Claude Gordon Brass Camp 1992 - Claude Gordon on Opening Intro

Let's see if I'm all wired up for sound, yeah.
So don't blame me if I'm wired today.
Now the, again, boy, I'd sure like to see a full room after this one.
So, Karen, I want to bring out the purpose of this whole workshop.
The purpose that we have this established for is for you to understand brass instruments.
How they work, what makes them work, so that you will play better and you will play easier.
In every aspect during this week, now you're going to have questions, so you write them down and you get those questions answered before you leave.
I don't care what they are.
Now our purpose, I want to bring this out very strongly, is not to criticize anyone.
I'm going to try and leave names out of this all weekend.
But we're going to put down what is the truth of our playing, regardless.
So it's not to criticize anyone.
But it's to help you so that you will understand what to do, regardless of all the talk that goes on.
Or someone telling you, no, don't do it that way, you do it this way, and you all know what that is, you've all got into it.
Or you better play this mouthpiece, or you change that mouthpiece, and so forth.
There's that all the time.
Now I get many calls and letters during the year.
You'd be amazed at how many letters come in.
All of them are having problems.
That's why they write.
They've got to the point that I just don't know what to do.
And I'm not playing, and I've got to get some understanding somewhere.
Now I have, for example here, let me see if I can find it, a letter that was published in a publication.
While I was sitting, I was trying to locate this, and I didn't.
That's in the section.
Yeah, here we are.
It starts out, or we'll leave names out of it, because we don't want anybody standing there.
There's help in the playing of lip, and it puts you on.
I am 43, played the trumpet for ten years as a kid.
I picked it back up again two and a half years ago, and I'm going to fall in love with it all over again.
However, about ten years ago, when I wasn't playing, I was hitting the mouth with a baseball,
which caused my upper right front tooth to cut into my lip.
This lip scarred.
A what? Doesn't mean anything.
And it goes on, but you see with this trumpet player, knowing how they think, this was going to affect his playing.
I've known players with complete paralyzed half-side of their face and everything else, and they just play beautifully.
That goes back to what your head is too in trouble for.
So then it goes on.
I had the scar tissue removed by an oral surgeon 18 months ago, as it had become inflamed and impeded my playing,
and certainly my range above middle C.
What can you do with range? Absolutely nothing.
If the lip will vibrate, you can play anything.
Remember that. Mark it down.
All the lip does is vibrate.
You have this old idea, well, I've got to get high, my lip has got to be right.
That's baloney.
And any great player, if he knows how to play it, some of the great players don't know how to play it,
but those that do will tell you the same thing.
Now, he said the new scar tissue left by the operation became inflamed,
and unfortunately I'm right back where I was with a tender somewhat swollen and sensitive area.
At about four o'clock on the mouthpiece, as I would be looking at it, I had been playing, well, this is irrelevant, a Shulky 14.
I've tried the 24, again, going through all the mouthpiece that, you know, the rigamarole,
I'm trying to find equipment that's going to do it for you.
I've tried Warburton, I've tried this, and I've tried this.
I've tried moving the mouthpiece over to the left a half inch or so, and he goes on and on.
He says, help, nothing works. He hasn't done anything yet.
How could it work?
He hasn't done one thing conducive to making a brass instrument work.
Now, he goes on, it's too long to read the whole thing, but the answer was what was very interesting.
I have to sort through an article to find it.
All right, now then, let's see, how it says in there, don't mash the lips.
This is the answer to his problem, the writer of the article.
Don't mash the lips. Make air speed.
You may find you have to tighten up on your approach to practice.
Even for strong, vital armatures, the record matters is to rest a few minutes for every few minutes of playing.
That's fine. You may need to try two or three parts less during a one-part playing.
Remember to keep the lip muscles firm to control the air pressure so the left arm won't have to.
The term practice may be considered very literally.
If you practice improvement, you should improve.
I also observe that while you played for ten years as a youth,
your facial muscles and wind support system are probably more in line with the two and a half years since you resumed.
Obviously, much of this speculation is since I haven't met you or heard you.
I hope something in some of these ideas will be helpful.
Nothing he said will help him at all.
What if I told you, well, now you lift the air and then you tighten up your lip?
Is that going to help your problem?
How many of you in here have real problems playing thanks to your hand?
A lot of you.
And a lot of which you'll find, well, it's very easy to see.
And this brings up the question.
Why do most of the prospective brass players fail?
They practice, they practice, they go to teachers, nothing happens.
Now there's actually, that's very easily answered.
And the reason is that they learn from the very start to play wrong, incorrectly.
The first thing you become conscious of that you're told is your lip.
Your lip.
And that's the most you hear through your entire study.
The lip, the lip, the lip.
I'll bring this up again on the day we worked off on the lip and the muscles.
The lip only vibrates.
That's all.
But you in your head are so conscious of the lip that that's all you think about.
And it's not going to work.
I'll bring it up again.
You can have a lip strong enough to lift that finger.
Not get the bubble O.C.
Now think about that.
I don't care how strong a lip is.
And then there are many examples and books.
For example, let's take the schools.
What do they teach?
Most of you have gone to some schools, haven't you?
And they're in schools.
You go to a school and you're having problems.
And you really want to play and you want to get it ironed out.
So you go up to school and you have to audition.
That's the first thing.
All right.
Then they put you with a teacher.
I say, well, you go to such-and-such teacher.
Or you go to so-and-so.
The ones that play good, generally the head of the brass department,
are probably his students.
The ones that are really having problems,
they send over to a teacher that's low on students and he needs a student.
So they send them to him.
And then they don't do anything in order of his stature,
of what he can teach or how he can help them.
There are absolutely no thoughts to your needs.
I could write books on the students that have come from schools
that have had real problems, all stemming from the wrong way to play.
Now, the teacher is maybe very sincere,
but that's what he was taught on his passing it on.
Like Herbert Clark told me one time,
he had a real struggle.
If any of you that read his book,
How I Became a Cornettist,
never in there does he say how great he was.
Never.
But he does tell you the terrible problems that he had.
And like he said, he never did well until he threw away the method books
and started figuring it out on his own.
And yet we're besieged with books.
This year, my God, more books have come out than I've seen in a long time.
I have yet to see one, except one I'll show you in a bit,
that is going to help one thing.
And this one writer, he brought out how many teachers he studied with.
A lot of people think, well, the more teachers I study with,
the more I'll learn and the better player I'll be.
That's wrong.
You only need one teacher, one good teacher, and that's all.
Now music is something else.
You can go to a music school and get all your music education.
That's fine.
And that will help.
And they go to the schools, have their band programs,
and they have their concert.
This is all good, but it doesn't teach you how to play the instrument.
How many of you had that experience, and you still have problems?
Over the years.
Now part of that, too, like one of the major schools in the United States,
music school, the head of the brass department heard one article,
one talk that he gave back in New York.
And he said, you come and audition.
You audition only for one reason, to find out,
and you may get a letter a week later saying you're not ready for our school.
In other words, you can't play the instrument.
They're not interested in that.
So that's not going to help you, is it?
So how are you going to dig up $30,000 to study all year in that school,
and you learn nothing by playing the instrument?
Now his statement was, we look for the gym.
And he said, then we polish the gym.
Now what's that going to do to the aspiring player?
They're looking for someone that already plays really very well,
and then they can work with him and they don't have to worry.
And this is prevalent all over the country.
We look for the gym.
Then they can say, see, the concert, that's my student.
And this goes on and on.
I've seen that again and again.
All right, now then, what is generally taught?
Someone that's having trouble, went to a school or a teacher,
tell me what they were taught, basically.
Don't be afraid, because we all have problems.
Who's been to a school and has taken lessons and is having real problems?
The school hasn't seemed to help you.
Well, let's take a look at it.
Here's a book.
I'm going to leave names out of this,
This is a new book that came out recently.
Now, I've never seen so much garbage in a book.
And this is taught in the schools all over.
I don't know if you can see it or not, but here's some of the pictures.
Downward tilt, upward tilt, straight up, vibrating point, above high seat.
What good are those pictures going to do you?
There's no two players look the same on anything they do,
depending on the face structure, the jaw structure, and so forth.
All right, now, what did I say, page 11.
The embouchure.
That's another thing they teach all the time, the embouchure.
I've had some marvelous students,
one that had a G that could take that window off, big and fat as a house,
and he went to one university in the Los Angeles area.
You know what happened?
The first thing the instructor said, you've got to change that embouchure.
That's plain wonderful.
Why should he change it?
And it was a beautiful embouchure.
Boy, it sat up here in the lower rim, was right on the lower left.
Just a beautiful embouchure.
But I notice what this book says.
Here's an embouchure, an embouchure that works fairly well.
Well, that statement alone should be out of place.
The bottom lip is curled inward toward the bottom teeth.
That's an absolute fallacy.
You never curl that lower lip in.
If you do, you're going to have a very hard time getting it out again,
because it will always want to do that.
Now, if your embouchure is right and it sits on that lower lip,
it's not going to curl that much.
Why should it curl in?
He says, be careful not to let more than about one-sixteenth inch of top red lip show.
One-sixteenth of an inch.
Now, you get out your tools and measure it.
And get a mirror so you can see exactly what you're doing.
Now, the mouthpiece is then positioned against the lips with about two-thirds of it on the bottom
and one-third on the top.
The inward curl of the bottom lip and the two-thirds mouthpiece position
of what we are striving for with this embouchure and are very important, as we'll be seeing.
Absolute baloney.
And this goes in and these instructors, they take it and they teach it, not knowing what to teach.
That's the big problem.
If you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't be teaching it or trying to teach it even.
This is called a new approach.
All right, I'll add some more in here about that.
Now, this is just one book you'll find in the schools.
Okay, we'll put that one away.
And in all the magazines, you'll find the mouthpiece ads.
A poor player or one that's having problems is a great target for mouthpiece makers,
instrument makers, gadgets, that all will do you no good.
And we'll have a whole lecture on mouthpieces later in the week,
although that's a dangerous subject we've got to take into consideration.
All right.
Now, what else is generally taught?
All right.
You have the lip, which I mentioned.
Now then, what's the most general thing?
Hmm?
I know that you're taught from average teachers.
Buzzing.
Buzzing.
Boy, this has become a universal thing.
It's so bad that there are main teachers now in law centers
that will have the student buzz for 45 minutes before he does anything else in his lesson.
Buzzing will do nothing.
Now, mainly because the lips don't play the horn.
They only vibrate.
In fact, buzzing is very detrimental.
Now, that probably astonishes a lot of you.
Forget that buzzing.
It'll do more harm than it will good.
In the first place, the lips don't play the horn.
So what good do you think it's going to do?
In the second place, it'll cause the lips to swell up.
Then you go try to play, and it doesn't feel good at all.
In the third place, you don't blow rust when you're buzzing the mouthpiece.
In the fourth place, why do you want to buzz the mouthpiece when you got the horn right there?
That's what you're playing.
The mouthpiece is just part of the horn.
You pick up the horn and practice it.
Forget the mouthpiece.
Just remember, buzzing is detrimental.
Now, there are going to be a lot of you here today that I hope will listen carefully,
I mean, all week, listen carefully and get the sense of what we're talking about.
If you don't get the sense, you're going to have problems.
Get the sense of what we're discussing.
Now, there'll be some that'll sit out there, and they'll be very in their mind.
They'll be saying, yeah, come on, let's tell us something.
I've seen them like that.
I've had them.
And one year we had a young man, and I know his teacher put him up to it,
and he said that Paul Gordon was the greatest con artist in the country.
And that's not true.
I don't do anything for con anymore.
I'm with Selma.
So this kid didn't know anything about it,
so he was obviously, his teacher told him to say that.
And the next dangerous thing, oh, I didn't finish.
There'll be some that have that attitude.
However, hopefully, there'll be those that listen.
They get the sense of it.
And when they go away, they remember it, retain it, and work on it.
That's what we hope for, because you're going to be well rewarded.
And our textbook is brass playing is no harder than deep breathing.
So you must all have that, because I'm going to refer to it again and again during the week.
And some look at that statement and say, oh, that's not true.
It's too hard.
Boy, when I get a high seam, my eyeballs are out to here.
And that's true, but it's not needed.
Brass playing is no harder than deep breathing.
That's an absolute true statement.
It's so easy.
In fact, we're going to take tomorrow the videotape that's out,
and I'm going to show you.
I don't play anymore.
After I had the heart surgery, that ended the whole thing.
And I was getting too old anyway.
You should quit while you're ahead.
Some of the guys, like Paul Mendez, he was an awful good trumpet player.
Actually, he was a mariachi trumpet player, and a very good one.
And I've heard people say, oh, he had a lousy tone.
He sounded like a Mexican.
I said, yeah, he is a Mexican.
Who should he sound like?
He was a great player.
And anyway, so of all these characters, I lost my train of thought.
What was I starting out with?
Oh, yeah.
And Mendez, he wouldn't quit.
And we're all inclined to be that way.
He just wouldn't quit.
And so personally, a lot of people say, oh, I've heard him.
He didn't play that well.
Well, no, not at 70 years old.
And he was sick anyway.
Now, that doesn't mean you can't play at 70.
You can't.
I'd be playing today if it weren't for all the doggone surgeries
and radiation and things I had.
And I'll keep clearing my throat, which I hope you'll excuse,
because I have radiation for cancer in the back of my throat.
And boy, that radiation has destroyed everything.
I still can't swallow.
And someone says, get out the horn and practice.
Let me see you practice with no saliva anywhere.
It's impossible.
You've got to have moisture there.
And another thing they teach, diaphragm.
Here's a real damn thing.
There is no such thing as diaphragmatic breathing.
If there's ever been a fallacy pushed onto the brass profession,
that's it.
Let me see if I can demonstrate.
That's a little hard to demonstrate, too.
Some books are coming out now with correct things.
There was a book on bicycling.
And I'll be amazed.
I read it, and it had all that in it very correctly.
You breathe from the lungs.
Now, they argue about the diaphragm being a muscle.
Diaphragm is not a muscle.
It's got muscle fiber in it, so it'll accomplish what it was put there for.
But there's no muscle as such.
And what is there is involuntarily.
I'd like to see the man that's in control.
It's impossible.
Besides that, your diaphragm lies in here.
Now, here's your lungs, and here's the heart.
Now, if you're going to push with that diaphragm, how are you going to get by the heart?
Now then, let's see if I can find someone here, a young man.
Where's that young man, a 12-year-old?
Yeah, come on up here.
Sometimes it's better to demonstrate with a youngster than it is with someone.
The hardest people to teach in the world are the ones who've been playing for 30 years.
Believe me.
Okay, push out your stomach.
Does it make you blow?
No.
Absolutely.
Any young boy will tell you that.
All right, move your diaphragm.
Now, there's your answer.
They don't even know where it is.
All right.
Now, I had another one come up.
Oh, he's on the videotape.
And he said something, and they were talking, the diaphragm and all that.
And I said, okay, move your diaphragm.
And he stood there a minute and looked at me, and he moved around, and he pushed.
And I said, did you move it?
He says, I don't know.
That's the answer.
Now, how are you going to train that to blow?
On the poor trumpet player, thank you very much.
The poor trumpet player and the old brass player, they stand up there like this, and you've seen that.
And there's nothing here.
So what are they blowing at?
Just sheer effort.
And they're like this.
And they can't.
Nothing will happen.
Now, I've got many students in here that have gone through that.
I think Jeff Pearl went through it.
Many, many, many other things.
All right, now then, the next thing that you're taught, the mouthpiece and the instrument.
Now, I had an apple box full of mouthpieces.
I finally took them over to Calico, and I said, Dominic, can you use those for brass?
I said, okay, take them.
I don't know how much money was spent in that apple box full of mouthpieces.
Not one progressive result out of any of them.
We had the picture mold around the front room in our house out in Santa Monica.
And I was into all this, like everybody, and I came home from the studio one day,
and I looked around this picture mold, right together, mouthpiece, around the entire room.
My wife had taken all those mouthpieces and put them on that picture mold one after another.
I couldn't believe what was there.
I got a mouthpiece.
So you do the same. You get a mouthpiece.
About three days later, boy, this thing isn't working.
So you get out the mouthpiece maker, you get another one.
About three days later, the same thing.
You're continually going back to that guy, and he loves it.
He's making money.
Before 1935, and I'll get to this when we talk mouthpieces,
before 1935, you go to any store, you get one mouthpiece, it'll all be the same.
It was after high notes came into the Vogue that they were going to manufacture a high note mouthpiece.
There's no such thing.
Start a player, and I'll bring this up again.
You'll hear some of these things selling.
All the best mouthpieces you can find, and he never changes them.
There's no such thing as a beginner's mouthpiece.
And that's another big fallacy that screws everybody up.
And buy off some letters to read to your leader the week on end.
All right, the next thing is that you're talked, and raise your hand.
Tell me how many have been talked to.
No pressure.
Boy, look at that.
No pressure.
That's an absolute fallacy.
There's no such thing as no pressure.
The amount of pressure will take care of itself as you develop correctly.
Now where that all started, Herbert Clark was the greatest name that ever lived in this industry.
Here we are, he's been dead for 45 years.
He's still the biggest name.
Boy, that's a statute, isn't it?
Way back in the late 1800s, he was able to teach you to play easily.
And did everybody say, oh, this is great?
No.
He had all the problems that I've had.
The average teacher put you down, put you down, put you down.
But he had it clear back in the late 1800s.
Now then, he did a demonstration of an origin of a university.
And he was talking about what a developed player could do.
And demonstrating it, he hung his horn on a string.
And then put his hand behind his back and went up and was playing extremely high notes.
With no effort.
It went like wildfire all through the country.
Herbert Clark's no-pressure method of playing.
He told me a couple weeks later he was sorry he ever did that demonstration.
Because everybody got the wrong idea.
He wasn't demonstrating that you played with no pressure.
He was demonstrating what a developed player using the right things could do.
And I was teaching, and I was also in Oregon one time, I was teaching in the back room.
And a guy came in the store and he asked the proprietor, he said, who's teaching back here?
And he said, Claude Royden is teaching.
He said, oh, he said, who did he study with?
And he said, he studied with Herbert Clark.
He said, oh, no pressure, huh?
And he said, no.
In fact, he told me just the opposite.
There's no such thing as no pressure.
And I said, no, Clark was no pressure.
He said, the guy said, well, did you study with Clark?
He says, no.
He says, well, Clark did for many years.
And he said, well, I don't care.
He says, Clark was no pressure.
And so you see the attitudes.
And this is what happened.
They don't want to change to what's right.
Now, you study with a teacher of 10 years, you know what he stands for.
And yet, this guy says, no, no, he's wrong.
No pressure.
Looks like Sandoval was giving a clinic out at UCL.
Incidentally, it was excellent.
And someone was asking, well, how do you get your range?
Someone, a student, Jeff Ferdinand, these guys were sitting there.
And so he says, well, my cover.
And the guy sat down and he says to the guy next to him, he says, no, he's wrong.
They don't want to change.
All right.
Now then, all these new books.
My gosh.
As I say, I've got a whole box full of books.
I call it my BS file.
All these books are in there.
And you study every one of them.
Nothing.
It's all the same old drivers that's been going on for years.
And the guy at the end of it is very noticeable.
Every one of these books, they sign up.
God bless you.
Good luck.
Now, I want to mention luck has absolutely nothing to do with brass playing.
Someone just doesn't have good luck to play good.
You're the one that's going to play good if you do it right and to develop.
Now, armature placement is another common fact.
I told you about you go to this one school in the top of Stucklitz and your mouth is too high.
You've got to bring it down.
That guy should have been on his knees thankful that he had that armature that high.
No, this teacher and the teacher has no worry of whether he destroys the player or not.
He doesn't care.
You just do as I say.
That's all he cares about.
So we'll discuss armature placement later.
Now then, there's no thought as to finger.
You don't find anything on fingering, yet if you're going to be a successful player,
you've got to learn every cockpit alternate finger there is and to use it fluidly without thinking about it.
Now, I train all the students so that those fingers work automatically.
There are things you're going to have to play that cannot be executed with scale fingering.
It can't be done any more than it can on a piano or violin or anything else.
So those things have to be developed.
Now then, let me read some more.
Who has St. Jacob's here?
Good.
Look up page 258 for me, I think.
Because that's the one I want right there.
I want page number four of that.
I don't want the one on Trill.
Hang on to that one.
All right.
Now in this book, which I'll not name either, on page 13.
Now all these books are in the schools.
This is basically what's being taught.
Now on page 13 here in this book,
it has a chart on the muscles in the face that you use.
What good is that going to do you?
How do you care what those muscles look like?
Well, you study that chart all day.
It's going to help you plan?
No, you'll get more confused than ever.
You can't think, well, I'm going to make this work or that work.
Now here's a dandy.
Lie on the floor, face up.
Place the feet together.
Now raise both feet off the floor about six inches and hold them as long as possible.
Do this as many times as you can, a minimum of 10.
Muscles used here are mainly rectus, external, and oblique.
Lie on the back, face up.
Place hands on hips and bring upper body into a sitting position.
Lie on the back, face up.
This time raise both feet and upper part of trunk and try to touch the toes with your hand.
Lie on the floor, face down, and do as many pushups as possible.
The breathing and support muscles are augmented.
On hands and knees, move right knee toward, left hand, hold, and return to original position.
Lie on the back, face up.
Place a 10-pound weight on the diaphragm.
Raise and lower the weight with the diaphragm.
Hang on, silly.
Absolutely silly.
I went into one university.
Now this book is in the university.
I went into one university and here were the trumpet players, or you know which ones.
The trumpet players lined against the wall.
They were pushing against the wall with a broom handle like this.
I went by one, I said, what are you doing?
He says, working on the diaphragm.
All you're going to get is a sore stomach.
It's not going to do anything.
I went through all that.
I got a big medicine ball and I had someone show it and I bounced it off my stomach.
There was no any results from it whatsoever.
That's how I know what these things do because I did them.
Now we have another one here.
Again, the diaphragm.
Lip puffer.
Upstream.
Downstream type.
The lips on the mouth.
It's not going to do you any good.
All it does is confuse the issue.
It's so silly to have yourself all crowded up with these beliefs.
They don't do any good and all they do is confuse you.
Absolute confusion.
Now here's a real gem.
This one I did a kick out.
This is really in the schools.
Air column.
Tone quality.
Producing a simple crescendo.
Matching notes.
Overblowing.
Open throat.
Another fallacy.
If you're planning correctly, that would take care of itself.
Everybody in here, let me see your closure throat.
You can do it, can't you?
And then open it.
Can't be better either.
If that were to happen, you might choke to death in your sleep some night.
The only thing that moves is that tongue.
We'll get to that later.
The key to high notes.
Any player with a normal armature can learn to play high notes with comparative ease.
Armature here consists of two pairs of separate control muscles.
Over tone exercise.
Middle of the armature.
Correct use of the corner and middle muscles.
What does that tell you?
I'm telling you anything.
Diaphragm support.
Here we go again.
Fast tongue and smooth tongue.
Beginning armature.
Lip trills.
Any player can learn to lip trill.
The principle of the minimum movement between notes trill.
Okay, does that explain it?
A lip trill is a misnomer.
There's no such thing as a lip trill.
Let me see you move your lips as fast as a trill.
Let me see you move your lips as fast.
No way.
It should be called a tongue trill.
That's very easy.
And of course then he's got lip movement.
Anyway, you get done, you go into the school that uses this,
and after a whole year of studying,
you don't play one bit better than you did before.
That's pretty frustrating.
We've all been through that, I know.
Now here's another gem.
That's a page on this one.
Again he starts out the armature.
He goes into two pages of that.
Then he goes into the lip slur.
You read the whole thing on lip slur,
and it doesn't say anything.
Then you move over to tongueing.
He says, shortening the stroke of the tongue
to the smallest degree possible
is the most direct means to the achievement
of correct tongueing technique.
Shortening the stroke, let me see you tongue fast.
Does that one explain it so you can do it?
Or you go home and practice, it'd be very frustrating.
And that's the general thing of your learning techniques.
Those are all school books.
All right, now then we have the story of myself.
I'll tell you, we never all played good.
When I was a little kid, eight years old,
I had a good playable high F above high C.
It was a good one, and I never wore it.
I just played.
Nobody ever showed me how or anything.
Dad gave me an Arvin book and the cornet looked like a blacksmith made it.
And he probably did back in those days.
And boy, I practiced.
That horn was just me 24 hours a day.
No matter what I was doing, that horn was there.
Except I over practiced.
I just practiced the horn.
But I had a good high F.
But then I decided that if I'm going to be a really fine player,
I'd better take lessons.
So I started taking lessons from a guy in Helena where I was born
that had just come from Chicago.
And a marvelous player.
My husband played excellent.
And then I had my first lesson.
And then he told me, get that jaw out.
Hold it out there.
Keep these corners tight.
I never heard of anything like that.
In fact, I never thought of the lift.
I just played it.
So I started in and trying to be a good student.
Boy, I followed him to the letter.
In one month, I could no more get my high F than I could fly.
But I could keep the jaw out.
Keep the corners tight.
For the next 10 years, I went downhill.
That's frustrating.
I didn't ever begin to play again until I finally got to
Herman Clark, who straightened me out, playing correctly.
Okay, now then, the teachers generally, there's no common ground.
Like I told you, you're going to keep getting buzzing.
The next thing, in all these new books that have come out,
you've got several pages of long tones.
Long tones are not good.
Someone said, how do you know?
Because I did them for a year.
All they do is stiffen you up.
It does not improve your sign one bit.
So they got long tones.
Then they got buzzing.
One guy wrote to me, he said, well, I take your books,
and oh, he was real proud of this, he said,
I buzz with the lips through the first, now get this,
five exercises in the book of daily routines.
The book doesn't say that.
You do one lesson at a time.
I go through all five, and I buzz them, then I go back,
and I buzz them out each through five of them.
Now then, he's shot his whole day of practice.
And he hasn't done anything right.
So again, he was going on his own ideas,
which so many people do.
We'll get into that a lot more, too.
And always the lip.
The strong lip, of course, is emphasized.
I saw one recently that had a picture of Maynard Boyne
that shows those muscles all bunched up,
and he's blowing as hard as he can,
the microphone right in the bell.
And that's not what makes a Maynard play.
It's not the lip or the strength of the lip at all.
That's just the way it looks when he plays.
And I had a young kid come in one time,
and he put up his hand, and I said,
well, you say to hold a horn like this, he said,
Maynard Ferguson was here the other day,
and he held it like this.
I said, fine, I'm just telling you how to play it.
I said, now, when you play like Maynard Ferguson,
you hold it any way you want.
But until then, you hold it correctly.
So I hope that got the point across.
Now then, blowing on the lead part.
There's another pattern.
They take the tune slide, let it hang down,
and they buzz on the lead part.
What's that going to do?
Now, what do you think that would do?
Anyone want to answer that?
It would take a lot of time, a lot of time.
All right, now then, dry lip.
Throw that out the window.
It's impossible.
You never play with a dry lip.
If any of you here are playing with a dry lip,
you start motioning it right now,
regardless of what happens.
In a few days, you'll get used to it.
You know why you play with a dry lip?
Because they have no facial strength whatsoever
to hold that lip in place.
So you play with it dry, and it hangs on the mouthpiece.
That's like one mouthpiece, make it brought out.
Oh, it's a gorgeous thing.
He said, you want to get a good grip?
He said, take a wood rasp,
and roughen the edge of the mouthpiece up.
And you know, as kids, we even tried that stuff.
That would all come out and downgrade and all these things.
But you see, we kept at it.
We didn't give up because, boy, we were going to be players, period.
So we never thought of stopping.
We knew that something was wrong.
You know, it's a shame.
But I want to make a statement.
The statement was made to me before, but I'm going to repeat it.
It's a shame.
But many teachers ruin more prospective material than they ever have.
Now, they're not doing it intentionally, but they do.
It's a shame because even they don't know why.
Now then, the warm-up is another thing.
Everybody asks how to warm up.
If you go out and do your breathing exercise around the building ten times,
you'll do better than a lot of what they call warm-up.
You get the body machine working a little bit and use it.
Because as we're going to bring out, the air is what does the work.
And we'll get into this again, much more in detail.
Endurance is all built around air.
You let the air do the work.
That means the air saves the lift.
You got guys that you can't tire off.
I could play ten hours a day in the studio and still put anything that they brought out.
How long was your show in Vegas, Carl?
Both shows together.
And boy, those guys were blowing all the time.
And they didn't have to quit.
It's like when Clark was playing.
And boy, don't ever kid yourself that what they played was easier than what we played.
In no way.
And some of those old marches they had to play, every phrase was repeated.
And you didn't stop playing until you got to the end.
And when Clark was in the band, the guys would be getting tired and say,
well, I'll take care of it, that's all right.
He was never known to tire out.
Now remember that.
No one ever saw him tire out.
Now there's got to be a reason for that.
Every one of us in here have the same things to work with that he did.
Bahamut Krill was going to a teacher in Chicago.
He had his lessons.
And like all of us, he had real struggles for years, many years.
The teacher told him one day, I don't know what they called him,
was that old name Bahamut, I don't know what they called him.
Anyway, he said, did you ever consider doing something else?
Well, that really hurt him a lot, because boy, he was going to be a sore.
And he says, I'll tell you what I want you to do.
He says, when you go by the river or the lake up there, when you go home,
he says, take that coin up and throw it as far as you can in the lake.
You'll never be a player.
Bahamut Krill became one of the greatest players of all time.
Now that shows you where a teacher's at.
Now if you're doing everything the teacher says very well,
you're doing exactly everything he told you.
You're doing everything every day and you fail.
Who really failed?
The teacher failed, not the student.
Now if the teacher teaches you correctly and you don't do what he says and you fail,
then who's failed?
The student has.
That's very easy to figure out.
Now then, I'll give you another example.
Roger.
Roger became a good player and handled all the contracting for all the books.
He made a lot of money and he did all the contracting for the books
and had his own band on the major books and so forth.
He came in one day and he'd been teaching from a major buzzing system guy in town.
And he says, I can't play.
I said, well, Roger, are you practicing?
Well, I practice exactly every day.
I haven't missed a day in years.
I said, well, what do you do?
And he showed me.
He's buzzing and buzzing and buzzing.
Now, I said, well, how many years have you been studying now with this teacher?
He said, oh, probably five years.
I said, well, doesn't it stand to reason that if buzzing was doing you any good,
it's going to happen pretty soon, not in five years?
Well, he said, I never thought of that.
He said, I just expected that one day it would happen.
In other words, you buzz and wait for the miracle.
There we go again.
Lots of luck.
There's no such thing as luck in playing.
Now then, let me see here.
I mentioned if this teacher's name comes up and Roger goes through the roof like a rocket, oh, he gets mad.
He said, all the money I spent and all the hours of practice, and I can't play.
Now, let's take an example.
Who has that St. Jacobin?
What page is that?
257 or 26.
Now, how many of you can grab a St. Jacobin in a hurry?
It's a very important book.
Now, here, I'll hold it up and hope you can see it.
Now, you can buzz.
Say you've been buzzing for 10 years.
Boy, you can buzz with the lips or the mouth.
You can give to someone that really wants to see.
Turn to 256 and 57.
Now then, you've been buzzing for 10 years.
Now, open that book and tell me how you're going to play those two pages.
What about all the things?
What about the endurance?
What about the breathing?
What about the technique?
Has the buzzing developed any of that?
That's just plain stupid raising it.
But look at that page.
Now, thanks.
I had a student, Bobby Berenson, who became a marvelous player.
He used to come up for his lesson on Saturday, about this high,
and he had his little cornet and he'd come up for his lesson.
And my manager, Ignis Gore, who was also Harry James' manager at that time,
so he'd come in for his lesson.
In a matter of years' time, he turned into a marvelous trumpet player.
In fact, Harry hired him on first for his band.
I used him in mine.
Other bands attempted to hire him, always on first trumpet.
Now then, he could take those two pages.
Now, on that second page, all those phrases repeat with a different model.
He played it from the start to the finish.
Never stop.
Only the rest that are in there are quartered over something.
He got the end and he said, that wasn't good.
Can I do it again?
I said, yeah.
And he did the same thing from the start to the finish.
Now, there was a trumpet player.
And this also applies to trombones, the French horn.
All of my students must do the entire book of Saint-Jacques,
the whole entire book of Harbin, of Clarks, and all of mine.
Now, that takes a few years.
Like, French horn.
What are you working on now in Saint-Jacques?
Yeah.
So she's going through Saint-Jacques now.
Mary, I want you to give Don LaVoy about a half a dozen swift kicks when he gets up there.
But he isn't here now.
If anyone needs him, he does.
All right.
Now, this brings up the fact there are two ways to play.
That's all.
There are two ways to play a brass instrument.
The right way and the wrong way.
Now, most of us have learned the wrong way completely.
Sadly enough, we all did.
Then we had to take up the years to come out of it.
Like I tell many of my students, look, you can do in six months what took me six years to do.
And I say, look, you do it that way.
And if you do it, it'll work.
There's no guess.
I never tell a student, well, try this.
You don't try anything.
You do it.
And let nature take its course.
Now, there's a couple of statements here.
Let me show you.
Tell a joke.
Now, any of you have a book by Ernest Williams?
I know, Dwayne, you got it.
I know.
It's called Ernest Williams Method.
Now, Ernest Williams turned out a lot of fine bars.
And Ernest himself was a Clarkster.
Now, we've learned all the things to watch out for.
But I'll tell you, well, I got to have a, I have to have a little table of some kind.
Is there anyone there that got that?
Tom and I want to get the other thing before I get into the real correct way of playing.
What we've heard so far in this whole lecture is all the wrong things, right?
And the sad part is we're all familiar with the wrong things.
Very familiar with it.
This is why you have got to get the sense.
And then you go that way.
Now, the hardest thing to do, well, I shouldn't say hard.
I don't like to use the word hard for anything.
One of the things that's going to give you the problem is to get rid of these old habits.
Because they've been ingrained in your mind and in your practicing.
And it's not going to look like even Jean when she first started.
She wasn't quite sure.
And I know that, because I hear everything that goes on.
And one of the students told me, well, Jean asked me, do you really think that that's what makes it work?
And now she's finding out, yeah, how is your playing improved?
Yeah.
And I always tell the students, look, you do as I tell you and you'll play.
But there's no mystery about it.
Now, Tom, in my bag there's a little bag of gadgets.
Where's that?
Right here, right there.
The little box that has these gadgets in it.
Now, the teachers also would use gadgets.
I was in Billings, Montana a few months ago.
And a football player that goes to the university called me and asked me to come out for an hour.
We had a lot of questions.
I said, sure, come on out.
And I didn't charge him anything for it.
I said, what's going on?
I said, the first thing he brought out in his case, I said, what is that?
And he told me.
I said, who are you teaching?
He told me.
And it brings out in his case a gadget.
And I said, what do you use that for?
He said, well, that's to improve my sign.
I said, take it out and throw it in the Missouri River.
It's not going to improve your sign one bit.
It has nothing to do with it.
Gadgets.
But they make money selling gadgets.
The poor brass player, he's the target of every manufacturer there is.
Me included.
When I was a kid, boy, I had every guess.
I even had a vibrator.
And I'd work it around my lip in the morning and get that ready to play because I had to go work.
I found out, though, I did it five seconds too much and I couldn't play at all.
It got so flabby I couldn't hold it.
You got your horns on?
Yeah.
I need some help.
Boy, we've got gadgets.
Now, one player that wrote a book, it is absolutely amazing.
He had one statement that he harked on all the time to study with him.
He said, as you go down, stay up.
As you go up, stay down.
Now, you figure out what that means.
I don't know.
But that was one of the things he was teaching in that school.
He came up just to show you how things are controlled.
He was a head brass instructor at the conservatory.
They wanted to know, when they opened up the conservatory, if I would take that position.
I said, no, I'm a player and I'm too busy in the studio.
So run over here and teach.
I said, if you have someone you want me to take, send them out to my house and I'll put up a day with them and so forth.
So this guy got the head instructor.
So he, of course, all the players that came through that wanted degrees, he would grab them all.
And there were some good players that came down because they wanted to get degrees.
So then these emerged and these were his students and he'd use that for his advertising and that.
So anyway, they called me up one day and said, Boy, we're stuck.
I said, would you do the jurors today?
And I said, yeah, I'm done at three o'clock over here.
So I said, sure, I'll do that.
So I came over for the jurors.
And the last two students would come in and this instructor came up and he says, just pass these through to all my students.
I don't understand.
The student came in and I said, OK, what have you got prepared?
Nothing.
I said, what are you going to play for me?
Well, they just stood there and looked at me.
And I said, all right, play me a chromatic scale from low F sharp to fifth line F sharp and back down again.
Neither one of them could do it.
They absolutely could not do it.
So I said, you mean to tell me you're on a senior, you're going to get your diploma and you're going to go out and compete in this world?
But the brass players we've got around LA, the finest players in the world.
And I said, you're going to compete with that or teach?
And you can't even play a chromatic scale?
So I flunked them both.
I didn't both F's.
That teacher never stopped running me down from then on around town.
He never spoke to me again either.
But I can't consciously do that.
How can they say that they're fine and ready?
Now, some of the things that they put out.
Now, here's one of the most popular today.
It's called a burger.
It has all the instructions in there of what to do.
Now, all it consists of is a little shank.
It's closed up on the end.
It's got two little holes in the side.
All right, Tom, let me see you practice on that.
Now, that's supposed to help you become a player.
He sells these things by the thousands.
All in the schools.
Jeff, how many over at that university have the burger?
I would say probably every one.
Every one, that's right.
I was forced to buy it.
Yeah.
Now, you see.
I think I bought it, but I've already made two.
Now, the guy that puts this out is one of the main teachers
in the university system in LA.
Now, you see the ads in the International Musician.
It says, Birks builds chops.
Doesn't build a dumb thing.
It'll sure tear it down in a hurry.
All right, let's put that one away.
Now, here's the one the trombone player brought in up in Montana.
Just out of a hospital, that's all.
It's one of those hospital Boeing things.
Boy, that's difficult, isn't it?
That's going to build a lot of wind.
Now, another one.
Now, here's another one.
So as you can see your lip, you want to always watch that lip.
That's what they say.
Now, if you're watching in the mirror and you're looking at the lip,
someone raises their hand and tells them, what are you looking for?
They tell you to watch the lip in the mirror.
What are you looking for?
Hmm?
Yeah, and how do you know if you're going to even find it or not?
Now, they sent me a letter to this company
and wanted me to endorse this thing.
Of course, I didn't even answer it.
I took a mirror right in front of the mouth and I didn't even see your lips.
Now, if you found it, what would you do?
Let's see how you look.
You're on your cross-eyed.
Now, here's another one.
Now, most of these, as you notice, are based on buzzing.
And this is the common thing that's talked all over this country.
One of the worst culprits of it is the ITG.
They publish the most stupid things I ever saw.
And if they challenge me on it, fine.
I'll challenge them right back.
They came out a while back with an article,
and I showed Larry Susan when I first saw it,
and he just threw it in the trash.
Didn't even read it.
But it says, you loosen the third valve cap a few threads,
and you'll play more in tune.
That's the dumbest thing I ever heard.
That has nothing to do with it.
You can take your three valve caps and throw them away.
It won't make a big difference if you're playing.
Now, they're putting out in the manufacturers who are jumping on it because they can sell them.
They're selling heavy valve caps to put on your horn
because it'll affect the vibration and give you more symphonic sound.
That's the lonely thing.
If you ever see Herstith, there's no one that plays more strong or sure symphonic work than Bud Herstith.
Wouldn't it be funny to see him taking his valve cap and turning it down and all this?
Wait a minute, Tchaikovsky, wait a minute.
I want to change mouthpieces here.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Generally, unless it's in a school, the conductor doesn't ask you what mouthpiece you're playing.
He could care less.
All he wants is you to play.
And he's not going to have something else you want to remember.
No conductor hires you because he likes you.
Maybe he will, that's fine, but not because of that.
He likes you because you've got something you can do that he needs.
That's why when we used to send substitutes in the studio,
boy, we made sure that this substitute was a top player and knew what he was doing
because we could get fired if we sent a guy that couldn't produce.
Those conductors like to look out in that orchestra and they see those same faces.
Then they know where they are.
In other words, that gives them the confidence
because they're not doing what they do, you're doing it.
And they're relying on you to play for them.
I know when people talk about nerves, there's no reason to get nervous.
If you know you can play that instrument, you're not going to get nervous.
And I was sitting up in one of the big shows in, I guess it was CBS, it might have been NBC,
CBS I think, and we had four trumpets, four French horns, five reeds,
full string section and the whole thing.
And we're on the air.
And yeah, it was Led Dresden, the meanest conductor that ever came.
Boy, he scared fine players, they just froze.
And I'm sitting there and I'm looking down at the park and up in the corner,
this is the first trumpet.
And all of a sudden something happened in my mind and I thought,
what in the world am I doing here?
Here's all this stuff in front of me.
Just then the stick came up and I forgot it.
But for me, I was panicked.
I went back to when I was a kid.
What am I doing here?
And then it went away.
So that's when I started using the phrase, hit it hard and wish it well.
You've got to drive every bit of fear out of that system.
You cannot be afraid.
Now you want to miss? Sure.
From the miner hanging on the wall of CBS, they'll never paint a mine.
But boy, they were good misses.
I'll never forget one time, I'll probably tell you this one again,
we're doing a concert with a big orchestra.
Put this one together, Tom, with a big orchestra.
And if I'm not sure, of course, you're listening to the Red Gluskin and the CBS orchestra.
And oh, this concert is going so well.
And this is one of the nights that I had that I couldn't miss.
Nothing I did was wrong.
Everything.
People leaning back in the chair.
And boy, that's fun.
I'm leaning that horn and just singing over the band.
And we get up to the end of it.
And we get them up to one of these strange endings that runs up.
The trumpet, well, I don't recall what the other three were,
but my part was on top of the strings as the reinforcement of everything.
Up to a top D.
And it just stayed there.
One of those endings that never end.
And I can't do any wrong.
I'm not even thinking about it.
But I lost count.
The only thing was I didn't know I'd lost count.
So I'm just singing over that orchestra.
And all of a sudden, like, beep!
And it was too late.
I had another one.
I went, beep!
All by myself.
And I can imagine on a broadcast like that, a D-boy will carry clear across the United States.
And the contractor and let both of their shoulders go like this.
I never heard a word about it.
When Lurt walked out of the room, and I know that Larry and all the guys can relate to this,
as he walked out of the room, he had to pass the brass section.
I went over so that if he was going to fire me, do it now and let's get it over with.
It was my fault.
Never get overconfident.
Always watch what you're doing.
And as he went by, he didn't even slow down.
He says, don't let anybody tell you you're a timid trumpet player, kid.
And he kept on walking.
That was the end of it.
Never heard another word.
So a good, honest miss doesn't always hurt.
But a sneaky miss can get you fired.
So remember that.
Okay.
Now this one is another buzzing gadget.
And it was written by, I mean, it was developed by a guy that really never played professionally at all.
And he said, well, I never had the chance you guys had.
And he was in the refrigeration.
All right.
You ready?
It won't work, but just give an example of it.
This is a buzzing gadget.
You're supposed to put the mouthpiece on the track and buzz as loud as you can and push it in and out of the horn.
Can you all see it?
Are you still selling those things?
I noticed the intonation changes, too.
But remember, the buzzer said when you go down, you stay up.
When you go up, you stay down.
Remember that now.
That's a real gem.
Now then, here's another buzzing gadget.
They thought so much of this when they go play with it.
See, you can put it in the horn.
So you've got the horn.
You're feeling the horn.
But the mouthpiece is buzzed.
Why not play the horn?
That is so stupid.
Now here's one that came out, and this is a real gadget.
Now you can tighten it or loosen it so as to get you resistant.
This is the no-pressure gadget.
Now then, as you play, this won't let you use pressure.
So you get up, you're playing just strong enough, and the spring gives way, and the sound all comes out the side.
Boy, that's going to develop you fast.
Now guys, you've got to learn to think.
Get the sense of it.
You're playing something here that can be developed.
The one that really irritated me was the lead weight.
Don't let that hit your foot, boy.
You put that on the mouthpiece.
Now that's supposed to keep the horn tilted up.
But you'd be amazed how many guys have those.
Now one that came out last year, you can get everything there again.
Now here's a dandy.
The mouthpiece visualizes it.
Now this, you can look in the mirror and see where your embouchure is.
Now you can see where your embouchure is. What's that going to do for you?
Now one of them comes out if the trumpet player's embouchure should be down here.
French horn embouchure should be up here.
Trombone, tuba, and baritone all are up here.
It's all a cup mouthpiece instrument.
The lips vibrate.
And that's it.
So that is a bunch of junk.
You worry a lot with it, and it's very difficult to get that across to some students.
And along that line, one put out a dandy last year.
Now this one is a buzzing gadget again.
And even without any dime stone by a tin trumpet or something, it has two holes in it.
And the instructions said that those holes must be covered.
Well, what do you put it in there for then?
That's going to make you a great player real fast.
The guy came up to my house, tore up the big bear, called this an acoustic coil.
And this is what you put it in the horn with. That's all that's for.
An acoustic coil is a piece of plastic like this.
And you're supposed to take this here and put it in the leaf pack.
That's just like playing with a horn you haven't cleaned out for ten months.
And he's selling them.
And gullible trumpet players are buying them.
All right, now, thank you, Tom, if you want to put those all away.
How much do you think that's going to develop?
We're going to run a little over, I'm sorry, but I've got to...
Okay, now then, let's look into the brighter side of this thing.
I told you there's two ways to play, a right and a wrong.
Now, let's take a look at what Williams had to say on page 186.
Now, there's two books that they'll bury maybe four coaches or so,
because when Colin put out another one, they'll remember him for some reason.
When we are in tune with nature's requirements,
the playing of high tones on the cornet or trumpet is not difficult.
Now, I suppose he's not telling us the truth.
The man was a great player, and he turned out a lot of good players.
Now, then he says later, he says,
it is generally believed that high tones are more difficult to produce
than the two tones of the middle register.
This is not altogether true.
Now, let that sink in.
Get the sense of what he's saying.
If one has trained properly, now none of us trained properly.
That was all our problem from the very start.
That's why we strained.
If you trained, you wouldn't have to strain.
So he goes on then.
Trained properly and has cultivated the correct method of production.
Correct method of production.
One tone is virtually as easy to produce as another.
And he's absolutely right.
You notice the great soloists are playing a very difficult solo.
Are they working hard?
You never see one work hard, unless they're putting on a show.
Like Maynard will put on a show.
He'll make it look like he's blowing his head off
and he's not working hard at all in reality.
So that's it.
Like a guy once told me one time, I was just a kid.
He said, you're a good player.
You know the trouble?
I said, what's that?
He said, when you get up higher, it doesn't sound like you're going higher.
You're not working hard enough.
In other words, it looked too easy.
They wanted to see somebody fall on his face and think,
and they'll listen, which happens sometimes.
All right.
Now then, Clark's statement.
How many of you got Clark's book here?
Ten to the second.
Preferably the older book.
And this brings up revisors.
Revisors are terrible.
They destroy so much.
All of a sudden, they know more than the person who wrote the book.
And what happens is they will supposedly revise the book
and end up putting in what they think rather than what St. Jacome is a great example.
Now we'll get into this later too.
But the reviser took out the whole St. Jacome pages
and put in Auburn's in place of it, which was absolutely the opposite.
So revisors, you can't always go by what you read.
Now the Clark book on the new one has a red cover,
another one has a green cover, or a white maybe.
Is that the revision?
I think it is.
And you've got the old book with Clark's picture on the front.
That one probably reads all right in Base Club.
Now turn to the ninth study.
All right.
On the old version, I want someone to stand up and read very loud.
What does it say?
That one is correct, I think.
Yeah.
Someone, if you can read very loud, read that out so they all can hear.
Is he reading the old one?
Now this is Clark's original statement.
Each of the following chromatic scales advances one step higher,
and each one is to be played four or more times in one breath.
No strain is necessary if played properly.
You get that?
No strain is necessary if played properly.
Now what did he mean by that?
The same thing as Williams meant in his.
When you're in tune with the elements of nature.
Now he didn't say if you squeeze the lips or if you do this or that.
Now who's got the new one, the red one?
Clark Tentacle, the red book.
You have it?
All right.
Now here's the revised one.
I got some mad at Carl Fischer.
I don't know why they didn't say it.
I've done it for nothing.
Just because it's Clark and I want to know.
Now here's what the revise has put in.
Each of the following exercises should be played four or one time in one breath.
You will not need to strain on the high notes.
It will keep your lips flexible and avoid playing too loudly.
Now that's just the opposite of what he said.
He said it played properly.
That's what we're going to get all this week.
I'm going to show you how to play properly.
That is within the forces of nature.
Anything we do in our lives depends upon the natural forces that govern this universe.
And if we don't go within those forces, then we're in trouble.
What about the mathematician?
If he changes the rules, he doesn't solve a mathematical problem, does he?
What about the doctor?
He has to stay within the natural laws or that patient won't live.
As the doctor, he can do nothing in his own but clean up and heal it up and what takes over?
The natural force.
Now that applies to everybody.
To fly an airplane, if you stay within the forces of nature, you're fine.
But if you get up, say, 300 feet above the runway and pull down your flaps completely,
you're going to come down because you're fighting the forces of nature.
You lose all your lift.
You must stay within the forces of nature.
Everybody does that except the brass player.
He buzzes his lip and waits for a miracle.
Now that brings up three items that we're going to hit very strongly all week.
How to practice.
There will be no one outside of students that have studied in this room that will practice collecting or know how to practice.
Don, did you ever practice correctly in your life?
No.
And now you find that the forces of nature work pretty good, don't they?
You must stay within them.
Now how to practice.
I can tell you exactly how to practice.
And if you don't do it, who's fault is it?
It's your fault.
I've had students leave the workshop on different occasions.
I believe everything Gordon said except that part.
He shot it down. He doesn't believe in anything. He's not going to work for it.
There are seven forces that we developed.
Now these are the natural forces that make the horn work.
Wind power.
The tongue.
Wind control.
The lips.
The facial muscles that hold them in place so that they will keep vibrating.
Six, the fingers of the right hand, and seven, the left hand that holds the instrument.
That's it. That's the seven forces of nature.
Now when you practice, you're going to be working on these forces.
They're not going to develop by tomorrow.
Now you can take a book or you can take systematic approach.
And you play the notes.
It's not going to help you.
It's how you practice those exercises.
You're working to develop something.
Now how long does it take?
86 months, maybe a year.
And when you're a good student, boy, that goes by in a hurry.
But you take the physical approach book.
Every one of the teachers that are using that book,
their students in 28 weeks are playing a good high C
and becoming the lead players in their school.
Dave or Carl or someone that's using that,
give me an example of what your beginning students have done.
Is Carl in here?
Yeah, Carl.
Give me an example of something your beginning students did in physical approach.
Now if I assign someone at this camp some things out of physical approach,
the elementary method, that doesn't mean I'm putting you back as a beginner.
That means that you're going to develop from that point.
Give me an example, Carl, of using that book and what happened in the school.
The grading, getting from this point to that point was so easy
that they just kept getting better all the time.
And they kept getting better players in their schools,
in the elementary schools, in the high school.
That was great.
It really worked.
That book does a great thing.
If you don't know how to teach it, you might get in trouble.
So there's directions in there that tell you how.
You're not supposed to take five lessons a day.
You've got to be patient and work with it.
Let it develop.
The average player goes down and buys a book.
He takes the first few pages and he tries to play it.
It doesn't really work.
So after about four or five days it goes on the shelf
and you never see the book again.
Nothing is going to develop in four or five days.
I'd keep a student on an exercise
and he'll accomplishes what I want him to accomplish.
Carl, how long did I keep you in the iron and stone level?
He kept saying, I don't want to play out of this anymore.
I want to put it away.
Let's get on with something else.
Oh, Carl, one more lesson.
That's not enough.
One more lesson?
That's a whole month.
Well, one more lesson.
It hadn't happened yet the next lesson.
This one on several lessons.
He said, I hate this book.
When am I going to get out of it?
And about the next lesson, all of a sudden,
that turn level flipped into place.
And he took off like a jackrabbit.
I said, OK, now we'll go on.
He said, no, I like this book now.
I want to stay with it.
And that's what happened.
All right.
How do you practice?
What do you do with that exercise?
If I say keep that chest up, and you start boxing
and you let it down, you're not boxing right.
If you're still going to try and push with the diaphragm,
it's not going to work.
If you're not holding that last note until you shake
and it squeezes, it's not going to work.
You can play the notes every day of your life
and end up worse than when you started.
Playing notes isn't going to do it.
It's how you practice.
And that's going to be stressed in your application groups
this week very strongly.
All right.
What you practice.
All right.
You've got to develop those seven elements of nature.
Each one must be developed until it works correctly by habit.
Not by thinking about it.
By habit.
It's got to work correctly.
Then it'll offer to you.
That's our department.
When to practice.
That means when do I change to another exercise?
Whenever I like.
And that's what we're going to show you also.
Okay.
Now then, you start with breathing because that's number one.
Now, when you breathe, you forget there's no such thing as a diaphragm
and Dr. Miller's going to hit on that very hard.
You fill your chest.
Air is only going to go into the lungs.
It's not going to go anywhere else.
Get that chest and fill it.
One way you can do is check yourself.
Take a breath and put your arms back.
Where does the air go?
Right there.
Knocked out.
And as many demonstrations I'll give you to try and prove it's knocked out.
That's for food.
This is for air.
Dave, come up here, will you?
Now then, I want you to take the textbook.
The fast plane is no harder than deep breathing.
And before tomorrow, you study page one through 15.
Now, remember, you get the sense of what it says.
And if you need questions, you ask them while you're here.
Don't wait and ask somebody that's never been to a workshop
or never studied with any of us.
Don't go ask him.
Ask the ones that know the answer.
All right, now, Dave will be having a lot of the breathing outside.
Now, up until tomorrow, I want you to take that breath
and you take 10 of them without the chest ever coming down.
You want to understand that, Dave?
Dave does this very well.
Kathy got hit on the head a few times.
By you?
Okay, so skin through the nose, very slowly.
And just go all the way up, okay?
Don't worry about where the air is going from about one place anyway.
All right?
So it's just...
Okay, don't worry about raving your shoulders.
Just stay relaxed, okay?
And then out slowly.
Now, where it goes out.
The chest stays up.
Now, this is a slipped eye.
You don't worry about that.
That's a deep guy head.
But when you let the air out, you don't have to force it out.
Just let it out.
The chest stays right there.
Now, what happens?
These muscles here.
And this is demonstrated in the brass playing book.
These muscles go like this.
But if you let the chest down, those muscles do nothing.
So they're not going to develop.
You squeeze like an accordion.
Go ahead and take this bus again.
I'll be right back.
Yeah.
They can all stand up and get that feel.
Okay.
Everybody up.
I know where it is.
You know, you need to be standing up, not going down, not on the freeway,
but right on the road.
Okay?
So just, hey, what?
Let's do that again for about 20 seconds.
You want to stand up anyway, what the heck.
What you do is later, you take your hands, kind of turn the palms up a little bit.
That just kind of helps to draw the shoulders out of the way.
Okay?
And then you breathe slowly like this.
And then back out slowly.
And don't hesitate.
Okay?
Yeah.
Okay, ready?
And turn the palms.
Kind of hold.
Chest up a little bit.
Okay, enter your nose slowly.
The chest up.
Out slowly.
Okay, stop.
As soon as we started doing this, sit down there, okay?
As soon as we started doing this, it was really interesting,
because I saw people look at each other going, get alive.
You know?
And you started looking around like, this is stupid.
No.
Okay?
Claude always talks about doubting Thomas' cousin.
You know, and you don't do it, right?
When I went to Claude, he introduced this to me,
and a lot of other things that I used a lot.
And all of a sudden, it was like the range started taking off.
There's got to be a trigger at some point.
So I stopped doing certain things.
When I stopped doing the breathing exercises,
the range went down.
The endurance went down.
The tone went down.
Everything just went out the window.
So as soon as we started doing this, I saw a bunch,
especially the younger people, stood up and went,
That's okay.
You can laugh all the way to bank something.
All right?
So everybody stand up and let's do it, all right?
It's going to be a cycle of candy.
Okay, ready?
If you start feeling dizzy, grab the chair again, okay?
Pull the chest up, please.
And enter your nose.
Out through your mouth.
Out through your mouth.
Enter your nose slowly.
Out through the mouth.
Keep that chest up.
Don't let it drop.
That's it.
Hold it up.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Out.
Okay.
That's right.
Yeah, okay?
We'll talk more about the practical act.
Right.
Now, I want you all to work on that this afternoon
because you'll have breathing exercise in the morning.
The ones, Clark had the great statement.
He said, the power generated by the muscles of the chest.
Not the diaphragm.
By the muscles of the chest.
They squeeze.
And Dr. Moore is going to that too.
Here's a good example.
You have a bellows.
Your lungs are like a bellows.
And the muscles squeezes.
Of course, you'd be facing this way, wouldn't you?
But they squeeze.
And then they open, you relax.
Then they squeeze.
And then they relax.
And they squeeze.
Now, that has to be developed.
I saw a young man outside today sitting against a tree
with both knees up when he's boxing.
He should have just enjoyed a lunch or something and forgot it.
That's probably didn't do him any good.
Because he's not playing well.
Everything has to be maintained.
You don't do it and drop it.
You keep it up.
You keep it up.
And I've had people say, well, gee, Gordon is a tough teacher.
All right, fine.
But you're going to be a player.
And I had one guy up north.
Someone told him, well, you're having problems.
He says, why don't you go down to Los Angeles?
Takes some lessons.
He says, no.
I've heard about that guy.
He says, you have to work too hard.
But you'll be a player.
And you'll play easily.
And you'll be happy.
There is one new book that's come out today.
Excellent.
And I'm real proud that college wrote the book.
After what?
I studied it about 20 years after college.
Really?
Yeah.
So he wrote this book.
And I just took it at lunch.
And it's got some very humorous descriptions,
which is typical of Carl.
And he'll show it to you.
You show him later in the week all what you've got.
I think it's an excellent book.
And it's going to do a lot.
The whole concept of it, I like.
The questions that so many trumpet players are asking every day,
just normal questions.
And he stays within the guidelines all the way.
So we'll hear more about that during the week.
Now, in the practical application will be like a lesson.
And I want each teacher at that time to take good note of each one of them
and work that these things are right.
Like when we talk about K-tone modified,
which will be coming up,
is the proper natural way to tone.
We'll get on that Tuesday where the tip of the tongue goes
and how it's used.
And that has to be developed.
It won't work automatically.
Unless, fortunately enough, as some are,
that they're hearing about one another.
A dizzy velocity, a tongue that way normally.
His tongue was always in the right place.
I don't think he knew it, but it was there.
That's why he did many phenomenal things.
Yes?
Oh, that's a pretty watch.
Okay.
Now, we've got to go.
Our time is up.
I know we got into a little lengthy discussion there,
but it was all very important.
And we'll get into a lot of it in more detail during the week.
Write your questions down, ask them, and get the sense of it.
Now, get your textbook, the brass playing book,
and make sure that you study those pages
before tomorrow's session.
If you have, as I said, questions, then you're asked them.
Get the sense of it.