Claude Gordon Brass Camp 1990 - Claude Gordon on Wind Control, Lips, and Face with Rich Hofmann

control to practice that is tied in with technique has to be. So this is where Clark comes in.
You all have the Clark books.
Now the first time to do the Clark book is not the finished product. First of all you have to go through the book and learn it.
And get the fingering and then you have to get some speed up.
Secondly, I have all the books to go through the Clark book like this.
To start off, the first study, you want to watch the dynamic markings because they're there to give the wind the power to produce.
Like you notice as it goes uphill, the dynamic marking gets louder.
So it's like that. The air does the work.
And it's also tongue level but we're not going to concentrate on that here.
That won't work anyway. Now, let's see, I got to have a horn.
I don't carry my horn anymore and I only try out for a horn I don't have one.
For about 60 years I had my horn right here no matter where I was.
Now, first of all, if you want to handle this on the right, trombones too.
On the trombone you have to hold it like it says in the grass playing book.
No, in the beginner's book.
The trombone, it has pictures there about how to hold that horn.
And do it right.
Now on the trumpet, there's two ways you can hold it.
I hate these thumb throws.
I'll throw it away.
You hold around the valve and you can hold it on top of the third like this.
Now keep the horn flat in your hand.
Don't hold it like this.
Flat in your hand.
Firm. Not like a vice but firm.
You've got to control this thing.
And if it's hanging like this, you're not going to control it.
Keep it firm.
Now there's another way you can hold it.
You can put that around there.
Sometimes that's difficult.
It makes it aching here.
But if it's easy to do it that way, it keeps it very straight and nice.
I used to hold mine that way a lot.
But then I went back to this because it was comfortable.
Firm. Flat in your hand.
Straight up and down.
Not like this.
Do you ever watch trumpet players play like this?
It looks awful, doesn't it?
And it's uncomfortable.
This arm up here.
And then if they raise this, they look like a bird going to fly.
But straight up and down.
Now the thumb on the first valve.
Not between it.
Because when it goes between, it doubles over.
On the first valve.
Under the lead pipe.
Like that.
Keep the thumb straight.
Don't let it bend.
Now when it bends, like if you get it between the two valves,
when it bends, now you're going to finger like this.
You'll never be a technician.
You'll never play clean or anything else.
That goes on all the valve instruments.
Now keep the thumb straight.
Now you don't play on the very tip like this.
On the ball of the finger.
And with that thumb under there like that,
it naturally falls right there.
Lift the finger high, clear off the valve,
and strike the valve hard.
Hard.
Otherwise, you're going to get a mushy sound.
You're not going to have a clean technique.
Same on French horn.
Get them off the valve.
Strike them hard.
They're not going to go clear down if you don't.
I see a lot of players are playing mushy
and it's not sounding good.
And one tone will be different than another.
And you'll see valves like this.
Instead of being down, some of them will be up a little bit.
Get them down.
Lift them high.
Now that's the fastest way to finger.
Any technician that ever talked will tell you the same thing.
Get them up.
There's some schools of thought where they say
don't leave them right on the valve.
Never are you going to have a clean technique that way.
You don't push them down.
Raise your fingers.
Strike them down.
So when you do the clerk,
they're going to be clean.
Rich, your fingers working?
Okay.
Turn sideways.
You don't have to do it a lot of times.
Turn sideways.
This is the best way so they can see those fingers.
Now, see, the point I want to bring out is those fingers.
See how they come up?
Now, if you tried to hold them on the valve,
you could never finger like that.
I didn't count them.
How tall was it?
About 20.
Alright, now, once you get the technique going,
after you've been through the whole book once,
what I recommend is the first month,
tongue them, ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta,
which came on if I.
Or the first week, the second week,
wait, K-Tone it. K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K. The third week, you double tone it. The fourth
week, slur it. That way you get the development of it and you're doing it fairly easy by that
time. If you have the new Red Book, ignore the text. It's incorrect. Some of it might sound the
same, but it's not what the clerk had in there originally. All right, now then, you do the
etude also with the same models. Take as many glances as you need, keep the chest up. The second
month, go on to number two. Now, they have alternate fingers, which are very vital and
you should use them. I believe when Dave's class, he will give you those fingers. You'll have more
time. And then you go on to the entire book that way, so that by the nine months, you'll be through
the first nine studies. Now, you're ready to go back and do it again. Now, the only thing you've
gained then, you've got your fingers working, you're holding your heart. You can play the studies
without too many minutes, but you haven't any speed yet. Now, you go back to second time through
the book. Now, we start working on wind control. Each exercise, like we'll use the first study for
now, four repeats in one breath. Now, you've got your chest up and you're playing fairly light on
the low notes. It's a little crescendo. You can handle it four times in one breath. What do you do by 20 then?
When Rich practices this all the time, he's up to 50 some repeats. Now, that's repeats in one breath,
four times. Chest up all the time. Try to play easily. And you pick up the tempo gradually,
don't try and do it all at once. Now, as you're picking up the breath control, just do it as
Rick also. Okay? All right. Now then, when you get into the second study, again, you'll start out,
you might get it twice in one breath, and then you'll keep collapsing. But you work for four times in one
breath. Now, it only goes to middle C in the book. You keep going up, make a DS, back to D flat,
and play an octave up until you get to high C. Now, you go on to the third study. Now, you've got
alternates again. Third on the low E's, and this is developing the fingers as well as the wind
control. Because the two are in a lot. Unless you have some technique, you're not going to have any
wind control. And you get the wind control out of Clark's book. It's just the greatest for that. Four
times in one breath is what you're working for. Then you go on, you know, we're on the third study,
two times in one breath. Just as Rick. The fourth study, the first time on the wind control, just go
once through, because that's pretty long. Then you work it up, because you get it with the repeat.
And so on through the whole book. Mark your alternate fingers in. Now, if you don't get them all in
systematic approach, in one of the early lessons, it'll give the alternate fingers on the clock. And
so then you can write them in. Now, alternate fingers don't go indiscriminately. You don't use
third all the time. Because it only works well in certain situations. Like if you're going top to
go F on the top line, you go F, E, F. One and two on the E would be by far the best. That gets fast.
F, E, F open on E is clumsy. And it doesn't sound good. But coming down, if you go F, E, D, you would not be one and two on E.
Because you're going to stumble every time. F, E, D is no good. It's F, E, D. But if you go F, E, F, then one and two. And there are situations like that.
Now, if you're working, which we are on fingers, and you're going like on the fourth study, you go D, E, D, E, D, E, dotty, dotty, dotty, dotty, dotty, dotty, dotty, dotty.
You would not go dotty, dotty, dotty, dotty, dotty, dotty. You're not developing anything. But if you go D, E, D, E, D, E, D, E, D, E, now you're working on those back two fingers.
Understand? Let me have your horn again and I think it's better if you see it on the floor.
The tendency is to call this false fingering. It's not false. It's correct fingering.
Piano player doesn't use the same fingers on everything. The alternates, in fact, they get those concertos
and they'll work for months on just working on fingering. If they don't have correct fingering, they're not going to play that concerto.
Violinists, they don't use the same fingering on everything. But that's accepted things.
But to get the brasses to say, well, that's false fingering. You're going to get into technical problems.
You cannot play with scale fingering. There's no way that you can manipulate it.
So if you're going, on this side of the horn, if you're going D, E, D, E, D, E, that's the way you want to finger it in your practices.
Now if you're going to play a passage or something, once you develop, use anything, you're not developing this at all.
But if you go to D, E, D, E, D, E, D, E, D, E, D. Now you're going to get that finger work in there.
So when you might write your fingers in, be careful, because I've had a lot of students bring their books in and they've got that marked third.
You don't want third. You don't want this. Understand? A to B, that would be great.
Third, because now you're working this. This gets to be one of the best fingers on your hand.
Did you ever notice, did you notice Dave last night when he was playing some of those trills and things, how much that back of his hand he used?
Not this, but back here. Just to be one of the best fingers on your hand.
So learn your alternate fingers, but learn them so that they're used correctly.
Clark never marked the alternate fingers in his book. And there's a reason for that.
It's better to go to the teacher in himself and let him explain what he meant.
But get rid of that main false finger. It's not false.
French have so darn many different fingerings for everything they do that they're using alternatives all the time anyway.
So lots of times the trumpet alternates don't work for the French horn.
You'll have your own.
Okay?
Now, we can use how to practice a lot too.
Let me see, someone.
Okay?
You got your horn?
Get it and come up here.
We talked about how to practice the other day.
That's how you practice it.
Now, here's another way that we can apply this how to practice and it'll help us with the fingering and everything else.
Okay, bring your horn down and your plaque up.
Now, where's the music, right?
We had one.
Okay.
Now, see, that's a good example to follow. There's a player that's ready no matter what.
Where's your horn, man?
Now, we're going to come over here.
Let's see.
I'm going to let her sit down on this because, and you rock the wood in your practice because it's very repetitious and very tedious.
I forgot.
Okay, so let's sit here.
I'm going to take this.
Now, turn to study number two.
That's a good thing to remember too, guys.
Always have a couple or a little box of good pencils in your case, always, and a good eraser.
You never mark with ink.
I remember Carl brought that out.
I've seen guys get fired on the spot for marking a part in ink.
Like, we used to be so busy sometimes in the studios, we would send a substitute to the rehearsal to mark the parts.
And then we'd show up and do the show.
Now, if we had those parts marked wrong, we're all in trouble, especially if they make long cuts and things like that.
If they mark it in ink or someone has marked it in ink, you can't get that mark out of there.
So when the guy comes and is playing it at sight, what's he going to do?
He might follow the ink part.
So that's a no-no. You use a pencil so it can be erased.
I'm going to mark some things in here.
Okay.
Now, have you played today?
Oh, okay, that's good.
Start day now. Don't you worry about a miss.
I expect you to miss.
Starting out, tell me.
I see you have practices still, haven't you?
Remember this little boy?
Yeah, a while ago.
Okay. Let's hear that from the start.
Big, bad, chestnut.
Okay, that's just what I want.
Now, how to practice.
And this applies on all your etudes, on all your studies.
How to practice.
We're going to start at the end and work backwards.
All right, now let's take the last four notes.
And then big and strong, don't try to hold back.
Okay, big breath.
Okay, now do it again. Big breath.
All right, big breath and in.
Big breath, one more.
All right, now back up.
Have you all got the etude? Are you following it?
All right, now back up four more notes.
And just play those four to the next note.
Dee da da da dee.
Okay.
Dee da da da dee.
Dee da da da dee.
Dee da da da dee.
All right, that was four times.
Four times absolutely correct.
If you miss a note, discard it. It doesn't count.
It's got to be four correct.
Now, put those two together.
Chestnut.
Okay.
I didn't drop too much water.
Again.
Again.
And again.
All right.
Now back up another count.
F sharp to the G.
Da dee da da dee.
Four times.
Okay, now put all of those together.
Four times, correct.
Again.
Again.
Again.
One more.
All right.
And you concentrate.
You watch out the window
or see some guy walking by.
Concentrate.
I used to concentrate so hard,
my wife would call me to dinner,
I would never even hear her.
She'd have to come in and tap me on the shoulder.
I was thinking constantly what I was doing.
All right.
Now then, let's back up to the B to the F sharp.
Chestnut.
Chestnut.
Okay, now put those all together.
Four times.
Again.
One more.
Okay.
Now let's back up another one.
A to the B.
Four times. Chestnut.
Okay, now all the way up four times.
Now, look down, so now.
Okay.
That's going up.
One more.
All right, now back up another four notes.
Okay.
Great.
Breathe fast and go all the way.
Okay.
One more.
Get over to my place now.
I think you skipped
the line.
Backward.
Yeah.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Now there we go.
Okay.
And never get all upset.
Oh, I missed that. I didn't.
You're working on it.
So always keep a nice happy attitude.
But then one more.
Chestnut.
All right, now let's back up another one.
E to G sharp
and end on that thing.
Okay, now all the way.
One more.
One more.
Okay.
Now let's back up another one.
B down to G.
Not B.
B da da da da.
Again.
Good.
Now you see the minute you miss,
you throw that out because if you do it again,
you make the same miss.
If you do it again, you make the same miss.
First thing you know, you're practicing the miss.
And the miss is getting better all the time.
All the way now.
Yeah.
One more.
All right.
Now let's back up to the first one.
One time.
Chestnut.
Okay.
Okay.
All the way now.
Chestnut.
Great. You went right up to the last thing.
That's very good.
Thank you.
After a few times it gets better
and better.
And you do that every day.
You work all the way back to the front.
Very carefully.
And pretty soon it gets easy.
By the end of the week,
actually by the end of four days,
if you do a line a day,
you won't be missing a note.
Then you start speeding it up.
And the goal
on this would be you,
first of all, get to it in one breath.
The minute
you do it in one breath, try for two.
The minute
you do it twice
in one breath, you work for three.
And the minute you
do it three times in one breath, you start
working for four times in one breath.
I work it out until I can do it four times
in one breath very easily.
You can even do it more.
The goal is four times in one breath
for the whole day.
Okay?
Now if you're working in school
for a jury,
and you have pieces to prepare,
that's the way to work on it.
Then when you have to play it
for someone, you're not going to be nervous
or anything else because you know
you can do it.
I'm going to mark another finger.
I don't want to write.
Oh, I see.
Sure.
Okay?
Now you can use
that method of practice
on the exercises, too.
Thank you. That was excellent.
Now, especially
when you do a difficult finger, let me see the horn.
You get like that low A
on the
second study.
Low A
would be
it would be
da-da-dee-da-da-dee-da-da-dee-da
for practice only.
Da-da-da-dee-da-da-da-dee-dee
da-da-da-dee-da-dee-da-dee-da-da-da-da-da
third on that lower A.
That gets awkward.
But eventually
with practice and using how to practice
you can
get to it very rapidly.
Okay?
Now, that's the
technical end that you must have
on your fingers.
I go through the whole book with the student
and then we go back and start doing it
for repetitions in one breath.
And you notice the chest
must stay up.
They're not going to last at all
if that chest isn't up.
Like, you do an etude in one breath
the idea is not
to go like, suppose in the end the etude
go da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da
da-da-da-da-dee-dee-dee
it isn't the idea of
eh, scrubbing.
When you do it in one breath
it means that you end up
da-da-da-da-da-da-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee
now you're doing it in one
breath and the chest still has
to be up. Now you may not get
that for a while. Like take the fifth etude.
Now the fifth, eight, two, yeah, one, yeah, you have to do the whole page in one breath.
Tom is all right.
Tom's okay?
Mm-hmm.
Tom?
Tom, I never thought of it last night, but do we have that tape with O'Donnell as the
fifth, eight, two, one, yeah?
Paul.
I think he takes it past the book.
Paul.
Yeah, that's Paul.
Is that there?
Yeah.
Okay.
O'Donnell came in for his lesson one time.
Okay, Bob, I want to work on this now for one breath.
Let's take the fifth, eight, two.
So he turns and he looks at me and says, okay, how do you want it, slurred or tongue?
Both getting it.
Good.
So I said, okay, you want to be that way?
Let's tongue it.
So I put the tape on and he tongue the whole thing in one breath.
Very well.
Not too fast either.
It was just nice.
Incidentally, on that A-tube, there's a whole line there of top A's.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
It's the seventh line now.
Put third on all those top A's.
That's one place where it really helps you.
Now, that one is not difficult key-wise, but you're still working how to practice.
And there you start speeding up.
Okay?
If we could find that tape, I'd like to play for you.
All righty.
Any questions on that?
That's the way we work that platform.
Every A-tube in it has to be how to practice.
Plus, wherever you need words on your fingers in the studies themselves.
A lot of them get a little lazy and they don't want to do that.
That's the way to do it.
That's the way Clark, that's the way Levy, Liberati.
That's the way every one of the great technicians worked out their solos.
To show you the diligence, Clark even went further.
He had to play the solo for an audience.
While he was warming up backstage, he would play the entire solo
a half a step lower than it was written.
Then he would rest a minute and then he would play the entire solo
a half a step higher than he was going to play it.
Then when he went out and played the solo, it was a cinch.
There was nothing to it.
Those are the kind of things that the great artists went through to play flawlessly.
He told me a story one time.
He went over to England and his cornet was in the baggage department all the time.
They were on the boat for a month.
Then they get there and the sirens outside, the world's greatest cornetists.
Now, he's going to have to produce in there.
He's really on the spot.
So he gets into one of those big old English music halls, no heat, and it's cold.
There was no chance to do anything.
He had to go in.
The orchestra was there and he started playing.
So he does a cadenza and the minute he started playing, he knew he was a half a tone flat.
What he did, it was easy because of the ways he practiced.
He just played the cadenza up a half a step.
And then when he came in by the end of the cadenza, now he's warmed up.
Then he modulated down to where the orchestra was.
That is because how they practiced.
There was no situation they couldn't handle.
I think that was a wonderful story.
By the time I called him up and said that I just had a lip, I couldn't play, it was sore.
What do I do? Just go play the job, of course.
No sympathy at all.
Did you find it?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, great.
And this is O'Donnell with that.
Now, we've been through the book several times, so he really had his finger in that.
We have to rewind all the way.
You have to rewind the whole tape?
Yeah. Also, you may get a little bit of a first call if you want to say something like that.
Oh, that's all right. Sure.
You want to hear that?
Oh, sure.
Because it's 20 seconds at the beginning of the tape.
That was Mike Paulson.
I'm going to leave this with you guys, too.
Okay, now while we're waiting for that tape to rewind, does everybody understand what we were saying?
You know how to use that, how to practice.
Now, knowing how to do it, that isn't enough.
A lot of guys say, oh, yeah, I know how to do that.
You've got to do it.
That takes a little time.
And it is tedious to do it that way, but boy, the results.
It's going to save you years of practice, because you probably never would have the A2 down unless you did it that way.
Yeah.
Would all the A2s go back?
Every A2, yeah.
And you did your solos the same way.
You did it into the solos in the argument book.
And you know, those characteristic study.
How to practice.
That's why I practically know everything in there by memory, because of how to practice it.
You do it so much that it just nails it down.
Got it?
No, about halfway.
About halfway.
All right.
All right.
Now, the lip.
This is a subject that I generally won't let anyone talk about when they come into the studio on my lesson.
When they talk about the lip, I say, forget it.
I don't want to hear about it.
The lip does not play a glass instrument.
That's hard for you to comprehend, I know.
Because all your life, all you've heard is the lip.
The lip.
The lip.
If you get a strong lip, you can play high.
Not necessarily.
You can have a lip strong enough to lift that candle and not ever play above a low C.
The lip does not play the horn.
It has only one function.
And you've really got to get this through your head, because if you're thinking of that lip all the time, you're fighting yourself.
If you leave the lip alone, it'll take care of itself.
It's just natural.
The lip only vibrates.
That's all.
It vibrates.
And I don't want to ever see a student of mine buzzing on a mouthpiece.
It's the worst thing you can do.
For several reasons.
You don't play the same.
You take a mouthpiece, you don't blow the same.
Right away you start blowing like this.
It's detrimental.
It's harmful.
That's why all those gadgets like the burp and all those things are terrible.
Now then, the shape of your mouth will have a lot to do where that mouthpiece sets on your lip.
Because the lip has to vibrate.
That's where the facial muscles come in.
Now the facial muscles have to be very strong.
They'll get that way anyway if you practice right, and don't worry about it.
The facial muscles grip.
They hold the lip in place so that it will vibrate.
Not so that it'll get high notes.
So that it'll keep vibrating.
If you ever notice you get your lip too tight together, it shuts off the vibration.
So when you try to go high and you're going like this all the time, you're shutting off the vibration.
You're doing yourself harm.
Those lips are never that tight together.
In fact, when I would play, if you could watch me play when I was playing,
I bring the horn up and run the tongue into the mouthpiece like that.
I go, why?
To separate the lip so it'll vibrate.
Then you get a positive attack.
It will pow.
The lip vibrates right now.
If you don't, there we go.
See that again.
It won't vibrate.
The lip's only purpose is to vibrate.
As you go up higher, the lip does not get tighter at all.
This firms up to hold it in place.
Now, the fact that you're moving all the time,
these facial muscles are fluctuating.
Now, if you notice, every one of the players last night, I watched,
did you see how much movement there was in that face?
Did you think it would adopt?
That's fine because this is moving and it's got to get strong.
Every time the tongue moves, the jaw moves, these muscles adjust.
But you don't think about that because you wouldn't know what to do.
Let it occur naturally where nature intended it.
Leave those things alone.
Now, mouthpiece position is important.
Now, let me see, I need a mouthpiece.
Ready?
All right, mouthpiece position is important.
Let's play this first.
I'm right on the microphone.
I mean, I'm right on Bob's.
Hold on.
Yeah, she wants to do the background.
Yeah, we'll play the other Friday.
Friday, that's right.
Keep it strong.
Herbert A. Clark, etude number five, single tongued in one breath.
One breath.
That's easy.
That's easy.
You get the breath developed, fingers working, tongue, and you play it correctly.
It's easy.
Okay, that's what you're working for on breath control, those kind of things.
Now, that won't happen overnight.
I went through that and finally, when I get down towards the end,
when you start running out of breath, I would make a pencil mark.
I would never let myself end before that pencil mark.
And I would try to go one note further.
Every time I'd do it, one note further, I'd erase the old mark and put a new one.
And I'd never do it less than that.
And just by inching up like that, I'm known to the time, I finally made it to the end.
And then I got started to do it twice, the fifth they do twice in one breath.
That was slurred.
I was going awful fast.
Like that.
I noticed he didn't do it that fast, did he?
It was just nice and comfortable.
All right, now the mouthpiece.
Side to side is irrelevant.
That depends on the shape of your teeth, your mouth, or what you may play.
If you noticed last night, I played over on one side a little.
Now, I'm not clear over like that.
That's no good.
Although, I developed embouchure from here to here.
Well, not last year.
The year before, I demonstrated that.
And it's on the videotape.
I'd go from here, play across, could play anywhere on my mouth.
Sometimes that was a great advantage because I'd get tired here,
and I'd just move it over again.
And that felt kind of fresh again.
So little side to side is really not important.
Most everyone plays a little to one side or another.
Now, if the teeth are absolutely flat, you'll probably be straight.
But if one tooth is behind it, it's going to be at a little angle.
That doesn't mean anything.
Don't try to change it.
Unless it's clear over here.
That's no good.
Some schools of thought will say, you get that right in the middle.
No, not necessarily.
Right in the middle may not work good.
O'Donnell is the only student I ever had that was right there.
He was just fortunate.
All of his natural formats and everything was just even.
But that doesn't make him play any better.
But now, Arvin made a statement in his book that was incorrect.
He said the mouthpiece should be one third on the upper,
and two thirds on the lower.
No, that's terrible.
You've only got a little piece of skin vibrating.
And every time you start moving up and you get a little push on that mouthpiece,
it's going to shut it off or pinch it.
And you're going to get a little tiny sound.
That's why when you're starting out or a beginner starting out,
right away he wants to play high.
So the mouthpiece is going to go way down there,
and he's going to get that little pinch.
And it's going to sound like a high sweep.
And oh, I'm playing high.
He's not playing at all.
So that was an error.
Although when you read Arvin in the footnote,
he was not dogmatic.
If you read on a little further,
which so many don't bother to read on further,
he said at least this seems right to me.
So you see, he left area for a little work on it.
Saint Jacome was absolutely correct.
And he and Arvin were not friends at all.
They were both vying for the crown at that time.
And so they didn't like each other.
So in Saint Jacome, well, he said place the mouthpiece,
and this is correct, toward the center of the mouth.
A little to one side or the other is used by most players
with no seeming credit or discredit to their playing.
However, place it unevenly, two-thirds on the upper
and the rest on the lower.
According to all professors, except one,
this is one-third on the upper and the rest on the lower,
according to that one sole individual,
oh yeah, according to one sole individual
whom I shall not name.
So that was Saint Jacome.
That was in his original book.
And they deleted that later.
I put it back, because I think it's marvelous.
They were not friends, and they dug each other
whenever they could.
But their books are just like that in Arvin.
That was the only discrepancy.
The mouthpiece must be moist.
Never play with a dry mouthpiece.
That will hold you right to a certain point
for your whole life, and you'll never get by it.
That has to be moist.
Anything that moves has to be moist or oiled.
So keep it moist.
Set that mouthpiece right up on the top lip
so it just sits on the lower lip.
Now, you can watch some modern trumpet players
in the pictures.
You can watch Harry James play his.
It's just sat right on the lower lip.
Most of it on the upper lip.
Like that.
That's going to give you plenty of vibration surface.
You're going to have plenty of power
and control and range.
You put it down, everything is stopped.
So that's important.
Keep the mouthpiece high.
Now, that goes for all brass instruments.
If you watched Kyoshi last night,
notice that mouthpiece was right up under his nose.
A big mouthpiece should be right up there.
One of the best Dixieland trumpet wound players
I saw during my years of playing was...
I can't think of the name.
Anyway, never had a range at all.
And he came to me one time, he said,
I want to take some lessons.
I said, I'm not going to teach you.
I said, what can I teach you?
I said, you've been playing longer than I have.
He said, no.
He said, I have no range.
And you watch him play and that trumpet in my mouthpiece
was way down here.
It's got to set up.
And then you're going to have your endurance
and everything.
Now, in a systematic approach,
I wrote a circle and put arrows.
And I said, this is the way the lip grips.
It is.
If you feel like you're gripping on the mouthpiece,
forget that.
That's the way it grips.
But don't try to do it.
It'll happen anyway if you're practicing.
I just put that in the book to show you.
That's what's doing it.
Now, the lip can go this way.
You can turn down.
One side might come down.
One side go up.
Doesn't mean a thing.
The nose can pull over.
It doesn't mean anything.
That's the way your facial structure is.
Stay away from that mirror.
It'll get you in more trouble than anything.
What do you care what it looks like if you're getting results?
You got a rambling book with you today by the chair?
Turn to page 30.
When I showed you what different officers
and different facial expressions can be when you're playing,
your face can move anyway.
It's still gripping and letting loose.
Gripping and letting loose.
Now, I'm telling you how it works,
but you don't dwell on this at all.
Forget your lip.
That's the best thing I can tell you.
Pick up the horn.
Like one old timer told me, I said,
I said, pounding question, question, question.
Finally, he said, look, just pick that damn thing up and blow.
And he was pretty right.
Forget about all that I call it intellectual playing.
That's one thing that schools get into a lot
because that's a school.
But it's not going to help you play.
What do you care what you look like?
Or what do you care what muscle?
Do you think when you walk up a stair you think,
now, let me see, this muscle, I've got to do this and this,
and then I pull that leg up.
You don't think that way.
You walk.
You're made to move in a certain way.
The lip will move.
It has to.
Like Tom, stand up there on that top step.
I want you to bend it.
I have someone different.
I can't remember the name of the block.
What?
You stand up there on the top step.
I want you to come down that step.
It would be better if we had every step.
All right, once again.
Now, you come down that step.
No.
Back up.
Now, I don't want you to move a knee.
Back up.
Now, if you had ten steps in a row, it would be better.
I could demonstrate better.
Straight forward now.
Don't move a knee.
You can't do it.
It's a moving machine.
When you move, something has to move.
If we didn't have a jaw and a hinge, you couldn't play at all.
So remember, you're a moving machine the whole thing.
Get away from that mirror.
It doesn't mean anything.
All right, now on page 29 in the last plan book.
There's a letter I got from Herbert Clark when I was in high school.
Next to the last paragraph.
Who's got it?
Next to the last paragraph.
Read that very loud so we can hear it.
Right.
The lips do not play the cornet.
I didn't know what it meant at that time.
And it didn't mean much to me.
I still was lip conscious until I got down and talked to them.
Well, let me give you some pages there.
I want you to study this.
The last we studied over to wind control.
All right, so today I want you to study page 27.
Wind control.
The lips and mouthpiece placement.
The muscles of the lips and the face.
The fingers of the right hand.
Study clear over through number seven on page 33.
Now, study it.
Don't just read it.
Remember, get the sense of what it's all about.
All right, now we have the wind control and lips.
You all understand now about your lip and your mouthpiece placement.
Now, if you're playing with that mouthpiece clear down here,
I would recommend you change it.
That's going to give you a little problem.
You're going to get a little upset.
It's going to take maybe a few months.
But you can change it if you do it right.
Just curious, backing up to the comment on the Dixieland Tremont player.
Was he able to switch it?
Oh, mine?
No, the Dixieland Tremont player that came to you.
No, I told him I'm not going to mess with it.
I said, you're a good player and you've got mine this many years.
Just stay with it.
But you can change it.
I had Zig Canstel, who makes the trumpets for all of these companies.
Like, you think you're buying a different instrument, you're buying it.
They're all made in one shop.
Zig makes them all.
The man, what was the guy in the mouthpiece?
Marcinkowitz?
Yeah, Marcinkowitz, now the so-called Burbank.
Zig makes them all.
They've already been over there.
But Zig had two sons and they both played trumpet.
And he came up one day and he said, you know, I wonder if you'd take my oldest son.
I said, well, if he wants to sell it, yeah, for you, Zig, I will.
And he said, well, I went to his jury last night.
No, his senior recital.
He said, I went to his senior recital.
I said, how was it?
He said, it was a disaster.
Just a disaster.
He said, well, he said, don't worry.
He'll take care of it.
Now, this is four years later.
It's still the same.
And his senior recital was terrible.
So he came out and I said, well, we're going to have to raise it.
You're never going to play it.
I said, gee, I'm up to first chair in the USC Symphony.
And he says, I worked four years to get there.
Well, he knew the literature and all that, sure.
But he couldn't play the horn.
He said, can I still take that and change it?
I said, no.
We're going to have to quit playing for a couple of weeks.
Just put the horn under the bed and forget it.
And then we'll start all over.
He said, well, how long will it take me to change it?
I said, it'll take you three months to a year, maybe two years.
Well, he says, then I can't play in the orchestra.
I said, no.
Because every time you play, it'll go right back to where it was.
So I said, now, I'm just telling you what you're going to have to do.
Whether you do it or not is up to you.
Now, you go home and think about it very seriously.
Because once we start, you're not going to stop.
I said, you think about it very seriously.
And you let me know if you decide to go one way or the other.
The next day, he called me up and said, OK, I'm going to change it.
In three months, he was playing up to double C.
It changed that easily for him.
Someone does that.
Probably because it was so bad that it wasn't too much.
It was entirely new.
And in three months.
And he played fine from then on.
So a change is very traumatic.
I had another student that I told him he was going to Europe
with one of these band tours that the school sent to Europe.
And before that, I said, we need to get back.
I won't do it now.
When we get back, we've got to change that album.
He was over here and under.
I said, we're going to have to change.
He came back after a month gone and it was up there.
He decided to go ahead and do it anyway.
And he did it.
So the album was up here.
Do you want to or don't you?
Byron, we changed yours, didn't we?
How long did it take you?
About four months.
Yeah.
And now how does it feel?
Much better.
So when it's in the right place, you'll play better.
You've got to have a surface to vibrate.
That's the thing.
Okay.
Now let me see.
What subject did we cover here?
We did wind control, right?
Yeah.
We did technique in the Clark.
And the mouthpiece.
We'll get into that tomorrow.
The lips and mouthpiece placement.
We've done that.
Now you understand it.
There we were.
Okay.
Now be sure and study that over.
And if you have questions, now is the time to ask them.
And you've got plenty of teachers around here too to help you.
You talk about keeping the mouthpiece moist.
What do you think of gold mouthpieces?
They seem to be...
Yeah.
Gold mouthpiece, excellent.
I love gold mouthpiece.
I love to play gold.
Silver's all right, too.
But gold does feel a little softer somehow.
I can't explain that.
But it just feels softer on your mouth.
I like gold.
And then silver gets dirty quicker.
But you take a little bottom eye or something like that and it'll clean up.
Thanks, Dave.
That's brand new and you want to take care of that.
Why not?
Okay.
Now, it does have to be moist, though.
Don't fool yourself about that.
What most of us do is lick the mouthpiece.
Keep it moist all the time.
Okay.
Any questions?
Nothing?
All right.
Now, we're into tonguing a lot.
Rich?
You here?
Okay.
You got an arvin?
No.
Forget an arvin out here.
Yeah.
Get an arvin.
That's all mine.
Rich is going through arvins now again.
And he called up one day and he said,
What am I going through this dumb thing again for?
I don't like it.
I hate it.
Well, we're going to go through it.
We're going through it.
Boy, page, page, page.
Models, models, models.
Remember, all of your practicing, you work on the models.
Otherwise, you'll miss it.
The exercise as written is just one thing.
You've got to control every model that's written and make up a few more.
There's one on page 157.
There's an exercise like this.
On the second one of those exercises, there's 22 models.
Now, if you don't do 22 models, you haven't worked the exercise out.
Most will play just what's written.
That's as far as they'll go.
You must practice those models, every one of them.
Now, when you get up to where Rich is,
we'll work on triple tongue using double tongue.
So it's T K T K T K T K T K T K T K T K T K T K T K T K T K T K T K T K T K
Your double tongue in triplets.
Then you reverse it.
KTK, KTK.
So you've got the forwards and backwards.
Then you also do ttk.
Now, someone will say, well, which is the right way to tongue?
They're all the right way to tongue,
depending on what you want to use.
You have to have every one of those models
so under your fingers in your tongue
That, no matter what situation you come upon, you don't even think, what am I going to do, it just automatically comes out.
Now that takes a lot of practice.
Okay, which one do you want to do? I want you to do one of the Arvin tripletones.
I want to do the one from number seven.
Bearberry? Okay. You're going to do the whole thing or just the right?
I'll do the second variation.
Just the right?
I'll do the whole thing.
No mercy.
I know no fear of you.
Oh, you picked out a different one.
First variation.
Oh, sure did.
Sorry, Bruce.
He hasn't sold right there.
That was a piano part.
Okay.
They were smart the way they wrote it.
They were smart the way they wrote this.
Okay.
You got your Arvin's and follow that variation.
That's hard to read.
For years, I didn't know anybody that showed me how to do that.
Oh, it looks scary.
Yeah. How many of you got your Arvin's book with you?
Okay.
It's the seventh cornet solo in the back. It's on page 323.
Right.
Variation one.
And that.
Here's where it starts. What's hard.
When?
Yeah. Thanks.
It's very difficult to count or to read.
But you don't read these things in sight.
You know, you work them out.
Just like the pianists with their concertos.
It's all 64th notes.
On the next, the variation like two down the line, there's 128th note.
Like there are five lines on it.
It's 16, 32, 65.
There's no way you're going to count it.
Yeah, you just have to keep going.
Okay.
Now we're going to take a break.
Not yet.
Okay.
Yeah.
See how that turn has to coordinate with the fingers?
At first it's not going to.
With practice.
Whoa.
And you notice there's no string.
Why? Because he's playing correct.
Now let's get back one more thing if you don't mind.
No, go ahead.
Might as well be happy about it. I have no choice.
Right.
Any one of these that you want to do, I want you to give me three different models.
Okay.
Okay.
You don't mind with Ben in your stand-off.
You don't mind, man.
All right.
This is a regular triple-tonguing exercise.
I want Rich to do it for you with the models.
First of all, TTK, right?
TTK?
Okay.
Now notice how common complaint is that I can't get the K to sound like the T.
But you notice this, we're all even.
Sound like three strings up.
So that's TTK.
Rich, weigh the tongue.
Now we're going to do a model TKT, TKTKTK, TKTKTK.
So you're actually double-tonguing with this in triplets.
Can't tell any difference, can you?
Now this is, Mendez tongued everything that way.
Everything. He double-tongued everything.
He had a very slow tongue.
That's surprising, isn't it?
He didn't, he just was very discouraged with his single tongue.
He double-tongued everything.
That's why when you heard him playing those wonderful things he did,
the transition from the single to the double, you couldn't even tell it was so smooth.
Because he was double-tonguing everything.
Mendez.
Mendez.
Mendez.
Okay, now then, the other way is KTKTKT.
Just the opposite.
KTKTKT.
KTKTKT.
KTKTKT.
KTKTKT.
Now all those, in Arbus he doesn't say to do them in the different models.
But we do.
I used to spend lots of time laying in bed and not thinking of another way to do an exercise.
And of course I got that from Mendez because if they had 20 models written he'd figure out 40 models.
And it made it harder for himself all the time.
So he got so that the regular playing was as smooth as a breeze.
I used to get so mad when someone would criticize Mendez.
He was such a beautiful player.
I had one guy come up to me and say, ah, he sounds like a Mexican.
I says, of course he is a Mexican.
There's a point to criticize.
All right, now all those articulations came out of Saint-Jacques.
Saint-Jacques really went into that.
So Irons has some in his book.
He got out of Saint-Jacques.
We all got it from somewhere.
The only ones you can give credit for great thinking was Harbin and Saint-Jacques.
They started the whole thing.
Everybody just took off of that and would tie in on one thing that would help us develop like that.
Now on your application today, what are you working on Tom?
We're going to talk about working on the chorus.
You might bring out the first lesson in the data routine still.
We're going to talk a little bit about the tongue on that.
Now some people don't want to pick up and practice at this.
It looks too easy.
It's just low C to G.
But this is vital.
Do it and do all the models.
Everything has models.
We'll make sure they have them.
Yes?
I have a question on that TKT triplet.
Does every triplet TKT?
No.
It alternates.
And then the different model just starts backwards.
It starts on the second triplet.
KT, KT, KT, KT, KT, KT.
Yeah, you get so you can't think about it.
You get all mixed up.
TK, TK, TK, TK, TK, TK, TK, TK.
You can double triple tongue all the way up to double high C.
Most books will not write triple tongue in your block B.
You can only write double C.
One of the recordings I did was...
Well, Prassman's holiday was on double tongue.
There was another one.
Anyway, tongue is way up like that.
It's in one of the recordings.
I can't think of the name of it.
On the mall.
We meant that to be a commercial song.
It didn't turn out to be that way.
We thought, boy, this will be a big seller.
It didn't turn out to be that way either.
But it has some phenomenal chokes in it.
You'll get a kick out of tongue wise.
It gets easy up there.
When you're tongueing correctly, it's right there in the front.
It gets kind of fun to do that.
If you don't do it right, triple tongueing is pretty tedious to practice.
And boy, that tongue will get tired.
Very tired.
So, rest often.
But we'll notice Friday on the tapes of those great old songs.
Maybe triple tongue forever.
Can you imagine how much they must have practiced those guys?
It's just marvelous.
Okay, thank you, Rich.
Very good.