How to Play the Trumpet

In this video, Brett Youens describes the three steps to playing with beautiful tone (“Sing it, Buzz it, Play it”), with the tuba used as an example.

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(Transcript)
Hi. Let’s talk a little more about valved brass instruments and how they work. As you can see, this is a tuba mouthpiece…a euphonium mouthpiece…a horn (also known as a french horn) mouthpiece (musicians, in general, prefer horn)…a trumpet mouthpiece. The principle we want to talk about today has something to do with mouthpieces, and that is the production of a beautiful tone on your instrument.

There are basically 3 steps: sing it/buzz it/play it. So if I want to play this melody, I should be able to sing it, I should be able to buzz it, and then I should be able to play it.

So let’s talk about why we should sing it/buzz it/and play it. It has to do with the difference between a piano and a valved brass instrument. If I see a key on a piano and press it, then there’s no problem producing the pitch that I’m wanting to produce, because all I have to do is press the key. But on a valved brass instrument, if I press any given combination of valves, I could produce an infinite number of pitches using that fingering.

For example…So how do my lips know which note they’re supposed to produce? Well, the answer is: My ear tells my lips what to do. So I need to find a way to test whether my ear knows what it’s supposed to tell my lips. So let’s take this melody…Now I’ll try to sing it…And you can see: I don’t know where that last tone is. So my ear doesn’t know what it’s supposed to tell my lips, so I need to practice that. OK. So now I’ve tested that my ear knows what it’s supposed to tell my lips. So the point of singing is not to be a beautiful singer. The point is to test whether your ear knows what it’s supposed to tell your lips. So – to review – you can sing it like this…or like this – in other words, humming – or if you want, you can play it on a kazoo (which is the same thing as singing). So: singing.

Next point: buzzing. I should be able to buzz with my mouthpiece any melody. The reason is if I’m wanting to produce, let’s say, an F#, and if I’m buzzing an F, then that F# is not going to sound very good. And if I’m wanting to play an F#, and I’m buzzing a Bb, it could even be that I don’t even hear the F#, I hear some different note. So, the more exact your buzzing the note you want, the better that note will sound. So basically the beauty of your tone is determined by how exactly you are buzzing what it is that you want to produce.

So: a couple of tips about buzzing on your instrument. Low notes can be a problem: You’ll notice, your air is gone and you can’t produce the note you want. So here’s a tip: Put your pinky in front of the end of the mouthpiece, to simulate the pressure that you’re having to overcome to play your instrument, and you can get a lot lower. Alternatively, of course, you could just hold it like this, or use your other hand.

There’s something called a “Buzz Extension Resistance Piece” or B.E.R.P or BERP that you can screw onto your instrument that looks like this. It’s this black piece of plastic screwed onto my instrument. So I can plug my mouthpiece into it and play while I’m holding my instrument. And, of course, I could also play this piece and act like I’m doing the fingerings, or actually do the fingerings. Right? So that way you could practice the fingerings and the buzzing at the same time.

One last point about buzzing: I should be able to produce a note without the mouthpiece. So if I am pressing very hard in order to get a note – which is not good – and if I take away my mouthpiece, I can test whether that note was coming from actually buzzing in a good way, or just pressing incredibly hard on my lips. Pressing is not good. You’ll have pain in this area, you’ll get tired of playing, and your tone will sound pinched and, in any case, not beautiful.

So one other tip. This is called an “embouchure visualizer”. If I buzz here, then I can see what my embouchure looks like. And my “embouchure” just means the way my lips are formed while I’m playing. I can watch the way my lips are formed while I’m playing. Right? So this is a nice little instrument.

You might be wondering how you can produce a tone without your mouthpiece. And it’s – it looks like this. If these are your lips, then you can see, maybe if I open them up just a little bit in the middle – how about let’s use this. Let’s say my lips are from here to here. Then you can see that there’s either a big hole there or a small hole, and usually there’s a very small hole for a high note, and a somewhat bigger hole for a low note. So it looks about like this. Right? So if that helps you any, that’s what an embouchure looks like while you’re playing.

So, now you know a little more about the production of a beautiful tone on your instrument.

Duration : 0:8:19

Continue reading 7 Learning & Playing Tuba/Trumpet/Euphonium/Baritone/Flugelhorn/French Horn/Cornet

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