Push up/pull down to help in leaps

[imsevimse]

Hi!

I want to greet the forum for making me aware of this. I guess I have done some of this without being aware of it, because I cant remember any teacher I had ever mentioned it. If I remember correctly it was in a discussion concerning different emboushuretypes that this came up, that some "push up" to ascend and "pull down" to descend (on the lips) and some do the opposite. I know my embouschuretype got diagnosed by Doug also at that time. I haven't thought much of this "push up/pull down" since until recently when I had some cracked notes. I questioned myself why I sometimes missed a large leap and another day had no problem with the same leap. I started to think more about whether it would be a difference if I actively did that "push-up" or "pull-down" on the lips to help the leap. Now I'm happy I did. It does help. For me it is "push-up" to ascend and "pull-down" to descend that works.

Just wanted to share that if you dig you can find knowledge here that may help and that includes both beginners and professionals.

/Tom

[sungfw]

For me, it depends on the direction of the leap and the lateral direction of the push or pull.

When I had a consultation with Doug at the US Army Band Tuba and Euphonium Conference back around 2010-2011, he recommended that I push up and to the left to ascend and pull down and to the right to descend, which did indeed fix a number of issues with range, crossing range breaks, and accuracy. Since then, experimentation with other motions (pushing up and to the right to ascend and pulling down and to the left to descend, pushing straight up to ascend and pulling straight down to descend, and pulling down in any direction to ascend or pushing up in any direction to descend, has demonstrated to my satisfaction that, for me, anything other than the prescribed direction is a recipe for disaster.

[Doug Elliott]

You can't successfully fight the way your face needs to work.

[musicofnote]

Jim Markey has some videos which were especially helpful to me concerning the meld between the change of air direction (jaw movement) per register and the position "shift" of the mouthpiece on the face, also determined by the register. He explains how he does it, but leaves room for "others" by explaining that they exist, but don't work for him. This was the first I'd heard of this since switching from trumpet to trombone in 1991. In the early 80's James Stamp was all the rage amongst trumpet players and that declared, that what you can buzz you can play and that there is no shifting in position or angle when doing either. That basically ruined me mentally and physically for the trumpet at the time and a 9 year break from playing got my head back to a place where I could change instruments and for the most part not be haunted by ghosts of instruments past.

On YouTube, there is an interesting series of fMRI recordings of famous brass players from all instruments playing a set of pre-prescribed exercises to show exactly what they do when they play - it was VERY interesting to see/hear how in some cases, what they claimed to be doing was much different to what was actually going on in their mouths and throats. And then I went back to some of the trumpet greats who professed being advocates of James Stamp and watched how they played actual literature and watched the visible external movements. I discussed this with a well known and sought after "emouchure doctor" here, who candidedly admitted to me, that in the intervening 40 years, he himself had come away from that Stampistic dogmatism. Not every player fits in the the same cookie-cutter way of teaching.

[baileyman]

Somewhere Dave has a video of himself doing octaves with lots of similar movement.