Welcome to Lesson 5.

STEP 5 - The Trumpet

Put the tuning slide back into your trumpet and put the mouthpiece into the instrument.

Exercise 5. Arnold Jacobs says that holding the instrument stimulates old habits and this is proven time and time again by students learning these exercises. Be sure to do what you have been doing in the last four exercises and happily accept any sound that comes out of the instrument. Do not attempt to play the way you always have.

Recall the feelings you have programmed into the body in the first four exercises and be sure to copy them now when blowing. If the blow doesn't feel the same as the first four exercises, then you are over exerting.

More often than not, the sound that comes out of the instrument is an ugly, loose low note below low C. That is fine. Repeat it many many times. Remember, you are reprogramming the feeling of the blow, not trying to play any particular note. If a low C or Middle G speak, well that's cool!

Pitch is determined by aperture corner tension, something we will deal with once the blow is perfected so just keep going through the 5 exercises and continually amend your belief system and reprogram your perception of how sound is made.

Once you get the feeling that you are not actually forcing your blow, changing notes is purely a matter of directing the airstream.

Most trumpet schools of thought are based on tongue position or air direction or corner tension on chop rolling etc etc etc etc. The bottom line is science is science, physics is physics and sound from a pipe is created when science and physics are at play. The physics of sound and pressure waves can be quite complicated but it is a topic we recommend you explore and there is plenty of literature around that is worth reading.

You will find top players look different when they play. The reason for this is that they have different jaw shapes, different teeth shapes, different lip shapes and thickness etc etc.....but, the physics must stay the same to create the range of notes possible.

Notice the U shape in the lower lip.

Keep that feeling in all registers, even when the aperture corners increase in tension.

As you ascend you will find UUUU occurs.

Louis Maggio used a monkey to demonstrate the idea! Players such as Wayne Bergeron attribute their success to Maggio.

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Imagine the cup of the mouthpiece is a set of shelves and you are the forklift.

Accelerator of the forklift = AIR VOLUME Lever to lift the forks = APERTURE CORNERS

Your airstream must hit a certain part of the mouthpiece to excite a particular frequency or harmonic of the trumpet.

Now lets imagine a low note is a large box that sits on the lower shelf

 

and high note is a small box that sits on a high shelf. Do you use the accelerator to lift the forks?

NO, you use the lever or aperture corners.

 

The arrows provide a good visualisation of how air direction must change.

When the air hits higher in the mouthpiece, a whirlpool or eddy effect takes place in the lower part of the mouthpiece.

The eddy has no input into sound creation and therefore has the effect of making the mouthpiece smaller

as demonstrated by the green line in the middle of the cup.

So why are there so many books, including The Only No Mystery Guide to Trumpet Mastery that talk about tongue position? In order to alter air direction, your jaw moves position, and your tongue is connected to your jaw.

Most of the schools of thought about trumpet playing are not incorrect, they just focus on one aspect of playing and disregard the others. For example, place your hand in front of your face and pivot your airstream up and down. Notice that your tongue and jaw change position and your aperture corners firm up slightly the higher the airstream goes.

The harmonic frequency that speaks on the trumpet is determined by the tension in the aperture corners. You must learn to develop the skill of changing the tension of the aperture corners without pinching down on the aperture causing an interruption to the airflow. The Only No Mystery Guide To Trumpet Mastery explains how to do this and provides a CD demonstrating ALL of the exercises.

PITCH AND VOLUME

There are too many methods around that endorse blowing harder to play higher. This is misleading! The aperture corners firm up when ascending, so to maintain volume, extra support is required.

You use the pedal or the accelerator to speed up. You use the hand lever to raise and lower the forks. No matter how hard you push your foot down, the forks won't change height - you must use the lever!

If you strain when you play higher, you are trying to defy physics. You are sending your air to the wrong place, over blowing or pinching your aperture and compressing your body too much. Double high C can feel as free as low C if you back off and not over blow what the instrument cannot handle. Your aperture corners must be set to the correct tension.

When your body is working correctly, playing trumpet can be compared to playing a guitar. Do you strum a guitar harder to change pitch? No! The note will just be louder.Your blow is the strum passing by a string and your aperture corners play the role of the string that is set to a particular tension.

Don't let your preconceived belief remain that it takes hard physical work to conquer the trumpet. Your practise needs to focus on reprogramming your belief system rather than repeating meaningless exercises over and over again. Work through The Only No Mystery Guide To Trumpet Mastery to get better results faster than you would expect, guaranteed!

We hope you have learnt from and enjoyed your 5 FREE LESSONS.

With Thanks,

Mystery to Mastery Publishing