more on air

[bloke]

I probably “trigger“ some people by discounting the thought-by-some-to-be-overwhelming importance of airflow, and - instead - emphasizing the importance of vibration, as well as the importance of the quality/beauty of the vibration.
My observations over the years have shown me that some of the things that are changed in instruments to “improve air flow” don’t always (though different) make things better, and players simply accommodate/alter what they have to do – in order to make a beautiful sound – to those instrument “airflow“ changes.

Playing brass instruments, air is the only way that we can make a vibration with our lips that vibrates sympathetically with a column of air, but air flowing through that column of air - and being displaced with new air - is not “the main thing”. Rather, it’s a means. Again, we really don’t have a way to vibrate our lips without blowing air between them, but – if we did – I submit that the air column would still vibrate sympathetically with the vibration of the lips.

THIS:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_ ... 0728284429
(Peter Bond - Metropolitan Opera Orchestra trumpet player.)

===============

observation:
It’s interesting some how players - who seem to be hung up on “air” - often end up sounding “airy”.

================
It makes perfect sense to encourage some beginners - who are hardly blowing any air at all – to blow enough air to cause their untrained lips to vibrate, but – once that obstacle has been conquered, it seems to me that brass players should concentrate on the beauty and efficiency of the vibration, and maybe even work towards making as little air as possible do as much as possible…particularly with our instruments - which feature a 50 square millimeters hole - through which we are blowing.
I know for certain that there are long sustained pitches in certain passages that - at age 65 – I can hold out much longer than I could decades ago. I cannot be made to believe that my physiological lung capacity has increased with age. I can believe that - somehow - I’ve taught myself how to vibrate more efficiently - to render more vibration and better quality vibrations with less air flow.

[Doc]

I probably “trigger“ some people by discounting the thought-by-some-to-be-overwhelming importance of airflow, and - instead - emphasizing the importance of vibration, as well as the importance of the quality/beauty of the vibration.
My observations over the years have shown me that some of the things that are changed in instruments to “improve air flow” don’t always (though different) make things better, and players simply accommodate/alter what they have to do – in order to make a beautiful sound – to those instrument “airflow“ changes.

Playing brass instruments, air is the only way that we can make a vibration with our lips that vibrates sympathetically with a column of air, but air flowing through that column of air - and being displaced with new air - is not “the main thing”. Rather, it’s a means. Again, we really don’t have a way to vibrate our lips without blowing air between them, but – if we did – I submit that the air column would still vibrate sympathetically with the vibration of the lips.

THIS:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_ ... 0728284429
(Peter Bond - Metropolitan Opera Orchestra trumpet player.)

===============

observation:
It’s interesting some how players - who seem to be hung up on “air” - often end up sounding “airy”.

================
It makes perfect sense to encourage some beginners - who are hardly blowing any air at all – to blow enough air to cause their untrained lips to vibrate, but – once that obstacle has been conquered, it seems to me that brass players should concentrate on the beauty and efficiency of the vibration, and maybe even work towards making as little air as possible do as much as possible…particularly with our instruments - which feature a 50 square millimeters hole - through which we are blowing.
I know for certain that there are long sustained pitches in certain passages that - at age 65 – I can hold out much longer than I could decades ago. I cannot be made to believe that my physiological lung capacity has increased with age. I can believe that - somehow - I’ve taught myself how to vibrate more efficiently - to render more vibration and better quality vibrations with less air flow.

Replace "lips" with "vocal cords," and the same holds true.

[iiipopes]

It's all called, "Application of Bernoulli's Principle."

https://www.teachengineering.org/lesson ... i_lesson01
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/file ... le_k-4.pdf

So why does the embouchure vibrate: the airflow over the embouchure is increased in velocity due to the narrowing of the aperture by the lips from the throat and oral cavity providing the breath support. The increase of velocity causes decrease in pressure, and the lip aperture further closes. At a point, the closure impedes the air flow, and the embouchure with the increased pressure from the lungs, throat and oral cavity behind the embouchure opens the aperture again. And the cycle repeats. When this is done as a regular periodic motion, controlled by the muscles of the embouchure with proper support of the breath, the result is what we perceive as a particular pitch.

The rest of it is all about making the periodic cycle of the embouchure vibrate in a manner which we have subjectively designated a preferred, or "good" tone.

[peterbas]

...

[peterbas]

...

[iiipopes]

It's all called, "Application of Bernoulli's Principle."

https://www.teachengineering.org/lesson ... i_lesson01
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/file ... le_k-4.pdf

So why does the embouchure vibrate: the airflow over the embouchure is increased in velocity due to the narrowing of the aperture by the lips from the throat and oral cavity providing the breath support. The increase of velocity causes decrease in pressure, and the lip aperture further closes. At a point, the closure impedes the air flow, and the embouchure with the increased pressure from the lungs, throat and oral cavity behind the embouchure opens the aperture again. And the cycle repeats. When this is done as a regular periodic motion, controlled by the muscles of the embouchure with proper support of the breath, the result is what we perceive as a particular pitch.

The rest of it is all about making the periodic cycle of the embouchure vibrate in a manner which we have subjectively designated a preferred, or "good" tone.

This only applies to the start of the note and later on to keep injecting extra energy into the standing wave inside the tuba by energising the lips. It is perfectly possible to play with a mouthpiece that is closed off with a vibrating shield and an air outlet to the side off the mouthpiece. Videos with trumpet and trombone mouthpieces on the net.
Or on this excellent site.
https://wilktone.com/?p=5582

Yes. At the mouthpiece throat, the energy transfers from flow to static wave.

[bloke]

It’s interesting how well trial-and-error works, as long as there is a strong aural/conceptual/mental model to use for all of the “trials”.
Without that, it seems to me as though it would be nearly as difficult for a deaf person to read instructions on how to do it, and then expect to obtain (to the ears of others) aesthetically pleasing results.
trial-and-error:
“better results” - encouraging “more of this“
“worse results” - encouraging “less of that“

[Ace]

The guy in the video hates blowing on the paper. No wonder---he's blowing on the middle of the paper. He is also blowing too hard. In effect, he is poo-pooing something that has long been valuable in teaching use of air. When I studied with some Hollywood film studio musicians in the 1950's they all used blowing the paper as part of the initial lessons. They instructed that soft slow air was to be directed to the bottom two inches of the paper, such that displacement be outward about 4 to 6 inches. The goal was not to blow the paper to shreds, rather to keep the displacement outward as long as 10 to 15 seconds.

Ace

[bloke]

In my view, the Met Orch trumpet player did an excellent job demonstrating that blowing air out into a room has very little to do with playing a brass instrument.

OK… Just like a consistently-has-failed economic system that continues to be foisted on people, “He did it wrong”. Admittedly, it occurred to me that he could’ve blown over the top of the piece of paper and demonstrated “lift“, but that really doesn’t have much of anything to do with playing a brass instrument, either.

I don’t know if he meant to, but - in the same video - he also demonstrated how idiotic the use of those “bell covers“ has been, during the past year.

I don’t know how many more ways I can say it, but - in playing a brass instrument, what we are doing is trying to not let air escape from ourselves, as we are causing our lips to vibrate by placing them quite close together in a tiny football shape (imitating the shape of an oboe, English horn, bassoon, or contrabassoon reed), and then placing a tiny air hole (again: even a tuba one is only about 50mm²) just past the lips.

Finally, a word on credentials:
The guy in this video plays in the Met orchestra. In another post in this thread, someone else mentioned some west coast studio musicians who recorded a whole bunch of great movie and TV music that we’ve all heard.
Cache, degrees, certifications, appointments, popularity, power, nor positions have anything in particular to do with whether what someone says is right or wrong. Things that are right are right. Things that are wrong are wrong...and one last thing: the silly self-contradictory expression, “agree to disagree“, does not necessarily mean that two people who disagree are both right.

[Mary Ann]

When I have ventured into giving tips to adults who post on groups asking for help with tone.....I tell them that tone is a combo of lip tension and air flow (not addressing things like mouth shape because that is not where they are at.) And suggest they pick a midrange pitch and experiment from one end of the continuum to the other, of "most air possible and least chops tension as possible" to "least air possible and most chops tension possible" and find that combination that gets them the tone they are looking for. So far, that has been useful; we're talking struggling amateurs here. Other similar exercises are "most smiling to least smiling for tone" and "up and down in the slot looking for resonance." Letting them find their tone is how it is going to work anyway in the long run. Might as well start there.

[bloke]

That's interesting, and I know those things have remarkable effects on the quality of resonance, but the very easiest way for me to mess up resonance is to mess up my mouth shape.

Anyone who plays a didgeridoo (or who - for the humorous entertainment of colleagues - has developed the skill of making playing sound like talking - ie. saying words by vibrating lips) knows this.

bloke "Please do not ask me to record myself 'saying' the Pledge of Allegiance on the trombone. "

[DandyZ629]

There's a reason he is where he is. Well, he retired in 2020. There's a reason he is one of the most respected brass teachers on the planet. What I think his approach illustrates really well, is that the adherence to dogma isn't the answer. Love me some Pete Bond!

[peterbas]

...

[Mary Ann]

I didn't even realize I had used two terms for pretty much the same thing. I'd let someone "feel" his way through tension. I personally don't even know what i do now and couldn't "teach" it to someone if I tried. But found those concepts help some people along the way (Horn players. Never tried to teach a tuba player; except have one friend who simply cannot play a pedal and I never could find a way to get him to unlax enough to let it happen.)

[bloke]

A recording engineer in a control booth has all sorts of tricks and tools at his disposal to change the sonority of what is coming in from the microphone. Via experience, he has some ideas of what will probably work, but he still going to “mess around“ (experiment) with different tools at his disposal to find the most pleasing resultant signal to record. This is how we come up with the best lip shape, best balance of all of the lip tension muscles, interior mouth shape, and tongue placement. If someone never seriously messes around with this (while wearing their most critical ears), they may not end up sounding as nice as they otherwise could.
This is why listening to really great players - that produce beautiful sounds - is more useful than dogma and other verbiage. I was lucky in grade school to sit next to a so-called “natural player“ (who applied be beautiful singing in his primitive Baptist church - out of his shaped-notes hymnals - to his tuba sound), and - when I became less serious with the guitar and more serious with the tuba, I found a few recordings (even though back in the early 1970s such things were rare) and sure: I discriminated between recordings which featured so-so sonority and those that offered beautiful sonority.

[DandyZ629]

A recording engineer in a control booth has all sorts of tricks and tools at his disposal to change the sonority of what is coming in from the microphone. Via experience, he has some ideas of what will probably work, but he still going to “mess around“ (experiment) with different tools at his disposal to find the most pleasing resultant signal to record. This is how we come up with the best lip shape, best balance of all of the lip tension muscles, interior mouth shape, and tongue placement. If someone never seriously messes around with this (while wearing their most critical ears), they may not end up sounding as nice as they otherwise could.
This is why listening to really great players - that produce beautiful sounds - is more useful than dogma and other verbiage. I was lucky in grade school just sit next to a so-called natural player“, and that’s when I became less serious with the guitar and more serious with the tuba, I found a few recordings, even though back in the early 1970s such things were rare…and sure: I discriminated between recordings which featured so-so sonority and those that offered beautiful sonority.

This! I loathe engineering involvement in recordings. The fewer microphones the better. More mics, and we end up with those Karajan Deutsch Grammaphon multi-mic'ed monstrosities that do irreparable damage to the idea of orchestral balance, and interpretation because they're jammed down everyone's throat. No one listens enough. They also don't expand past certain parameters. We can all learn from everything, good or bad. Provided we're given an accurate representation. Too often on a lot of recordings, we aren't. Yet again, a major focus of my upcoming podcast.

[bloke]

I completely agree with you, regarding recording techniques in general, but I was making an analogy between how we manipulate our sound acoustically, and how a recording engineer manipulates his sound -!for which he is responsible - electronically.

[DandyZ629]

I get ranty sometimes about that. I apologize :)

[bloke]

no need

[matt g]

Here’s another good chat, also with a prior member of the same organization:

https://www.brasschats.com/interviews/jim-pandolfi

I knew Mr. Nedo Pandolfi (Jim’s father) and the man was a genius in terms of creating good musicians. Having him compliment my ability (even though I was something like 27 at the time) was huge. Nevertheless, Jim carries a lot of Nedo’s ideas with him and those ideas on playing are quite good.

There’s a time and place for breathing exercises, insofar that many young people are simply weak in their core due to the luxuries of 21st century living. Gaining core strength creates control over the airflow under low impact instances (like playing) so that the tone is even. Maybe you gain some sustainment in terms of time between breaths, but that’s about it. If you really want to gain time between breaths, lose weight and work on your cardio. That helps way more.