From

Help Your Trumpeters Develop

a Great Embouchure
According to some traditions, Gabriel the archangel will sound a trumpet to
signal the end of the world. But who has stopped to think what he's going to
play or how he's going to pull it off? We've all heard the adage "practice makes
perfect," but obviously he can't practice the Final Trumpet without serious con-
sequences. However, when we imagine Armageddon, I doubt most of us imag-
ine a wretched sound like the bugle in Monty Python and the Holy Grail; we
expect to hear the sounding of a bright, heroic tone.
We usually associate trumpets with heralding an event or calling people to
action, as do fanfares, wedding marches, and bugle calls. But most of us also
know that the blats of a beginning trumpet player aren't exactly what most peo-

Alicia Sanderman is a student at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University where she is

majoring in professional writing and minoring in trumpet performance and English as
a second language.

February 2 0 0 4 55
pie want to listen to. So what exactly
is it that bridges the gap between little
Joey's first awful notes and the glori-
ous sound of Maurice Andre?
Good sound production depends
primarily on three things: proper
breathing (not dealt with here), proper
embouchure, or the placement of the
player's lips on the mouthpiece
(French bouche = mouth), and proper
tongue arch. In "The Responsibilities
of a Cornet Soloist" in a 1939 issue of
The Etude, trumpeter Herbert Clarke is
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56 Teaching Music
quoted as saying, "Proper wind con-
trol is 98 percent of correct playing."
He may have been exaggerating slight-
ly; however, his emphasis was in the
right place. But just what is the other
mystical 2 percent that frustrates and
torments players with mammoth
lungs and excellent breath control?
According to Clyde E. Noble,
author of The Psychology of Trumpet
Playing (Missoula, MT: Mountain
Press, 1964), there are thirteen inter-
woven muscles beneath the skin of the
Step Right Up!
mouth and cheeks that control a t
peter's embouchure (p. 53). These
facial muscles must be strong 1
the air is highly compressed and fon
against the lips, cheeks, and throat
when the player is performing high
and loud passages, which tends to <
turb the lip vibrations and diston the !
tone. This is extremely taxing on the
thirteen small muscles and often
results in an inability to maintain the
embouchure. This process creates a
buildup of lactic acid in the facial mu
cles and causes fatigue.
One sign of fatigue is air escaping
from the lips' corners. Beginning play-1
ers or players who fail to practice reg-
ularly will experience endurance
problems (thus the concern for poor
Gabriels big solo if it consists of any-
thing more than a few low notes).
SO, HOW DOES A TRUMPET PLAYER
develop a strong embouchure? Does
Gabriel need to do some sort of lip
push-ups? The idea is not as absurd
as it sounds. Many players practice
lip slurs, which are exercises to
strengthen a player's muscles while
building flexibility. Since there are
only seven valve combinations on
the trumpetopen; 1, 2, 3; 1, 3; 2,
3; 1, 2; 1; and 2 (the third valve
alone is the equivalent of 1, 2)a
trumpeter must be able to play sev-
eral notes using each valve combina-
tion. Bugles, which are trumpets
without valves, have only a single
harmonic series, which leaves them
with so few notes that a bugler can-
not even play a scale. (The overtone
or harmonic series is based on fun-
damental frequencies and frequency
ratios, allowing players to produce
multiple notes with the same finger-
ing.) We hear intervals from har-
monic series in bugle calls like
"Taps" and "Reveille." Practicing
these sets of common intervals
(fifths, fourths, and thirds) without
tonguing individual notes creates a
flexible embouchure. This skill is
important because a trumpeter
needs to be able to produce any one
of the thirty-one notes in the normal
2.5-octave range at will.
However, strength and endur-
ance are far from everything a player
needs to be good. Brass players must
also command a wide dynamic
range. They must have the dia-
phragm and embouchure control to
produce sounds so soft that they
make the listener strain to hear
them, as well as sounds so stentori-
an that they carry across concert
halls and battlefields.
Good tone quality and intonation
are the most obvious differences that
an average listener would notice
between the New York Philharmon-
ic's Phil Smith and little Joey, even
without knowing the exact technical
terms to describe them. Someone
might describe a player's sound as
whiny bright, irritating, clear, and
so forth. A player's tone has a specif-
ic quality based on the number of
overtone frequencies present above
the note played. It is this quality
that allows a general audience to
distinguish between different instru-
ments and trained listeners to differ-
entiate among many players of the
same instrument. Good intonation is
based on specific frequency ratios
between musical intervals. These are
expressed in units called cents. An
octave spans 1200 cents and is
divided into smaller ratios that cre-
ate all the notes within an octave.
The obvious sour notes of a begin-
ner may be 30-50 cents off, but
deviations of 10-20 cents are com-
mon in the playing of professional
musicians.
SO, HOW CAN A TRUMPET STUDENT
develop the perfect embouchure that
will create a sound people beg to lis-
ten to? The consensus among trumpet
professionals I have encountered is
that one should opt for a "puckered
smile," which consists of rolling in the
lips slightly so that they form a cush-
ion under the rim of the mouthpiece.
In the past, players thought that
stretching the lips back was preferable
to puckering slightly. This theory has
since been superceded because JowI/UE
stretching causes the lip aperture to
become wide and flat, which makes
for poor resonance, endurance diffi-
cud Save!!
culties, and problems controlling
intonation and dynamics.
Once the embouchure is formed,
the player must then decide on both International Association for
the vertical and horizontal position of Jazz Education
the mouthpiece. A generally accepted
opinion seems to be that the player
The International
should include one-third of the upper Association lor Jazz
lip and two-thirds of the lower lip in Education (IAJE)
the mouthpiece. However, there are has a special off^r
different schools of thought on this
issue, and a player's jaw formation
for MENC members
and teeth are significant factors in who register for the
deciding what makes the most MENC Biennial
promising embouchure. Conference,
Crowded teeth, overbites, and
underbites complicate the issue, often
April 14-48, in
forcing a player to compensate by Minneapolis. Join
either angling the trumpet extremely IAJE for a special
upward or downward. Also, the size low rate of $60. Just
of a player's teeth and the relative size
of both lips are not to be dismissed by check the IAJE
any means. Therefore, there is such a membership line on
thing as being born with a potentially your conference reg-
good embouchure just by virtue of
one's anatomy. However, for players
istration form at
without the perfect teeth and jaw www.menc.org
combination, there is a wide selection
of mouthpieces that will help coun- IAJE membership
terbalance possible embouchure
problems.
features a variety of
To determine horizontal place- valuable benefits
ment of the mouthpiece, players and programs. Visit
should find the vibrating center of www.iaje.org
their lips, which may or may not be
the anatomical center. (Like Louis
for details.
Armstrong, most trumpeters play
slightly off-center.) To find the
vibrating center, students can force
See you t
a focused stream of air though tight-
ened, almost closed lips, which will
cause their lips to vibrate or buzz.
Test the mouthpiece in various O m
places. It's important to keep the
corners of the embouchure firm.
u o
When done correctly, this buzzing
50N3IAI
February 2004 57
sounds more like a World War II
fighter plane than music, but keep
in mind that this buzz is the basis
for producing a sound on the
mouthpiece and eventually, the
entire instrument.
THE NEXT STEP IN THE PROCESS IS
to consider the tongue. While this
organ might seem slightly less com-
plex than all the contributing facial
muscles, there are different muscles
that make the tongue shorten, flatten,
narrow, or bulge upward. There are
many possible tongue positions for
starting an attack, such as "ta," "la,"
"tu," "da," "dough," and so forth. For
example, say "ta." You'll notice that
the tip of your tongue touched your
hard palate behind your upper teeth
and released a small puff of air as you
lowered your tongue to the base of
your mouth. This is a typical attack.
The tongue's position before an
attack, along with its direction,
speed of release, and distance of
movement, are all variables that
affect how a player attacks a note,
from very separated and accented to
smoothly. A greater area of the
tongue at the hard palate with a
slower release will create a smooth
attack, often used for a lyrical sec-
tion. Trumpet players can practice
' smooth attacks by slowly saying
< "da." Because the air is ready behind
F the tongue, a careful, slow release of
! the tongue on the syllable "da" can
i make a tone seem to appear from
nowhere.
The tongue also plays a large role
| in changing from low to midrange
j to high notes. In an experiment
i done in 1954 with radiography and
j spectrography, researchers found
I that the most common vowel trum-
pet players used was "ah," which
was gradually modified through
| "eh" into "ee" for the extreme high
range. The vowel modification
serves to move the high part of the
[tongue backward, which compress-
les the air near the lips and conse-
quently increases the air speed. the fast, virtuosic passages on the
Even in the highest range, however, valves. If the student holds the trum-
players must maintain airflow and pet correctly, it will be easier to
avoid constricting their throats. develop the proper airflow needed to
support high notes as well as those
BY INCREASING AIR SPEED, PLAYERS in lower ranges.
will be able to produce the increased Once trumpeters develop muscle
pressure necessary for high notes memory, they will always use the same
without smashing their horns against embouchure to play. This is a result of
their faces. In other words, the strengthening the muscles specific to
pinkie ring is not an octave key. the embouchure. An embouchure
Using undue pressure by pushing change, even by a few millimeters,
the instrument hard against the lips requires the player to strengthen a
is a recurring problem in young whole new set of muscles. And finally,
players because it gives students issues of embouchure and tongue
temporary success, but students who aside, the player still needs to master
use this technique will not have ade- concepts of breath support, rhythm,
quate endurance. The left arm musicality music theory, and music
should hold the entire weight of the history to be a successful professional
horn, and the shoulders should be musician. So, since he can't practice
down and relaxed. This distribution before the big day, let's hope that
of weight helps maintain the lips' Gabriel will be the beneficiary of a lot
ability to vibrate and leaves the fin- of divine inspiration when he picks up
gers of the right hand free to perform that Final Trumpet! ^
The University of Tennessee
School of Music
and
MENC: The National Association for Music Education
Announce
The National Symposium on
Multicultural Music
Octlbirll,2IM
Featuring
Performances - Sessions
African, African American, Appalachian
Asian, Bahamian, Bulgarian, Greek,
Iraqi, Irish, Mexican American,
Native American
Visit to
THE MUSEUM OF APPALACHIA
A Tennessee Children's Choir
Folk Dancing and Storytelling
For More Information, Contact:
Dr. Marvelene C. Moore
School of Music, The University of Tennessee
1741 Volunteer Boulevard
Knoxville, TN 37996-2600
865-974-7515,865-974-3241
mmoore7@utk.edu
February 2004 59