouth as possible. Keep the consonants
light, your mouth open, and steady air. Practicing the ku
by itself is something that is often advocated, but you cant actually do a good
ku with out the tu
because the tu and the ku are part of a single fluid action with the ku that you want only possible as a reaction to the tu. If this sounds
complicated, just ignore the last sentence.
Keep in mind that all of this applies to all
ranges. 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, which brings us
to.
Embouchure
The embouchure will take care of itself if you let air move freely, articulate naturally, and above all else focus on the sound you want. I used to give a detailed explanation of how the embouchure works and would explain it to my students, but then I realized that the most dramatic embouchure changes that I take my students through (and I take all of them through one) happens without paying any attention to the embouchure at all. When you take a good inhale, and then without stopping your inhale you cleanly articulate a note without letting your lips come together and tense up, you will have a good embouchure. I figured out that bad embouchures come from trying to set up an embouchure before air is moving.
Conclusion
This all probably sounds complicated, but the
purpose of almost everything here is to make trumpet playing feel as much like
just blowing as possible. We are tempted
to do so many things that feel like they help us, but in reality only serve to
add tension or cut off the airflow, when what we want is the most relaxed and
free flowing system possible.
I will cover all other topics in FAQ, and if anything here is not clear to you or you have any other questions please do not hesitate to email me.
