Texas Bandmasters Association
Bandmasters Review • December 2012
29
Buzzing should be part of every brass player’s diet
for success. Every exercise should be sung and then
buzzed first before playing it on the instrument. This
is necessary to develop the center of pitch.
The key is to use a program such as Smart Music to
assess the student’s progress at each stage of singing,
buzzing, and playing. Smart Music is a great program.
You can introduce the coolness factor of playing the
song with the accompaniment, but the essential work
begins when practicing with just the solo line and
metronome click. It is important to have the student
matching the unison every time. You can then turn off
the solo line and have the program assess the student’s
progress with just the metronome click. For a special
challenge, have the student asses themselves without
the click and without looking at the screen. This will
also assess how well he/she can keep a steady pulse.
For some reason, some teachers refuse to use this
method because they think that it doesn’t teach the
student to read music or that it is too much rote
learning. But isn’t this exactly how kids learn in band
rehearsal? This approach helps a student change their
practice approach from time based practice to result
based practice. Students enjoy seeing green notes
versus red notes and get a lot of satisfaction from
getting a 100% on an exercise. Granted, Smart Music
can’t teach a student to play with a great sound or to be
musical. However, lessons are so much more productive
when a student is already playing the correct notes
and rhythms. The instructor can then focus on their
student’s musicality and production of sound.
The last thing I would like to address is mouthpiece
pressure. As students, we learn early that a little bit
of mouthpiece pressure helps get the next harmonic
to come out. For example, we may press a little to go
from low C to middle G. We use a little more pressure
to get the next C out. We use even more pressure
to get E. The next thing you know, we don’t need
braces anymore! The embouchure works in balance
with the air. As the air blows, our lip muscles grip
the air and we get the air oscillating to create the
sound. As the lip muscles tire, the air blows them out
and apart. We use the mouthpiece to help hold the
aperture together by using mouth-piece pressure. The
best approach is to teach students to use quality air
while encouraging them
to free buzz the full
range of the instrument.
The free buzz helps
strengthen the embouch-
ure muscles to with
stand the air pressure
blowing against them.
A great tool to help
encourage the student to
use less pressure is the
“Pressure Reducer”. It is
available various places online including Ebay. You can
also purchase one at Osmun.com. Search for “pressure
adaptor, trumpet”. The device is spring loaded and
helps the student realize when and where they start
to use pressure. With a little practice, the student can
start feeling the spring. Without the pressure reducer,
we should still be able to feel the spring being replaced
by the suppleness of the muscles in the embouchure.
The idea is not that we don’t use pressure, but in
knowing which note the pressure kicks in.
Trumpet Fundamentals
Mouthpiece through the straw
Mouthpiece placement
Straw