Improving Tone Quality

[MelloFanatic09]

Alright, so with drum corps auditions coming up REALLY soon, any tips would be appreciated. I play the mellophone, and I'm pretty good at it I'd say, but I know my tone needs improving. It isn't horrible, but it could definitely be better.

Do any of you brass players know any good tips for helping to improve tone quality?

Thanks in advance :)

-Ashlee

[wvu80]

Lip slurs, up and down. And pedal tones.

Also, don't forget to buzz that mouthpiece every morning before you go to school. If you can do it on the mouthpiece, you can do it on the horn.

Now practice, then knock 'em dead in that audition with your beautiful, characteristic sound. :)

Edited November 8, 2007 by wvu80

[rai-mello]

Honestly, except for Cavaliers, what is a "characteristic sound"? I know that Cavaliers definitely go for the French horn timbre. Anyone know about any corps? Is there anything that lets us know that we're using a characteristic sound?

[wvu80]

Honestly, except for Cavaliers, what is a "characteristic sound"? I know that Cavaliers definitely go for the French horn timbre. Anyone know about any corps? Is there anything that lets us know that we're using a characteristic sound?

The Blue Devils have a DVD called Dynasty of Brass.

It is the single most fantastic thing you could own that will help you develop your brass sound, because you can turn it up loud on your home theater and play right along the Blue Devils with their 16 warm-up exercises you hear all the time when they play "in the lot." You can change the audio and have Wayne Downy talk to you over the playing about how to develop a "characteristic sound", or you can play the "trumpets only" audio, or the tubas, mellos, or baris. You get the idea.

Plus you can print out the music for the exercises on your laser printer, which includes Space Music, and Bb Tuning (what the old guys call F Tuning, but for Bb instruments).

Characteristic sound? Twenty or so DCI high brass trophies tell me Blue Devils have got it, in spades!

Edited November 8, 2007 by wvu80

[Dave]

Before we get lots of crazy ideas in here, I'm going to jump in and try to lay down the basic idea. Firstly, if you want to develop your playing, the best thing you can do is get yourself a private teacher. You don't need to get the best of the best, just get someone who's an experienced player who's willing to take a few bucks to spend time working with you; there are a lot of us out there. They will point you towards good exercises and books to use. Playing in the real world vs. playing in drum corps should be like doing work in a class vs. taking a standardized test--in other words, the latter should be a straightforward application of the former. If you work to become a good brass player in general, being a good drum corps brass player will come naturally.

Now, as for what you can do even without a teacher: start off the horn with the fundamentals of playing. The old adage of "if you can sing it, you can play it" is absolutely true, so spend time--a lot of time--singing through music. Anything: band music, solos, small group stuff, anything you can. Just get used to the idea of "speaking" in music and your brain controlling pitch like that. Your body is used to controlling pitch through your vocal chords, so this will be using what your body already does naturally to develop musical literacy and skill.

Now, we're going to take that and transfer it to the next level--producing pitches with your lips, rather than with your vocal chords. The father of modern brass playing, Arnold Jacobs, spent many years studying human physiology, and found that our brains are wired to our emboucheres the same way they're wired to our vocal chords in terms of motor and sensory nerves--in other words, vocal vibrations and lip vibrations can be controlled the same way. The difference is, we haven't been buzzing our lips to create pitches since birth, the way we have used our vocal chords, so it's going to take more practice. What you have spent time singing, spend a lot of time just buzzing on your mouthpiece. Not just simple exercises, but whole songs, simple and complex tunes, anything you want. Don't tell yourself something is too hard to buzz, just do it, and you'll be surprised what you can do with practice. Try to have the best tone possible on your mouthpiece, and yes, it is possible to have good mouthpiece tone. It just takes time and patience, and repetition.

While you're doing all this, realize this as well: just like we learn to speak as babies by listening to adults, so do we learn to play our horns by listening to those better than us. Get recordings, as many as you can, and spend time listening to them. Even better, try to play along with them, and let the sounds that really appeal to you as a musician guide you. Transfer what you've done to your horn, and just keep at it. Over time you will find yourself happier with what you hear. Above all, don't look for or subscribe to any quick fixes; there are no such things. You just have to keep practicing.

[rai-mello]

Before we get lots of crazy ideas in here, I'm going to jump in and try to lay down the basic idea. Firstly, if you want to develop your playing, the best thing you can do is get yourself a private teacher. You don't need to get the best of the best, just get someone who's an experienced player who's willing to take a few bucks to spend time working with you; there are a lot of us out there. They will point you towards good exercises and books to use. Playing in the real world vs. playing in drum corps should be like doing work in a class vs. taking a standardized test--in other words, the latter should be a straightforward application of the former. If you work to become a good brass player in general, being a good drum corps brass player will come naturally.

Now, as for what you can do even without a teacher: start off the horn with the fundamentals of playing. The old adage of "if you can sing it, you can play it" is absolutely true, so spend time--a lot of time--singing through music. Anything: band music, solos, small group stuff, anything you can. Just get used to the idea of "speaking" in music and your brain controlling pitch like that. Your body is used to controlling pitch through your vocal chords, so this will be using what your body already does naturally to develop musical literacy and skill.

Now, we're going to take that and transfer it to the next level--producing pitches with your lips, rather than with your vocal chords. The father of modern brass playing, Arnold Jacobs, spent many years studying human physiology, and found that our brains are wired to our emboucheres the same way they're wired to our vocal chords in terms of motor and sensory nerves--in other words, vocal vibrations and lip vibrations can be controlled the same way. The difference is, we haven't been buzzing our lips to create pitches since birth, the way we have used our vocal chords, so it's going to take more practice. What you have spent time singing, spend a lot of time just buzzing on your mouthpiece. Not just simple exercises, but whole songs, simple and complex tunes, anything you want. Don't tell yourself something is too hard to buzz, just do it, and you'll be surprised what you can do with practice. Try to have the best tone possible on your mouthpiece, and yes, it is possible to have good mouthpiece tone. It just takes time and patience, and repetition.

While you're doing all this, realize this as well: just like we learn to speak as babies by listening to adults, so do we learn to play our horns by listening to those better than us. Get recordings, as many as you can, and spend time listening to them. Even better, try to play along with them, and let the sounds that really appeal to you as a musician guide you. Transfer what you've done to your horn, and just keep at it. Over time you will find yourself happier with what you hear. Above all, don't look for or subscribe to any quick fixes; there are no such things. You just have to keep practicing.

I like all these ideas, and though I'm not a pessimist, I don't think there's a mellophone private teacher out there. That's been one of my main concerns being a purebred mellophone player. Trumpets, baritones and tubas have teachers because they are concert instruments. Mellophone I would say is purely marching, hence no teacher.

However, the Dynasty of Brass doesn't seem too bad right about now, even considering it's price.

[Dave]

Just find a trumpet teacher who's willing to be a little flexible on that end. Or just find someone who has a good understanding of brass playing in general.

[rai-mello]

Just find a trumpet teacher who's willing to be a little flexible on that end. Or just find someone who has a good understanding of brass playing in general.

So the guy in the quote I got, Wayne Dillon, you think he's any good? :P

[Dave]

I don't know him, so I really can't say. I have heard nothing bad about him, either, so...there you go.

[Shadow_7]

All of the off the horn tricks don't really help you improve your tone on the horn. You can sing all day, and buzz your mouthpiece all day. But if you never pick up the horn you'll find your tone is not any better, and possibly worse. I know when I tried doing mouthpiece buzzing 2/3rds of my practice time relative to actually playing my horn because of my practice/home circumstances that my tone actually got worse.

As fas as tone, you've got to do those boring long tones. With plenty of breaks. Anything more than that and your focus goes away from tone and towards something else. And by all means play on equipment that matches your concept of sound. If you're thinking you want a dark sound, then don't play on a jet tone mouthpiece, or even a trumpet mouthpiece on a mellophone. If you want to sound like "X", then at least give the equipment that "X" is using a try. Just my opinion.