Danger ! Danger- Do Not Use………..

Slide Creams are all alike…..Right? No About a month ago I noticed that my flugle horn’s tuning slide was working a little hard and because I had just lubricated my trombone slide with some Yamaha Slide Cream, I thought it wise to lubricate my flugle horn’s tuning slide before I put my equipment away. Bad decision. When I tuned with our organist for a church service this morning, I found that the tuning slide in my recently lubricated flugle horn could not be budged. No matter what I did, I could not move the slide. When I got home, I…

Revisiting Room Sound Insulation Ideas

From time to time we receive material from our readers which needs to be included on our site and this issue includes a fine example of contributing thoughts and helpful information from our good friend Bailey Chauner from Seattle, Washington. In previous posts we have addressed the importance of sound insulating your practice area in order to make life more pleasant for your family and neighbors. I think you will find Bailey’s ideas to be very helpful and for that reason we have included his contribution today. The Science of Soundproofing: Simple Tips for the Trumpeter’s Home Whether you’re a…

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5 Areas Where Most Trumpet Players Go Wrong- #3 Tonguing

The tongue servers more than one function when playing a brass instrument as indicated below- The tongue acts as a valve to open and control the air flow from the lunges to the lips. The tongue affects the final tone quality or timbre of the sound of the instrument. The tongue, through raising and lowering in the mouth cavity controls the velocity of the exiting air stream which affects the various ranges one performs in. The tongue facilitates rearticulating of rapidly tongued notes. The tongue can affect styling changes such as recognizable jazz articulation. The tongue is the only part…

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Using Meditation To Advance Your Chordal Recognition Ability.

Have you ever wanted to improve your ability to recognize notes within a chord? be able to hear a chord and distinguish its name and function? spend some quality time relaxing in an easy chair? block out the noise, stress and commotion of your daily lives? leave the noise and tension of the world around you and visit a more stress free environment with nothing but slow moving thoughts of pleasant places? If you vote for the affirmative on any or all of these conditions, I have just the place for you to visit.

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Starting Over…..again. Part 2

The problem I am currently facing is that the room I am now practicing in does not contain the noise (volume) at which I practice. As mentioned in our first post on this subject, the large windows are wonderful for viewing my front yard but fall far short for containing my practicing which became evident from a comment my new neighbor made when we first moved in. My first thought was to rummage through our still packed boxes to find my practice mutes. Nothing does more for reducing the sound in a small room than a good practice mute. And…

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New Flow Studies Material- Part II

If you have played through my material from my last post, some may find the tempi too fast. If you like the concept and would like a slower tempo, I suggest that you read an earlier post called “Using Technology to Improve Your Trumpet Playing- Using an Audio Recorder” where I describe how you can download a simple and free app. which will enable you to do your own recordings. When comparing my exercises with Mr. Cichowicz’s etude on page 9 of his booklet, you can see a strong similarity. Obviously his material stressed long flowing lines with constant slurs.…

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Using Technology to Improve Your Trumpet Playing- Using an oscilloscope

Visualizing Your Sound Many times I am asked , “Who do you think has the best trumpet sound?” Some would say Clifford Brown, some would offer the name Maurice André, Bud Herseth or “Bix” Beiderbecke. Everyone has an opinion but the real question should be, “Why do they have the sound we strive for”? Some say the secret to a good tone quality lies in the equipment used and some believe that the resonating chamber in each person is the reason. Whatever the reason and whoever you are speaking of, one thing is a known fact, through technology, we can…

Brass Players Obsession To Find And Keep “The Sound”

We will begin by replacing the word “sound” with the definitions “tone quality/color” or “timbre”. When approaching something as complex as a brass player’s concept of his/her “sound” we must first set accurate parameters for this discussion. Wikipedia “In music, timbre (/ˈtæmbər/ TAM-bər, also known as tone color or tone quality from psychoacoustics) is the quality of a musical note, sound, or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments”. Now; on to the topic which will occupy the next series of posts from your humble correspondent.…

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The Sound Check

Every commercial musician has gone through this ritual before a show and no one has ever portrayed this tedious practice better than this. Thanks Paul for the heads up. Enjoy!

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