Question about High Range

[zaidmkhan]

My high range is okay. I can get up to a Bb relatively easily. I just can’t get from the range with the F4 up to that range without having to reset my lips on the mouthpiece. Essentially, that shift is hard for me. Any suggestions or exercises would be appreciated. Thanks

[Doug Elliott]

I hesitate to give any specific advice without seeing you play, but you could or should try starting on that high F and come down from it and back up. Start by going down just to hgh Bb and back up. Gradually expand farher downward, always going back to the high F.

No shift. Do not allow any shift to happen.

[zaidmkhan]

So start in the F go up to the Bb and come back down without any breaks?

[BGuttman]

Start on the high note (in your case Bb) and go down to F and back up. Make sure you do not move the mouthpiece or your lips within the mouthpiece during this transition. I think Doug was assuming you were dealing with the F above the Bb (6 lines above the bass staff).

There are a bunch of different lip slur exercises to work on these transitions. I believe Brad Edwards has published a whole book of them.

[Doug Elliott]

Yes, sorry I misinterpreted which notes you were talking about. I can help you most with a Skype lesson. PM me if you're interested, I have time in this next week.

[LeTromboniste]

Careful with advice worded as "make sure nothing is moving at all" or something along those lines. It comes from a good place, that there shouldn't be a shift/reset or excessive movement, but it's just not true that nothing moves – not shifting doesn't mean you aren't moving something. I read such advice online as a teenager when I was self-taught, among other places on the old TromboneForum, took it literally, and it took me years, until halfway through college, to realise that in fact basically everything should be moving, always, just not by shifting. I was trying to keep the exact same embouchure for every note, and had managed to still build a good sound and control from the trigger notes to high Bb, but I just couldn't expand my range above Bb with lasting effect, and had no stamina up high. Eventually trying so hard to expand the range started to make me lose range rather than gain any, and I almost quit playing as a result. The problem was that really I was just trying to play these high notes with the same embouchure as 2 octaves lower, and thus with an aperture that was way too open, with the wrong pressure at the wrong places, and actively working to stifle the very movements and changes and the pivoting that would have been needed, because "nothing should be moving". And I had done that for the 5 years of playing before I had any teacher, and then the first 4+ years of studying (my first teacher was a good teacher for many things, but he didn't spot this, and we tackled this in my second year with my college teacher), so basically for my first decade of playing, the most formative years where you build your basic technique. That became deeply ingrained in my technique, and to this day it's still something I keep needing to work on.

So yeah, careful with giving and receiving online advice, best to get a specialist opinion with a lesson with Doug.

[harrisonreed]

There is movement of the jaw, tongue, and even horn angle. But physically taking the mouthpiece off your face and resetting it is wrong. It's a sign that your mechanics are inefficient.

[LeTromboniste]

There is movement of the jaw, tongue, and even horn angle. But physically taking the mouthpiece off your face and resetting it is wrong. It's a sign that your mechanics are inefficient.

Absolutely

[timothy42b]

There is movement of the jaw, tongue, and even horn angle. But physically taking the mouthpiece off your face and resetting it is wrong. It's a sign that your mechanics are inefficient.

Without taking it off the face, letting it slip even a little means you can't get back up high. Well, I can't get back up high anyway.