Playing in the upper register: a rant

[tbdana]

I'm so tired of people seeking help online about how to play in the upper register, and getting all manner of nonsense and actively harmful advice from people who do not have good upper registers and who do not know what the hell they are doing. I don't know why those even folks try to "help." They're actually hurting people, making it harder for them.

Certinaly there's a lot of Dunning-Kruger effect going on in these situations. People think they have wisdom to offer, but they actually don't know enough to know that they don't know enough to be able to teach or help others.

I won't ramble on. Suffice it to say that if people are recommending muscle strength, or practicing low notes to play high notes, or pointing to equipment to get the notes, or other myths, crutches and nonsense, those are not folks you should listen to.

The secret is that high notes are effortless. They are all about feel and finesse, and not at all about power or strength or weird techniques. Find the pros who have GREAT high ranges. Folks like Marshall Gilkes, Bill Watrous, Dave Steinmeyer, etc. Listen to them play, and listen to what they say about playing in the upper register. You'll notice that they don't sound like they're working hard (because they are not), and they won't talk to you about muscle strength like you're some kind of weightlifter, or to practice low notes like it's part of a magical incantation, or to use gimmicks. They will tell you about finding the right feel, and relaxing, and maintaining good air flow, and playing with finesse.

Unfortunately, most of the people online who try to "advise" and "help" people to a good high range are people who can't do it themselves and don't have the knowledge you need. Most often, they're struggling, too. Look to the pros who are the best at it.

/rant

[GabrielRice]

[GabrielRice]

The players you name are "jazz" players (I use the quotes ironically), but the same thing is clearly true to a very large extent for symphonic players. The player who showed us all that high notes could sound great on a big bass trombone with a big mouthpiece is Charlie Vernon, and one of the things I noticed spending time with him is that he does most of his high register practicing relatively softly and most of his low register practicing relatively loudly.

Also, you didn't mention Urbie Green, who consistently fools me when I listen to recordings; I almost always think he's playing at least a third lower than he actually is when he's in the high register.

[harrisonreed]

While likening the tiny fine motor musculature in the face to the muscles in your quads like you can build them through weight training is folly (you wouldn't lift weights to learn how to use chopsticks or do the Vulcan salute), I don't think it is necessarily correct to dismiss building the mid and low range to make the upper register easier.

Don't forget that most of the people who stress over the upper register and place an inordinate value on it can't play to begin with in any register. It is better to build the mid register first.

[robcat2075]

To say that the secret to high notes is that they are "effortless" will be rather inadequate guidance to those who can not play high notes.

To say that it is about finding the right feel and finesse is just another hipster slogan that gives nothing to act on.

In looking up "what they say" I found only crumbs...

One person asserted that Bill Watrous said "To play high you have to practice high". Logical, but circular.

For Steinmeyer, also no first hand comments but a blogger says Steinmeyer said he typically uses the smallest mouthpieces and horns and he says he "pushes the air". "Pushing the air" was reiterated several times. He conceded to the interviewer that he doesn't know exactly how he does it. Searching him out for advice on what to do seems fruitless then.

For Gilkes I did find this video with some possibly authentic quotes. Mostly slogans again but, with clarification, the diagram about the airstream direction might be actionable. He says "Don't push!" That sounds like the opposite of what Steinmeyer said.

If the advice is to learn by listening to these players, I did watch this performance by Steinmeyer. I'm doubtful that watching and listening to him will be sufficiently instructive for playing high notes.

I agree that "high notes" are not taught well. I agree that more nonsense is dispensed than usable advice. i had nine trombone teachers and none of them (AKA zero) had anything effective to teach about playing high notes even though they could play high notes themselves.

It defies reality to insist that high notes are just a mental attitude. Just as one produces a high note on a violin by a specific physical act, high notes on a trombone must also be the result of a specific action.

[Doug Elliott]

All valid points.

[MStarke]

This is an interesting perspective, but I do not agree in many points.

"I'm so tired of people seeking help online about how to play in the upper register, and getting all manner of nonsense and actively harmful advice from people who do not have good upper registers and who do not know what the hell they are doing."
--> This is the nature of the internet. Obviously you have to be able to filter what makes sense and what not, which source is credible and which isn't.

"The secret is that high notes are effortless. They are all about feel and finesse, and not at all about power or strength or weird techniques. ... They will tell you about finding the right feel, and relaxing, and maintaining good air flow, and playing with finesse."
--> Okay, fine. But this does not help at all. Obviously everybody wants to play effortless and wants to sound easy and relaxed. But what if you simply cannot reach this without trying out things? What if many many players (including myself) at some point acquired habits that held them back and need to "rewire" their body functions to make it work? What if this isn't as easy as saying "make it effortless"?

"Unfortunately, most of the people online who try to "advise" and "help" people to a good high range are people who can't do it themselves and don't have the knowledge you need. Most often, they're struggling, too. Look to the pros who are the best at it."
--> It's not always essential that a trainer/coach/teacher can do it themselves. In the contrary, many people who can do it do not have a clue how to teach it and what they are actually doing. Because they never had to think about it.

I have had trombone lessons with some breaks over the last 30+ years. All my teachers were fantastic, top level professionals that had great technique, incl. high register. I still remember my very first trombone teacher playing the first part of Rhenish on bass trombone so that I could play the bass part with him. Effortless.
Some of my teachers had a really strong idea of trombone technique (on breathing, embouchure etc.) that they pushed on me and other students. And for many this did not lead to a great high register because there were individual challenges and demands.
Only very few of my teachers really knew what would help and what to try out and adapt as an individual. Yes, this does include experiments and exercises that you may find unnecessary. I am extremely grateful to these teachers for their thinking and their efforts.
I am also thankful to everyone who shares their thoughts online. I also understand that some of the greatest teachers will not share all their knowledge online for free.

If you achieved a great high register "only" by trying to be effortless and practising enough, that's great. But this is not enough for everyone.

[Wilktone]

I'm so tired of people seeking help online about how to play in the upper register, and getting all manner of nonsense and actively harmful advice from people who do not have good upper registers and who do not know what the hell they are doing. I don't know why those even folks try to "help." They're actually hurting people, making it harder for them.

You're not wrong. That said...

The secret is that high notes are effortless. They are all about feel and finesse, and not at all about power or strength or weird techniques.

I'm not a fan of reducing upper register playing to "just make them feel effortless" or don't use power or "weird" techniques either.

In my own path to develop a workable upper register I worked very hard and tried lots of different approaches, including just relaxing and allowing the upper register to happen. The only things that worked for me was a very specific (and personal) recommendation that significantly changed how I played over the entire range. After making that change I can honestly say that my upper register felt "effortless" in comparison.

Therein lies the difficulty in simply looking to players with great upper registers and doing what they think they are doing. If you have a solid upper register it should feel and sound effortless, but that's the goal. The path that individual players need to do to get to that feeling can be quite different. For one player it might feel like they are "pushing the air" and for another it's "not pushing the air." Sure, if [insert great player A]'s advice might happen to do the trick, but if looking to the great players and what they say was the most efficient approach I don't think we'd have that abundance of internet posters asking for advice. Or the wide range of advice that is given.

Easy answers to difficult questions are attractive. Sometimes they're even helpful. But by and large I prefer to teach and practice with more objective goals in mind.

Dave

[harrisonreed]

Yeah, Dana, your post reads angry/annoyed but, like, why are you annoyed? Everyone is just on different stepping stones that make up the same path up a mountain with no peak in sight. You get above the cloud layer and realize there is another one obscuring the peak, miles above you, with a note that says "Watrous wuz here".

I agree that saying "just play effortlessly in the upper register" is probably the least useful advice of everything else you mentioned. It's like you're wondering why there are people further down the mountain at all; like your location on it is just a matter of mindset.

You still have to go up the mountain, even if you can make large and efficient strides and get there quickly. People who don't know the technique may not be able to make it over some of the obstacles, as they try to move forward. Saying "just be up here at this level in on the mountain" is not helpful to them.

[Richard3rd]

I hear the same thing on trumpet forums about it not taking a lot of strength. What people there and here don't understand is that when you say it doesn't take a lot of strength, you don't realize the strength you have. People who say this or that don't weigh much already have strength. You don't realize that your playing over time develops a level of strength that beginners don't have. Telling a beginner that it doesn't take strength is not the way to go. Telling them that proper technique will in time allow upper range playing is really a better strategy.

[tbdana]

So, my OP was a rant on internet experts, not a trombone lesson. I see that I didn't make that clear enough. I'm not sure how multiple people interpreted it as me trying to teach them high notes by saying "play it effortlessly," but somehow that's what people took away. Instead, I was ranting that those who try to "help" on the internet are invariably unqualified to speak and are harming rather than helping.

When I say high notes aren't the result of brute force but should feel effortless, that's not an attempt to teach people how to play high notes, it was pointing out a common piece of bad advice (using force, in some fashion) and how different it feels when you're actually doing it right.

In the last 24 hours I've read the following bad advice about how to play high notes:

1. super-high notes comes from being able to hit super low notes: i e pedal tones an octave below ‘normal’ Bb (whatever "normal" means).
2. Get a P.E.T.E. device.
3. Do lip calisthenics to strengthen the muscles.
4. Get a double-cup mouthpiece.
5. Play the highest note you can play, and attack it fortissimo over and over.
6. Free buzz gradually higher and higher until you can do it in the upper register.
7. Practice forceful high notes one day, then rest for three to four days without playing. Repeat.
8. Hammer a high F with brute force over and over. (Why a "high F" I don't know, and if you can do that aren't you already there?)
9. Then the opposite: practice softer and softer the higher you go.
...and finally, the ubiquitous...
9. Practice long tones in the middle to low register.

None of these will give you a good high range. Or if they do, it will be at the expense of other things.

And frankly, it frustrates me that people spout this "advice" as if it's authoritative, and those who lap it up have no way to discern real expertise from feigned expertise, especially when the fake experts are loud and provide simplicity, when real experts whisper and don't offer easy fixes.

It frustrates me because I have great empathy for others who struggle with range. I'd actually really appreciate it if randos on the internet wouldn't pretend to be experts in things they're not, but that's the way of the world I guess. Still, I'm allowed to express frustration when well-meaning fools harm trombone players who are trying to learn, and that's what this post was intended to do. It was not intended as a trombone lesson, it was a rant, hence the use of the word "rant" in the title and at the very end of the OP. That was a clue!

[Burgerbob]

This is an interesting perspective, but I do not agree in many points.

"I'm so tired of people seeking help online about how to play in the upper register, and getting all manner of nonsense and actively harmful advice from people who do not have good upper registers and who do not know what the hell they are doing."
--> This is the nature of the internet. Obviously you have to be able to filter what makes sense and what not, which source is credible and which isn't.

Ignore the grifters, easy enough.

[tbdana]

The players you name are "jazz" players (I use the quotes ironically), but the same thing is clearly true to a very large extent for symphonic players. The player who showed us all that high notes could sound great on a big bass trombone with a big mouthpiece is Charlie Vernon, and one of the things I noticed spending time with him is that he does most of his high register practicing relatively softly and most of his low register practicing relatively loudly.

Also, you didn't mention Urbie Green, who consistently fools me when I listen to recordings; I almost always think he's playing at least a third lower than he actually is when he's in the high register.

I wish I had been able to spend time with Charlie Vernon. He gets a bad rap these days, but what a phenomenal and influential trombonist! I envy you.

Yeah, I didn't mention Urbie or any orchestral trombonists. It was a rant, and I just mentioned people a few folks I have known personally and who are famous for their ability in the upper register. But if I had tried to be inclusive, I would have definitely mentioned Urbie and Vernon, and also Joe Alessi, because like Watrous and Gilkes he plays the right way and plays the entire instrument, and as a result has an excellent high range.

Also, for some reason I see more "jazz" players working on high chops than symphonic players. Is that a thing? I dunno.

[tbdana]

Ignore the grifters, easy enough.

The whole world is failing at ignoring the grifters, right now.

[MStarke]

I did generally understand that your original post was a rant, not a trombone lesson as you said. However it did come across pretty much like "I know how it goes, all these people who do it differently have no clue and should just do it like I and XYZ do...".

In the last 24 hours I've read the following bad advice about how to play high notes:

1. super-high notes comes from being able to hit super low notes: i e pedal tones an octave below ‘normal’ Bb (whatever "normal" means).
2. Get a P.E.T.E. device.
3. Do lip calisthenics to strengthen the muscles.
4. Get a double-cup mouthpiece.
5. Play the highest note you can play, and attack it fortissimo over and over.
6. Free buzz gradually higher and higher until you can do it in the upper register.
7. Practice forceful high notes one day, then rest for three to four days without playing. Repeat.
8. Hammer a high F with brute force over and over. (Why a "high F" I don't know, and if you can do that aren't you already there?)
9. Then the opposite: practice softer and softer the higher you go.
...and finally, the ubiquitous...
9. Practice long tones in the middle to low register.

None of these will give you a good high range. Or if they do, it will be at the expense of other things.

On this specific list/examples of bad (?) advice: I see how some are pretty shady, but some can/will work or at least help some players. But certainly not without further explanation/advice. Certainly only picking one of these without further understanding will not help, agreed.

[MStarke]

Also, for some reason I see more "jazz" players working on high chops than symphonic players. Is that a thing? I dunno.

This is pretty interesting. It's probably a matter of requirements.
Symphonic players practically never need anything above high F. If I remember correctly I have never had to play higher than high E in an orchestral setting (I think there is one in Mendelssohn's Lobgesang?). Much of that is normally on alto. Okay, I am not a professional orchestral player, but don't think there is any "typical" repertoire much higher than that.
The majority of "high" notes for orchestral trombone is maybe up to high C or Db. However I would not fall into the trap saying this makes it easy. The degree of perfection and also the sound that is expected can be pretty challenging also in that range.
In the end also the usual "classical" solo repertoire kind of stays in that line.

There is probably not much need for an orchestral player to have anything beyond high F available, if it's not just for the notes below feeling more comfortable.

And also if it goes beyond maybe high Bb, it's typically just some short individual notes, or it's a piece suited for alto, which is another story.

Of course there will always be exceptions to all this.

[tbdana]

I did generally understand that your original post was a rant, not a trombone lesson as you said. However it did come across pretty much like "I know how it goes, all these people who do it differently have no clue and should just do it like I and XYZ do...".

Well, that's unfortunate. I usually try to avoid giving "how to" advice on this forum, and when I do I try to go out of my way to caution that others here know a lot more about whatever the subject is than I do.

However, I do have a decent high range (and low range, and everything in-between), and I do feel like I know something about this. In getting there, I've been given (and took) all that bad advice over the years. It set me back. It hurt my playing. And then I eventually figured out that I was getting bad advice. I just hate seeing other people go down that same road, unnecessarily.

But you don't see me preaching about high range or low range or this or that, because I take a gestalt approach to playing the trombone. If I preach anything at all it is: (1) playing the entire instrument, and playing it the right way; and (2) that everything important happens before the mouthpiece. I don't focus on this thing or that thing, I keep on the fundamentals and the whole. And I don't pretend that I have it all figured out. I'm still on a journey. I even had lessons with Doug and Dave. And I still face challenges (I'm facing an overuse challenge right now, in fact.)

But I've been on this high range wild goose chase, and I've been led down all those wrong paths. I just wish I could help prevent others from going the same ways I did, and listening to the same terrible advice I listened to.

[tbdana]

There is probably not much need for an orchestral player to have anything beyond high F available, if it's not just for the notes below feeling more comfortable.

I frankly don't think any of us "need" anything beyond a high F. But, as you allude to, developing notes above the F helps with playing up to the F.

[MStarke]

There is probably not much need for an orchestral player to have anything beyond high F available, if it's not just for the notes below feeling more comfortable.

I frankly don't think any of us "need" anything beyond a high F. But, as you allude to, developing notes above the F helps with playing up to the F.

Not really "need", but in the non-orchestral world I have seen notes written higher than high F and it was actually appropriate.

[harrisonreed]

I did generally understand that your original post was a rant, not a trombone lesson as you said. However it did come across pretty much like "I know how it goes, all these people who do it differently have no clue and should just do it like I and XYZ do...".

This is how I interpreted it too. It came out of left field. But most of the big posts from Dana come out of left field and press the buttons.

Where are you reading all this stuff, Dana? Reddit? It literally doesn't matter what you read on Reddit, just down vote it. That is the whole point of free speech and being able to bury unpopular opinions by downvoting there. Let the truth (or just whatever is funny and popular!) rise to the top. There is no need to be annoyed about what advice people give for free on the Internet on platforms that exist to sell ads for energy drinks. If you really want to learn a skill you have to pay or convince an actual expert to teach you, as you know.

[Burgerbob]

Ignore the grifters, easy enough.

The whole world is failing at ignoring the grifters, right now.

There is a bit of daylight between the ones ruining the country and the ones peddling high note methods.

[WilliamLang]

Honestly I'd be ranting also going by all the advice you've listed. Almost none of it is usable, and the closest thing to helpful, the very last point, lacks all other context and meaning by itself. I think a lot of brass pedagogy is quite frankly broken.

So I'm kinda a high note person, and I've had a lot of success teaching students to get up into those altissimo registers, and maybe I can add some context to one small corner of the teaching world.

"You need to play low to play high" - I'd love to look at this.

So my playing is primarily considered classical and contemporary (I also don't believe in genres but that's for own rant one day down the line.) One aspect of the above quote that I use is: in those worlds, if the low range and middle range aren't good, the high notes don't matter, especially because those worlds are where you make most of your living. But I like to remind people that connecting the registers is much more important than achieving a high note result.

So my main exercise is two octave arpeggios, but up AND down. If you can't come back down to your original note with the same timbre and control you started with, you've compromised something in the attempt to get a high note, and are probably not playing with your best sound/technique. That's one aspect.

Another part of this context for me is: when you play a rich low note, like a pedal tone or 1st/2nd partial, acoustically you're not just hearing the note being played, but you're hearing all the overtones as well. This is why instruments sound different from each other (after the attack of course.) So in my thinking, a rich lower register will include more upper overtones somewhere in the mix. We can't pick them out consciously, but our body/ears can intuitively access the higher ranges, and be more "ready" for playing up there from a mind-body connection.

I can't prove that at all - but it helps students so far, and it least seems a little intuitive and hopefully not too forced.

The rest of the list (original 1-9) seem like they worked for one person, probably by luck more than anything, and really shouldn't be emulated. Although 9.1 - the softer one, does have a little merit. Like, you can crank F6 all you want. It won't really be much louder than pianissimo F6. So why practice cranking the volume after Bb5 or so. Just getting up there registers as a certain dynamic, and from my large amount of experience in the F6-Eb7 realm, there's really not much to do other than get the note or don't.

In the last 24 hours I've read the following bad advice about how to play high notes:

1. super-high notes comes from being able to hit super low notes: i e pedal tones an octave below ‘normal’ Bb (whatever "normal" means).
2. Get a P.E.T.E. device.
3. Do lip calisthenics to strengthen the muscles.
4. Get a double-cup mouthpiece.
5. Play the highest note you can play, and attack it fortissimo over and over.
6. Free buzz gradually higher and higher until you can do it in the upper register.
7. Practice forceful high notes one day, then rest for three to four days without playing. Repeat.
8. Hammer a high F with brute force over and over. (Why a "high F" I don't know, and if you can do that aren't you already there?)
9. Then the opposite: practice softer and softer the higher you go.
...and finally, the ubiquitous...
9. Practice long tones in the middle to low register.

None of these will give you a good high range. Or if they do, it will be at the expense of other things.

[tbdana]

This is how I interpreted it too. It came out of left field. But most of the big posts from Dana come out of left field and press the buttons.

Well, I certainly didn't intend to "press people's buttons." I was just griping about horrible advice that seems to be the majority of the advice out there, and how it hurts people who are actually trying to learn. Perhaps people sometimes read more into my posts than I intended.

Where are you reading all this stuff, Dana? Reddit?

Pretty much everywhere except Reddit. I'm not on Reddit as it's incomprehensible noise to me. But what inspired my post were two separate but simultaneous conversations on Facebook and Instagram yesterday that shared the same bad and destructive advice to people who are trying to learn and are buying what the fools are selling, same as I did before you could get buried in bad advice on the innerwebses.

[harrisonreed]

Facebook is just as bad. Don't feel bad about the blind leading the blind on a slightly different platform that also only exists to sell ads for taco bell and fast fashion. I don't think you need to convince too many people here that it's full of bad advice!

The one I have seen here on this site a lot is the classic weight lifting analogy you mentioned for building the embouchure. I've spoken against this idea many times, to no avail.

My argument mostly centers around the fact that you can control most aspects of how the air goes into the aperture with the tongue, which requires no strength training whatsoever and is about 1000x stronger than the muscles around the lips to begin with.

[tbdana]

So my main exercise is two octave arpeggios, but up AND down. If you can't come back down to your original note with the same timbre and control you started with, you've compromised something in the attempt to get a high note, and are probably not playing with your best sound/technique.

I LOVE two-octave (and three-octave) arpeggios. Also one of my own main exercises. I do the below exercise every day, not just in F, but in every key, major and minor. Three octaves, up and down, slurred and tongued. They are fantastic for ensuring that you're not changing your embouchure as you change ranges. And other things. Just great exercises for a lot of reasons.

Screenshot 2025-11-19 at 9.42.02 AM.png

[tbdana]

Facebook is just as bad. Don't feel bad about the blind leading the blind on a slightly different platform that also only exists to sell ads for taco bell and fast fashion. I don't think you need to convince too many people here that it's full of bad advice!

The one I have seen here on this site a lot is the classic weight lifting analogy you mentioned for building the embouchure. I've spoken against this idea many times, to no avail.

My argument mostly centers around the fact that you can control most aspects of how the air goes into the aperture with the tongue, which requires no strength training whatsoever and is about 1000x stronger than the muscles around the lips to begin with.

Bravo. Tongue is so important for the upper register -- the notes, the pitch, and the control.

[WilliamLang]

Yeah - the consistency needed in the embouchure to do these arpeggios well usually helps with using the tongue as the primary guide. I usually hesitate to teach younger students that way because then they start to try to muscle the tongue into position vs. learn to hear and trust what they're actually producing, but it's a great concept to get to. Also works really well with whistling!

[harrisonreed]

Whistling and throat singing are related to it, I think. Sam knew what he was talking about.

The mouthpiece advice to help in the upper register that Dana mentioned is also not necessarily wrong, but it presupposes that the "seeker" already knows how to play in the upper register.

A shallow cup or double cup does indeed greatly aid in the upper register. With a shallow cup, the target for aiming your air close to the rim edge is HUGE. On a 0G, you might not be able to even hit the target inside the cup -- it's all aimed at the throat.

*Edit sp.*

[WilliamLang]

Absolutely. You can start to access overtones if you experiment with vowel shape and tongue position in the oral cavity while singing. Also some applications for timbre in trombone playing, though not really for classical playing or most commercial adjacent music.

[harrisonreed]

That's just because today's classical idiom is so limited. People going to auditions want to play like one of three recordings on any given excerpt. People going to concerts want to literally hear the recording. It's a shame. But that is getting off topic.

[Gfunk]

I LOVE two-octave (and three-octave) arpeggios. Also one of my own main exercises. I do the below exercise every day, not just in F, but in every key, major and minor. Three octaves, up and down, slurred and tongued. They are fantastic for ensuring that you're not changing your embouchure as you change ranges.

I do pretty much this every day but in a slight modification of what Joe Alessi laid out in his 2007 seminar warm up packet.

I fully agree with those above on the importance of connecting all register in the form of these two or three octave arpeggios. That’s a large reason these are in my daily routine.

I will say this discussion does make me wish there was more focus on ease along side the technique when I was younger. I think Dana is right in that the people who are doing this at the highest level play with immense ease. We should aim for that rather than achieving ability to “hit” a high F or whatever it may be that sometimes people like to say is the goal.

[GabrielRice]

Another part of this context for me is: when you play a rich low note, like a pedal tone or 1st/2nd partial, acoustically you're not just hearing the note being played, but you're hearing all the overtones as well. This is why instruments sound different from each other (after the attack of course.) So in my thinking, a rich lower register will include more upper overtones somewhere in the mix. We can't pick them out consciously, but our body/ears can intuitively access the higher ranges, and be more "ready" for playing up there from a mind-body connection.

To add to this, I find that I lose richness in the low register when I neglect the high register. The sound becomes too simple, too much fundamental without the core of the high overtones.

I tell my students that the person in one of my orchestras who is best attuned to bass trombone sound is the principal oboist. When a bass trombone sub doesn't make a sound rich in overtones that she can her and tune with (or just plays out of tune) she isn't happy and lets me know.

[VJOFan]

This question is based on my own development and what I saw with students in my elementary programs when I taught that for over a decade a while back.

Do a lot of kids in their first year of playing develop range security above D above middle C?

I was considered an "outstanding" player through my developing years and really couldn't play up to Bb above middle C for at least four years and that was only by developing a compensation that, truthfully, I only fully fixed in the last few years.

The question is getting back to the strength idea, but may point more to coordination of various muscle groups doing their complicated dances. An undeveloped face will not have sufficient strength to hold an embouchure together in any range but particularly in the extremes. So there is some muscle development that has to happen. There also has to be a good deal of understanding the whole system so the high notes come out consistently without breaking a player down.

[Savio]

I agree with Dana in her first post. My high register is not so good and have searched youtube for good advices. Lots of different suggestions and I tried lot of them. When I listen good players it seems they all do it effortless so I will try to figure out that route. Even if it a little late for me. I also watch the William Lang videoes and its amazing how he do it. Seems effortless for him so it's inspiring. I also watched a video from Michael Mulcahy who say it should be effortless in all registers. But I think a good basic ground in middle and low register should help? The high big bands trumpeters like Maynard Ferguson doesn't look effortless or healthy? Sounds amazing but I don't think thats my path to go.....

Leif

[tbdana]

The question is getting back to the strength idea, but may point more to coordination of various muscle groups doing their complicated dances.

The strength thing is a red herring, I think. It's far more about fine motor control than it is muscular strength. I like the way Harry put it, above. Something about likening the tiny fine motor musculature in the face to the muscles in your quads like you can build them through weight training being folly, and how you wouldn't lift weights to learn how to use chopsticks. Playing high notes is much more like using chopsticks than it is lifting weights.

An undeveloped face will not have sufficient strength to hold an embouchure together in any range but particularly in the extremes. So there is some muscle development that has to happen. There also has to be a good deal of understanding the whole system so the high notes come out consistently without breaking a player down.

I like to think of it like repairing a watch. Of course you need to have sufficient foundational finger strength to hold onto your tools so you don't drop them and you can use them as intended, but strength is not what watch repair relies upon. Success in watch repair depends on your ability to make exceedingly fine motor adjustments quickly, accurately, and repeatedly. It's the same with playing high notes. You need sufficient strength to keep your corners and control your aperture, but what makes for success in the upper range is making quick and accurate fine motor adjustments with your lips and tongue. It reminds me of the movie, Contact, and the advice Ellie's father gave her.



That's what creates success in the upper register. Small moves with utmost control.

[timothy42b]

I'm so tired of people seeking help online about how to play in the upper register, and getting all manner of nonsense and actively harmful advice from people who do not have good upper registers and who do not know what the hell they are doing.

Suffice it to say that if people are recommending muscle strength, or practicing low notes to play high notes, or pointing to equipment to get the notes, or other myths, crutches and nonsense, those are not folks you should listen to.

Not all the advice that "doesn't work" comes from people who can't play high.

Not everyone who plays high knows how they do it. In fact it's probably rare that they do.

Athletes who are world class at hitting a ball, throwing an object, etc. are often wildly wrong about the mechanics of what they do, but firmly convinced they know what they're doing. For athletics we have motion capture and force plate data that can help. But for trombone playing much of the mechanics are invisible, aside from a few MRI studies.

My hypothesis, skill in the high register is a combination of:

correct fundamentals, which can be taught, and.........

getting that magic knack to it, which you probably have to luck into, and is where that effortless mastery lies and.........

that genetic combination of talent and fast twitch muscle or other biological factors.

We probably all have some access to the first two. One of the problems with getting the knack is that practice makes permanent, and it may be hard to make that mistake that is actually more correct.

Just my rambling.

[LeTromboniste]

I think a lot of the bad advice for the high range (and especially the strength part) is a crutch to compensate for bad advice elsewhere in the playing that's making high range harder than it should. In my own practice, deconstructing accumulated inefficiencies in my technique due to bad advice that I've internalized is still a work in progress. I still don't have a high range I'm happy with (so maybe I'm not one to talk). But I think a lot of it, for a lot of people, comes from accepted wisdom in trombone pedagogy that I find very damaging on any number of fronts. We look for that big huge dark fat tone, and we try to play everything as even as possible, with the same sound in every register. We're taught to always take low deep breaths. We're taught to avoid any movement of the embouchure. That leads a lot of us to playing way too open, with inefficient use of air, with a very inefficient buzz, and to actively impede changes in our embouchure that actually need to happen for the high range to be easy. No wonder we then need to build "strength" to access the high range, when we've forbidden ourselves every tool that would actually be helpful... That's a dead end I put myself in during my teenage years and the start of my studies, and am still not finished backpedaling. When I realized I was in that dead end I thought it was just me but in the years since, I've had too many conversations with people who ran into exactly the same problem, and I've observed it in too many players who haven't realized they're in that dead end yet. And a lot of it stems from the sound concept and aesthetic that's valued, and maybe even more importantly, the vocabulary we use to describe them.

[GabrielRice]

^^^this^^^

[sf105]

Seconded. After a terrible start, I fixed a few things and developer a perfect trigger range but not much else. It's improved a bit since I started resetting during covid, but still recovering from the wrong start.

[Wilktone]

deleted for double post

[Wilktone]

Are we starting to do the very thing that Dana was ranting against?

So, my OP was a rant on internet experts, not a trombone lesson. I see that I didn't make that clear enough. I'm not sure how multiple people interpreted it as me trying to teach them high notes by saying "play it effortlessly," but somehow that's what people took away.

So I'm certainly the pot calling the kettle black here, but surely if you reread what you wrote you can understand why you came across this way?

The secret is that high notes are effortless. They are all about feel and finesse, and not at all about power or strength or weird techniques.

That's not describing a goal based on sensation, it's a specific instruction. You even went so far as to call it a "secret," which is one of the terms I personally hate on all those clickbait YouTube videos that purport to tell you the "secret" to high range.

So while I do understand your point much better with your clarification, I do think that your own words are what gave us this impression.

I hear the same thing on trumpet forums about it not taking a lot of strength. What people there and here don't understand is that when you say it doesn't take a lot of strength, you don't realize the strength you have. People who say this or that don't weigh much already have strength. You don't realize that your playing over time develops a level of strength that beginners don't have. Telling a beginner that it doesn't take strength is not the way to go. Telling them that proper technique will in time allow upper range playing is really a better strategy.

I agree.

My argument mostly centers around the fact that you can control most aspects of how the air goes into the aperture with the tongue, which requires no strength training whatsoever and is about 1000x stronger than the muscles around the lips to begin with.

Yes the tongue arch (and other aspects related to articulation) are important to playing with good tone over the entire range. But I don't think it's fair to say that it's 1,000 times stronger or really always the key to good high range.

Whistling and throat singing are related to it, I think.

Only in the sense that we "tune" the oral cavity with the tongue while playing. The tongue itself isn't creating the specific pitch we're playing, it just helps to reinforce the rest of the playing system.

I've been fascinated by harmonic singing for a long time, even taught myself to do it and ended up as a co-author on a physics education publication discussing the science behind it (the lead author is a physicist who actually knows what he's doing). But my tongue position for the clearest and strongest harmonic is *way* different from anything that works for playing. In any register.

I don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm against discussing tongue arch as an important piece of the puzzle. If that's the piece that's missing for a player, it can certainly feel like adjusting the tongue arch becomes the "key" for upper register playing. If there's another piece missing then it might help, but it's not going to really help a student asking questions online. Let's not allow ourselves to engage in the very thing that Dana was complaining about, unless you disagree that it's a problem.

The strength thing is a red herring, I think. It's far more about fine motor control than it is muscular strength. I like the way Harry put it, above.

I don't think we should dismiss the role that strength has. It's not just lip compression, it's also related to the strength and endurance required to hold the lips firm enough to accept normal mouthpiece pressure (particularly when playing higher or louder) without damaging our lips.

For *you*, it may feel like it's more about fine motor control. For someone else, they may need to build up more strength. For someone else again it may be adjusting the tongue arch or breathing or whatever. Had you written this thought in your initial post I think it would have further been interpreted that your gripe is more about how you understand the key to upper register playing and all those "experts" you're complaining about have it wrong. Which is fine, but don't be surprised if people again misunderstand your point.

I even had lessons with Doug and Dave.

To be clear, I didn't give you a lesson. I gave you my embouchure pedagogy presentation and when I asked if you wanted to put what I discussed into the context for your own playing you were reluctant to try out things that I suggested and seemed skeptical that it would benefit. And it was also something I volunteered to present to you, to help you understand why Doug's lessons are so highly valued. You got what you paid for.

What was your lesson with Doug like? Was that after your post in October describing endurance issues? At the end of September there was a topic where you described some things that you were experimenting with that you felt had a positive effect on your playing. One of the things you mentioned seemed to be different from my recollection of (briefly) watching you play and Doug mentioned there that he hadn't worked with you up to that time, even though you cited us both as the source for what you were doing.

Dave

[harrisonreed]

I am still amazed at the "sound concept" that many young college age players think is the ideal. No, it's not everybody, and there are so many fine players, but there is a pervasive idea that the "orchestral" sound is this diffuse fluff. Like, what is that?

On the flip side, I was listening to some ca. 2010 Alessi solo recordings and was surprised with how bright he sounded then. We trombonists can't seem to settle on it.

For me, the all time great sound was the super amount of core Lindberg was getting in his early albums -- very dark but not "diffuse fluff". So much core.



When I was in college people called that sound "bright". What were they smoking?

[harrisonreed]

My argument mostly centers around the fact that you can control most aspects of how the air goes into the aperture with the tongue, which requires no strength training whatsoever and is about 1000x stronger than the muscles around the lips to begin with.

Yes the tongue arch (and other aspects related to articulation) are important to playing with good tone over the entire range. But I don't think it's fair to say that it's 1,000 times stronger or really always the key to good high range.

Dave

The 1000x is rhetorical. I have no way of measuring it, but my tongue does not tire, whereas the chops get tired almost immediately when misused. So it might as well be 1000x stronger / more endurance.

We will have to agree to disagree about the tongue being the key to a good high range, though. It's everything.

Of course you need to be able to hold your corners in place, and that takes actually playing in whatever register to build up the endurance and control to do it in that register, but I really think that there is a very low limit on what you can build up "strength wise" before you will just injure yourself playing.

Don't take it from me though:

[Wilktone]

The 1000x is rhetorical. I have no way of measuring it, but my tongue does not tire, whereas the chops get tired almost immediately when misused. So it might as well be 1000x stronger / more endurance.

Or maybe the tongue isn't doing the same amount of work as the lips. My fingers don't really get tired either.

We will have to agree to disagree about the tongue being the key to a good high range, though. It's everything.

I hate this expression, "agree to disagree." It means, "I'm done discussing this and can't be convinced to change my mind, even if I'm presented with solid evidence."

Of course you need to be able to hold your corners in place, and that takes actually playing in whatever register to build up the endurance and control to do it in that register, but I really think that there is a very low limit on what you can build up "strength wise" before you will just injure yourself playing.

What I'm saying is there there is a degree of chop strength and endurance that is necessary to *avoid injury*.

Don't take it from me though:

I'll watch that later and get back to you on that.

Dave

[Wilktone]

Don't take it from me though:

OK, I watched that at 1.5 speed.

Sure, that's a pretty good discussion on tongue arch level, but it's not presented as the "key." Baadsvik even discusses proper lip position as part of his video, so I think it's more fair to say that this video supports my point - it's part of a system and we ignore one part of it or put too much emphasis on another at our own peril (or those of the students we teach or try to help when they ask internet questions).

[harrisonreed]

Dave, as far as "agree to disagree" goes, nobody here has really presented any solid evidence to change anybody's mind on anything. Myself especially. Unfortunately the only real evidence we can get is of people actually sounding good and describing what they do. Or the MRI scan videos, which do not sound good but we know the players involved do sound good. Unfortunately those videos only show the angle of the teeth, jaw, and tongue.

So in that sense we are left with the anecdotes from really good players who mostly don't know 100% what they are doing to play.

We've all had great discussions on this stuff repeatedly on all the various forums, but there is no real 100% 'proof'. Much easier to pick out the bad advice and bad habits than to prove what is right.

[VJOFan]

I started this before work and finished it after, so a little late to the party but here it is anyway.

I'm not suggesting walking around with a pencil between the lips to build muscles, but I want to come back one last time (for me) on the strength part of this.

Analogies about why one doesn't need to worry about strength seem to focus on people being good at something that requires fine motor skills and stating that X finicky activity doesn't take brute strength, but rather finesse.

I have two thoughts about that. The first is, again, developmental. A young child can't colour very well for many reasons, but one is certainly that they can't easily push and pull the crayon across the paper or firmly hold it without getting sore hands. Without developing strength (and of course coordination) through colouring, printing will never happen. In my classroom last June I had two much older students who had never held a pencil. We had to do physio/occupational therapy drills to fast track minimal pencil skills. Once they had the grip, we could start working on fine tuning their movements.

The second is the idea that since experts don't feel the use of great strength while performing a task, then it must not be important to the task. While it is easy to look at a fine motor activity and say look that doesn't take strength because the forces applied are small, it may be interesting to think of some gross motor things that definitely take strength, but experts might not feel it that way.

Ask a pole vaulter or high jumper about their sport and they would talk about timing, precision and form first. But any untrained person would find they can't even leap high enough straight up to think about trying to learn the form. Even Olympic weightlifters in perhaps the most obvious strength sport of them all, would explain their sport in terms of speed, agility and timing how to get under the weight. But without the ability to deadlift 500 pounds, snatching their competition weight would not be possible even with the best technique.

This is all to say, when we get into these discussions and try to eliminate something as being part of the equation we aren't being true to reality of how bodies work. We need the correct angle and placement that maximizes the possibilities of our anatomies, we need the inner shapes of our oral cavity to be helping us , we need to keep up a supply of air to sustain the buzz and we also need to be able to keep an embouchure in place withstanding all the forces trying to blow it apart. If we don't allow that all the stuff is part of the system, we can't know what is really breaking down when something goes wrong. We'll just give the nail we see a hit with the hammer of the only tool we think is valid.

[tbdana]

Forest, meet trees.

Some of you are going a little overboard here.

Of course, any muscle movement at all takes some measure of strength, but is that the essence of the activity? Is strength the answer to playing high notes? Hell no!

Saying that high notes should feel effortless is not “a specific instruction.“ That’s just nuts.

Agree to disagree isn’t a rejection of evidence, it’s a polite way to say that further discussion on the point is not wanted, usually because it has gotten to the beating the dead horse stage or is not central to the topic.

This was a rant about bad advice. I have to again say that this was not intended as a Trombone lesson on how to play high notes. Go ahead and debate that all you want, but don’t try to say that I was trying to give a lesson on how to play high notes. I know how to play high notes. i’m happy to teach people, but I won’t do it here. And I don’t intend to do it here. And I don’t want people to try to characterize me as doing that here. Thank you.

One of the things that frustrates me about pendants and academics is the tendency to parse everything down into meaninglessness. That certainly happens in discussions about how to play high notes. But again, I never intended this to be a discussion about how to play high notes. Of course, if some of you wanna take it there, go for it. just don’t infer or imply that I had any part in that exercise.

[JTeagarden]

There's a big "pre-disposition" aspect that we're glossing over: Certainly to some extent the Marshall Gilkes's and Bill Watrous''s of this world don't show any great physical strain in the high range because they are simply blessed with very advantageous physiology.

As further evidence for this I might point to Christian Lindberg, who started playing trombone at 16, and 2 years later, was playing in the Royal Swedish Opera. Not a perfect analogy, but a big part of the reason Marshall Gilkes can do what he does is just an anatomical advantage, in the same way that some athletes can throw a baseball 95 MPH, and make that look effortless.

There's no amount of good advice that will make me play like Marshall Gilkes, but undoubtedly plenty of advice out there that will make things even worse!

[LeTromboniste]

But again, I never intended this to be a discussion about how to play high notes. Of course, if some of you wanna take it there, go for it. just don’t infer or imply that I had any part in that exercise.

To be fair you posted a rant about the abundance of bad advice about high range (and I absolutely agree with you). I think a discussion about high range is kind of the obvious most likely outcome of such a post.