Getting a Good Sound!

Trying to teach someone about producing a good sound is frustratingly difficult. Often the student thinks they sound ok. They are just happy to 'get" all the notes more or less in the right place! But in actual fact their sound is inconsistent .. either too pinched or raucous by being overblown and usually then also out of tune.

Knowing a good sound is a bit like learning to ride a bike in the sense that you don't "know" until you already have it under control. The sense of balance is elusive until one day you just can do it. I think the analogy is good in a couple of ways. Firstly, like a lot of skills, you have to have blind faith that the goal is achievable. Secondly a good sound also requires 'balance". Once you feel the benefit of improved balance you will be able to go places you never dreamed of.... and you won't get it unless you keep working on it!!

The simplest way I can try to describe what I am talking about is to say this: create sound with air compression and let your lips respond to the resonance of the instrument. The "balance" is between how much air is required to play a note and then how you respond with your embouchure. Although you don't need to blow air into the instrument (there's already air in there) you blow air to create compression or energy which generates lip flutter which when the lips touch together turns into sound (buzz).

The mouthpiece, the tubing and bell flare (that makes up your horn) has certain physical properties. By blowing a pressure wave (sound wave) - (and apologies to physicists for the terminology) that is stronger than the resistance provided by the combination of these parts you keep a note going. The resistance in the instrument itself participates in producing "the sound" and you must allow it to do that by having the lip buzzing surface flexible enough to respond. Too much lip tension or too much air pressure won't allow for the response or natural resonance of the tubing . The instrument length responds to certain frequencies and you are smarter to allow this to happen than to try and 'make' it happen.

To try and be accurate, my understanding is that after about a high C the physics of the tube and bell no longer applies and the natural resonance or resistance is overcome by the frequency being generated. So once you break free of the tubing you are on your own! .. and by this stage most of us have such a tensed and closed off lip setting we can't get much more range. 

So, although the air is the primary component in this method, I am going to start with the lips.

Most students tend towards closing off the lip opening. As they play a line of notes the embouchure get's more and more tense and there is a struggle to keep adjusting to play different intervals. You can get resuls by pressing the lips together or using the rim of the mouthpiece to simulate the lip flex but DON"T DO THAT! That way leads to a closed off sound and you will not make progress past a certain point. What needs to happen is less lip adjustment and more difference in air compression. The mouthpiece rim does become an active part of the embouchure but you don't need to think much about that.

You MAY need to be prepared to experiment with lip placement to find the opening and placement on the mouthpiece that allows for maximum resonance. As far as lip participation is concerned flexibility and range then becomes more a question of maintaining that resonant position. Your playing range comes from that setting being more flexed (or tensed and harder?) or less flexed (or relaxed and softer?).

I believe that this lip flexibility is the FLEXIBILITY that is mentioned in study books. Practice in this technique isn't towards building big muscles. You don't need huge and strong muscle tension but you need to do enough practice/playing to build up the neccesary conditioning in muscles and skin tone of the lip.

However, this resonant position idea doesn't work at all well unless the air compression is sufficient to get the lips buzzing at the right frequency. The balance is simply between the air and the lip flex. 

How do you get the right air? Well there's several ideas about this and my first suggestion is to check out the ideas of Mr Bobby Shew (do a search) - I like to think that this concept falls into line with his teaching. Also consider Mr Allen Vizzutti (check his fantastic books). The best basic practice I could suggest to achieve this concept are the exercises of Jimmy Stamp. I like the ideas from Arnold Jacobs and similarly William Adams who (to be very simple) suggest that if you think the right way your body will respond. But therein lies the difficulty - most of us don't understand that level of sound or musicality until we have experienced it.

To avoid turning this into a book I will stop here. Maybe I will be confident enough to write something on the air side of things sometime in the future. Please feel free to correspond if you wish to discuss this further .. or present a different view.

Practice and Playing.

Try to do something every day.
We all have a kind of “base” practice. Something you probably should do daily to keep in form. But to progress you need to add one new thing and concentrate on it. You will learn more by taking little chunks than trying to cope with too much. Sometimes learning that one new bit can be done in a few minutes or maybe even a day or longer but at least you will learn it properly and then you always have it. One thing for 100% or a hundred things for 1%. I know which one I think is better.

Keep your instrument out at home. Every time you walk past it pick it up and play a note or a bit of that thing you want to get together.

If you have a piano at home play a note as you walk past. Try and remember it and next time you go past check if you held it in your inner ear. OR take the note and sing an interval and try to remember that next time you swing by the piano.

Similarly many people practice with a metronome to practice playing in time. That’s great!… but another idea is to try playing a little faster than the metronome. Try playing a little slower. It’s amazing how far you can stretch the time!
OR set the click going, get the feel, leave the room for a few seconds so you can’t hear the click anymore and then come back to see if you have stayed in time.

Try to push yourself along. Don’t wait for your teacher to say you can move ahead. Flick a few pages further in your study book. Maybe you can do it already!

Why not modify your existing practice material. If you’ve got something down maybe you can practice it in swing, or another key, or slurred rather than tongued or an octave higher/lower, backwards, in minor instead of major or vice versa, – use your imagination.
Sometimes you can string things together. An example is to practice a scale or chord first in major and then the same scale but change it to minor.

- A good trick if you are trying to learn a difficult technical thing is to do it slower than you can play it perfectly and then do it double tempo. So, one time slow one time double. Try to let auto pilot kick in for the double time. The slow should always be perfect and the double time will eventually also be perfect.
- Swap hands. Play udsipe down.
- mix up articulations. You need to be a bit disciplined but choose an articulation before you start an exercise and stay with it. Turn things into triplets. That’s tough!

Relax. Play at a tempo and technique where you can stay relaxed. Your body will always perform better “loose”. Maybe balanced is a better word than relaxed?

Play along CD’s always more fun with a friend!

Try to keep a performance attitude in your practice.