This is a 10 minute master class that I did for Jazz Trumpet Festival Brazil. I describe what it takes to learn the skill of playing in the upper register on trumpet. This is the secret to playing high notes on trumpet.
Thank you for sharing this! I personally am working on reducing tension in my throat and neck, and my head would hurt when I worked on my upper register playing. I had never considered OVERbreathing to be a problem, but now I know that's something else I need to work on!
Great concise advice. I can attest that this approach really works. Playing luck be a lady Sinatra consistently is proof enough for me. Really like your way of explaining things and reminding us that it is about the music in the end!
i didnt realize how much tension i was playing with. whenever I played higher i would grip my trumpet super hard and my lips would be come tense. thank you so much and I wish you the best.
You sound great and your information is great! I'm solid up to a double c...sometimes a D. Tension is my enemy and it happens when I realize how difficult it is. Thanks again for this eye opening video.
wow. extremely valuable and yet again so "simple". especially for me, where I can call up the F3 regularly, the tips give me another push towards a better feel, endurance and confidence when working out the best sound and stable height. So far, I've mostly practised with scales and natural scales, but my throat got tight pretty quickly. This is exactly the problem I can now tackle!
Thank you, teacher, I had never heard of the glottis on the trumpet.I have never been able to have a high record. I have always felt my throat closed.I would like to get a book that talks about this or your doctoral thesis.
Man, that was great Ryan. Always wondered how you had that Double C at the end of that 4 hr gig up in Cartersville with “ The abnormal suspects” 😂 over 10 yrs ago.
Beats “Bo and the Gang!” 😂😂😂 Always enjoyed hanging with ya. Especially that Chattahoochee Golf Club gig where you were sick as a dog… but you nailed it anyways….and where the pay was well….late!
Great informative video. My question to you is, are all aspiring trumpet players able to play double high Cs at some point in their development, or is it a question of physical gifts?
When I was growing up I had all these doubts in my mind about getting there. In fact, my goal was to be able to play Gs and As. I started being able to play double Bs where my break was about 5 years after my professional career started and I started experimenting with equipment and fingerings to help notes speak. I wouldn’t say that it’s a question of physical gifts, unless you have some kind of teeth structure that totally messes with airstream. There are some people that play with their upper lip at the very edge of there upper teeth, when this happens changes to the back and bottom of the tooth can greatly affect the air spin or flow. I’ve experimented with putting wax on the back side of my teeth, but it doesn’t affect much for me because my jaw is open wide enough for my lips to overlap the space between my top and bottom teeth, as I have no gap horizontally between my teeth. I believe it is a learned skill that most people can achieve if they are using the proper equipment and are playing efficiently, without excess isometric tension. I believe that and thinking that it’s difficult are the some of most difficult challenges to overcome for the majority of people.
I had the privilege of seeing Maynard three times, once with Steve Reid and his brother John sat in the audience right in front of me. Little did I know we would become close friends later in life.
I’ve been dealing with Valsalva for about 5 years now. I can make the trumpet sing like a bell until High C until it falls apart. Can you do a video addressing this specifically? Thanks!
Currently traveling, however, I’m teaching lessons on Thursday, July 26. If interested, contact me through my website: ryanchapmantrumpet.com I think it will be a lot more helpful for you, if I can address your specific needs in a lesson format. All the best!
I use my signature artist model Warburton mouthpiece on a NY backbore with a 30 throat on a 1968 Conn Connstellation 36B Trumpet at the moment. The trumpet in this video is a horn made from a Yamaha 6310z and has a Calicchio 10 leadpipe with a 1s bell. Yes, I do give lessons. You can contact me through my website. ryanchapmantrumpet.com
It's the body of a Yamaha 6310z that a friend of might bought on my recommendation. He passed suddenly at 92 years old and it was gifted to me. The horn played stuffy, so I put a Calicchio 1s bell and 10 lead pipe with a .338 opening on it and now it plays great.
Saturday Jan. 20, 2024. 3:25 central time. I have come to place where I believe teeth play apart in playing in the high register. I have no gap between my top teeth and bottom teeth so creating a small aperture only gets me to a road block.
This might sound crazy, but the thing that has worked the most for me (as far as mental games) when going up is to think about doing... Absolutely NOTHING! What about the air? Nothing, just release air the same way you do it with low notes. What about lip pressure? Nothing, try to keep lips as similar as possible to the low note you started with. What about the tongue? Now this one is a huge NOTHING. How many times do we have to choke and reach our limit in range every time we do the tongue arche to understand that it doesn't work? Besides doing nothing, the pencil exercise (done correctly) and the Cat Anderson whispered g (also done correctly with teeth closed position) are magical. Be sure to do these correctly, most people play these as isometric exercises when in fact they should be thought of as position exercises.
My dissertation covers most of what you are talking about especially the word you used choke. Google Ryan Chapman and Glottis and my dissertation from Frost School at University of Miami will pop up. Sam Pilafian was on my committee among others that have been heavy educators and performers in the music field.
@@jazzg7b13I will certainly look it up, thank you. I am always eager to learn more and have learned to open my mind and ears to everything. Thanks again!
If by "compression" you mean air pressure, there is ONE mechanism to create compression. That is the exhalation action. The tongue does not "compress" the air nor do the lips.
The lip aperture AND the instrument resistance is always present when playing. Additional resistance by a pronunced tongue arch will not further increase the pressure of the air reaching the aperture. It actually reduces it from the lung air pressure.
@@darryljones9208 Its simple physics. By narrowing the opening in which air travels through we increase its velocity, and faster air means you can play higher notes.
@@darryljones9208 For example, if you cover half of a running house spout the water travels farther because theres more velocity due to a smaller opening.
@@krab4204 not exactly. Frequency of tone has NOTHING to do with air flow velocity ANYWHERE. And the hose nozzle example is irrelevant for a number of resons. A garden hose nozzle limits the water flow. This reduces the pressure losses due to viscosity losses through the long and narrow supply hose AND the long narrow water lines before that. That geometry does not exist for the trumpet-playing system. The aperture PLUS instrument resistance ensures that full lung air pressure exists at the lip aperture. Any narrowing upstream will ONLY reduce the pressure of the air available at the aperture. That goes for a narrowing of the throat (glotis) OR an arched tongue. The claim that the tongue arch "compressed" the air or increases the air "speed" through the lip aperture is absolutely absurd. Often heard and incessantly repeated by trumpet players, but purely nonsense.
The trumpeting advice is sound, but I want to offer some constructive feedback about the neuroscience related to myelin and learning. Myelination starts prenatally and finishes by around the mid 20s. The myelin sheath serves to insulate the axon, which speeds neural transmission rate. Myelin is created by glial cells. The process of learning does not create myelin. If we created myelin by learning, we would never learn anything after the mid 20s in the lifespan. The neuroscience behind learning involves establishing neural pathways where adjacent neurons fire together and create networks that work efficiently together as they continue to fire (action potentials) together. Processes of synaptogenesis and neural pruning help refine the pathways and further increase efficiency. It is true that starting slowly and developing accurate execution is better. The goal is errorless learning. Making errors, especially repeating the same mistake, will wire a neural pathway to keep making the mistake. Progressing slowly through learning a new behavior allows for attention to detail and making fewer mistakes that could become a bad habit.
