Help with endurance/range

[dctrumpetgrlie04]

I accidentally posted this is the wrong forum initially..

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I play trumpet and I'm looking for a few ways to help expand my range and help my endurance. I know lip slurs help, but is there anything else that helps anyone else here with range? I can play comfortably to about a C above the staff.

Along with range help, does anyone have any ideas for endurance? Especially mid-range, it kills my lips. Does anyone else have this problem/ does anyone know how to help it?

Thanks for any help.

[BMBob]

I know this isn't giving you much, but as far as endurance goes, just play. Play and play and play. Make sure that you're not using excess pressure while you play and do your best to avoid that as you get tired. Also, ALWAYS, ALWAYS make sure to get a good warmup and warm-down.

[Shadow_7]

Well, there's equipment things you can do for range. But generally going that route makes accuracy harder, and playing loud through small things can be problematic. And you can play, play, and play some more, but if you never work on range, you'll never get range. I've gone that route myself. I had gorgeous tone, could sight read anything, and lip slur like a butterfly. But still couldn't get above a G, just a major 6th above the tuning note.

You need to rest as well as play. I've found that I have my best range when I don't play for a week or more. Although not playing kills endurance, accuracy, and other aspects. The only balance between the two is a nice drawn out routine/warmup that includes lots of rest periods. I don't really do much warming down, but I don't always have to play again the very next day. When I religiously do the routine that works for me, I generally have a 5th or more range at my disposal. Not doing it means I'll have an off day, not that my off day is all that bad these days. But it could/should be better based on known capabilities.

Lip slurs work flexibility. The only real range benefit is that most tend to use your full established range in the process of doing them. It's like driving extra miles to get cheaper gas, when you tally the costs of going that route, your benefit is minimal if at all.

Long tones seem to work for me. Starting at a point and working out chromatically from there, both up and down. Eventually you'll want to start where you want your center of range to be. But want it to be and where it is don't always coexist. So just start where it's comfortable and works towards the uncomfortable.

Routines like the Hession Sessions, or a Bill Adams based routine seem popular and successful for most. Playing outside of your comfort zone has a bit of a psychological aspect. You need a clear image/goal and the belief that you can do it. Which gets reinforced by doing it. Focusing on how to do it, only distracts you from the goal of doing it. Or in other terms, one sensory perception overides another sensory perception.

[BMBob]

Yup - you're right. There are a myriad of sources out there to help you work on range. As far as endurance goes, it just comes from doing it, over, and over, and over again, which is what I was trying to say in my previous post. It's just like endurance in any other area. If you want to run a marathon, you've got to run!

[84BDsop]

You also may want to play around with your mouthpiece...not so much the bowl, but the diameter of the bore.

Until just before performance season last year I'd only played on 2 mouthpieces in my life...a Besson 6A that came with my brother's old trumpet (that I found in teh attic when I was a kid...started my musical career) and a Claude Gordon CG7S that I started playing on in BD.

Last year I decided to look for a mouthpiece with a narrower bore...the idea being to use simply physics to increase the airspeed, particularly up high (I don't remember teh mouthpiece I bought, and my sop case is buried inva corner while we paint inside the house).

It didn't so much increase my range -- I could squeak out a high D if I was relatively fresh -- but it DID solidify the top of my range.

[Drew Wilkie]

The thing that you (and everyone) needs to remember is that brass playing is 10% strength, and 90% coordination. Lip slurs will not give you high chops, they'll only help to teach you flexibility.

Wayne Bergeron could play double C's in the seventh grade. Why? He's not a freak, he was just a kid. But when he first picked up the horn, the embouchure setup that was most natural to him was one that could produce a double C. This proves that the innate facial strength of a seventh grader is all one needs to play a double C with power.

99.9% of the time, kids with no range are playing with their chops too spread apart in the mouthpiece. When they take a breath, they love to spread their lips as wide as possible, and blow like the devil. Unfortunately, this doesn't afford any real range or endurance potential.

So instead of doing that, work on practicing EVERYTHING at pianissimo, and with as little mouthpiece pressure as possible. The ONLY way to do that is to not spread your lips apart in the mouthpiece. Your chops must be touching each other when you start to play. The air will form the aperture, not the rim of the mouthpiece pinning the lips open. When you first do this, your mouthpiece will feel a LOT smaller...but this is the sensation you want.

It's not WHAT you practice, but HOW you practice it. In this circumstance, you're trying to build a new habit with your embouchure. So whenever you practice, breath through your nose...and DO NOT stretch your mouth open to play. Play everything pianissimo, and with almost no mouthpiece pressure. This will force you to bring your lips closer to together inside the mouthpiece, which is the direction you want to go in as far as developing range and endurance.

[rai-mello]

Though everyone says lip slurs, I don't particularly like them. Now I do, since it built my range up. A simple of good exercise goes as such.

C G, E C, G E, Bb G, so on, and so forth. It goes from C down to a G, up to an E, down to a C ectcetera...

If you're not looking for a lip slurs, I would say try playing a chromatic scale, all the way up high until you can't go no far. Don't do this often, in fact, maybe only do the chromatic scale thing once, twice, three times a day at most! The chromatic scale has to start from your low C though. Not sure how much that helps, but it helps me handle the upper register a bit more.

*shows two pennies*

(yeah, i copied this from my post in the other thread :))

[Martybucs]

Everyone that can play high, does it a little different, but everyone is giving great advice. Try lots of things out. Something that will work for you will probably give you immediate, if modest, results and feel relatively natural. For most people range and endurance comes from hard dedicated work. There is no magic bullet.

There are, however, trick setups that will give you instant range through resetting your chops a certain way. Generally, all you get is the high note and everything else is bad; tone, flexibility, volume, etc. Believe it or not, playing around with different setups like that can help you find something that can work in real playing. Just be very, very careful not to use too much pressure!!! You can seriously injure your chops and there is so much more important stuff in playing the trumpet than range. Endurance... you kinda really need that.

Doc Severinson said it best, "When you're done talking about it, just practice."

[Martybucs]

There are also methods that promise range and endurance.

"Sail the Seven C's" comes to mind. It is basically a book of exercises increasing in range and length in hopes that you'll be able to find out, for yourself, how to play the increasingly difficult exercises. Works for some.

There are also embouchure designs; Balanced Embouchure or BE, involves rolling your lips in and out according to the register your playing in; Tongue Controlled Embouchure or TCE, the guy that plays this way, Bahb Civitello(?), (Bob) is really amazing so I guess it works, I've tried it, it's pretty radical. I think you put the tip of your tongue between your lower teeth and your bottom lip, curl your tongue so that the arch of your tongue, this creates, touches your top teeth and inside of your upper lip and voila! You get a loud BLAT! However, you can work with this and screech some pretty loud triple G's, but I can't and don't have the time to refine this method; Jerome Callet has something that he calls Superchops. (I pretty much play in this manner and always have in a self taught way and getting his book helped me refine my technique - works for me), I think Jerry now swears by the TCE and claims to have developed it with Bahb, (I think. Maybe someone can correct me since I'm writing off the top of my head); There's Carmine Caruso, (you pretty much have to live alone in a secluded area to use this method)

I'll bet there are more methods but this should get you started and maybe save you some time gaining range and endurance, if you care to research the above stuff and find what you like.

Lastly, if you play on a Bach mouthpiece, you may want to change that. Bach revolutionized mouthpiece manufacturing by offering a consistently high standard of product at an affordable price. Bach mouthpieces are the ubiquitous standard of the industry, however, there are better choices, IMO, because of the sharpness of the rim which can chew your chops up.

This can get expensive, but there are more comfortable rims out there and you need to experiment.

Schilke is the most obvious, affordable choice for a comfortable rim, again, IMO. In fact, from here on everything is IMHO.

GR mouthpieces are interesting and expensive, but comfortable.

Giardinelli is very similar to Bach with a more comfortable rim and my favorite is the 10M, but they have many sizes and shapes of cups. I think Maynard sounded best when playing Giardinelli. (MF1VS, wasn't it?)

Warburton has a great product (Terri is a drum corps guy, marched in a Canadian corps, soprano). Very comfortable rims and cups and interchangeable backbores to find just the right resistance/feedback. Great customer service.

Gosh this could go on and on. Reeves. Stork, Curry, etc.,etc.

Personally, I would stay away from Parduba, and Jet Tones. Not that people don't play perfectly well on them, but most don't. (see IMO disclaimer)

If you have lots of disposable income, you could work with a mouthpiece manufacturer that will custom make a mouthpiece for you. You would go to their factory and try different designs until you get a winner. I would love to do this, but it is expensive. At the end though, you have a piece you're happy with.

Good luck!

[vferrera]

The thing that you (and everyone) needs to remember is that brass playing is 10% strength, and 90% coordination. Lip slurs will not give you high chops, they'll only help to teach you flexibility.

Wayne Bergeron could play double C's in the seventh grade. Why? He's not a freak, he was just a kid. But when he first picked up the horn, the embouchure setup that was most natural to him was one that could produce a double C. This proves that the innate facial strength of a seventh grader is all one needs to play a double C with power.

99.9% of the time, kids with no range are playing with their chops too spread apart in the mouthpiece. When they take a breath, they love to spread their lips as wide as possible, and blow like the devil. Unfortunately, this doesn't afford any real range or endurance potential.

So instead of doing that, work on practicing EVERYTHING at pianissimo, and with as little mouthpiece pressure as possible. The ONLY way to do that is to not spread your lips apart in the mouthpiece. Your chops must be touching each other when you start to play. The air will form the aperture, not the rim of the mouthpiece pinning the lips open. When you first do this, your mouthpiece will feel a LOT smaller...but this is the sensation you want.

It's not WHAT you practice, but HOW you practice it. In this circumstance, you're trying to build a new habit with your embouchure. So whenever you practice, breath through your nose...and DO NOT stretch your mouth open to play. Play everything pianissimo, and with almost no mouthpiece pressure. This will force you to bring your lips closer to together inside the mouthpiece, which is the direction you want to go in as far as developing range and endurance.

Bingo. This is excellent advice. The other advantage of this method is that you can play loud as f*** without even trying hard.

Another thing to consider is that of all the muscles in your face, there are only three that have anything to do with trumpet playing - the outer rim of the orbicularis, the zygomatic major and the risorius. The orbicularis controls the aperture, and the other two control the corners. You need only the absolute minimum tension in these muscles to produce a tone. Tension in any other muscle group is generally counter-productive.

When I was in h.s. I was taught to play with a clenched embouchure. This is extremely inefficient for several reasons: 1) you are tensioning muscles that have nothing to do with playing which only makes you tired, 2) With a stiff embouchure, the only way to control the aperture is with mouthpiece pressure. 3) the only way to overcome mouthpiece pressure is by blowing hard. So you end up working extremely hard and still sounding like #### with no range and endurance. This is very discouraging and is why I didn't touch a horn for 23 years after I aged out.

I started playing again about a year ago and recently stumbled on the method that Mr. Wilkie describes. Even though I only have about 3-5 hours per week of practice time, my endurance and range are better than they ever were before and tone quality is verging on "acceptable."

Some guys are natural players. Not me. But with a relaxed approach, I find that I sound better and generally have more fun playing than I ever did before.

A final note is that you have to know your limitations. Play the notes you can play without straining. Straining only leads to bad habits (pressure, overblowing), which takes you in a vicious cycle that ruins your playing. Stay relaxed all the time and use air speed and lip compression to get the to top of your range. This does not guarantee that you will be able to scream, but you will be able to pay brilliantly and effortlessly within your natural range whether that be high C or double C.