Trombone Sound and Attack

Hi, this is Denson Paul Pollard and I'm recording this video in response to questions that I've received about how to achieve a clear tone quality and how to achieve clear attacks. I'm combining these two topics in one video because I really feel that the things that we should think about for a clear sound, a clear tone, are the same things that we should think about for achieving a clear attack. And there are five points that I want to speak about. Number one is the air. Lots of it used in the right way. Number two, buzzing the mouthpiece. Number three, the active parts of the body. Armature, tongue, and slight arm. Number three. Number four, physical relaxation. And number five, the mental aspect of it. So number one, air. Let's face it, the trombone is a gas guzzling instrument. We have to take huge breaths in and blow that air back out. Expansion in all directions. And lots of air blown back out. First point I want to make about this is that there should never be a hesitation in between. No stopping the air in between the inhalation and the exhalation. It should never be this. Never. Always a continuous cycle. Continuous in all the way to back out. And we should always be striving to use this huge quantity of air in the right way. And what I mean by that is that there should be, first of all, there should be as little compression, as little pushing as possible on the air when we play. And this is a little bit difficult to quantify because air is invisible and we can't really see what's going on inside the body. It's hard to measure it. But some good rules of thumb are that when we get to the extreme highs in range and the extreme louds and dynamics, there should be a little bit more compression. But for most everything else that we do on the instrument, these muscles in our abdomen and in our upper body should not push, compress the air that much at all. So the mid and low, very little compression. And in the mid, medium and soft dynamics, very little compression. Another idea to throw out is that in the low register, the air column should be a little wider and the air should move slower. In the high register, the air column should be a little more narrow and the air should move faster. And of course, I'll throw out an idea from one of my previous videos, which is that the lower we play, the more directly the air should be blown and the higher we play, the further down the air should be blown. So, slow arpeggiated exercises are great for really getting in touch with these ideas of low compression, air column width and air direction. I feel very low compression. At the F, I felt more compression, but as I came back down, I released to low compression again. So, lots of air used in the right way. Number two, buzzing the right pitch inside the mouthpiece. It's very important that we try to be buzzing as close to the correct pitch at all times as possible in the mouthpiece. Not buzzing the right pitch inside your mouthpiece is like trying to jam your hand into a glove that's the wrong size. Imagine how uncomfortable that would be. Well, that's what happens to the embouchure. The embouchure is made uncomfortable and you lose endurance and range and sound quality and attacks when you're not buzzing the right pitch. I'm here in front of a piano right now, and I spend a little bit of time every day and have for many years at the piano buzzing with and without my tongue. Let's start with a B-flat major scale. Playing simple things, just simply trying to match the pitch of the piano. The fact is, our lips are like the vocal cords of a child. And in the same way that a young child who's trying to learn how to express their ideas through speech, practice that every day through trial and error, we need to be practicing a little bit on the mouthpiece every day to refine our sense of pitch here at the embouchure. And at the point of attack, we should not buzz above or below the pitch. It should be right on pitch, right at the beginning. It should not be... Right on the pitch, right at the beginning. So, buzzing the right pitch as much as possible and spending a little bit of time every day on that. Now, number three. The active parts of the body should be moving at the same time. The three active parts of the body when we play are, of course, our slide arm, our tongue, and our embouchure. Now, embouchure is a little tricky because everyone's face and everyone's lips and teeth are so different. You know, there are lots of different slight variations on embouchure that can be successful on the trombone. I think one good rule of thumb is that there should be firm corners without any puffing, and you should have a flat chin most of the time. So, the firm corners form a triangle that allows the tissue in the middle to vibrate freely. It's been said that the perfect embouchure is a combination of a kiss and a smile, and I would agree with that. So, embouchure. Tongue. Depending on the range that we're playing in, the tongue should hit in different places inside the mouth. The lower we play, the farther forward the tongue should hit, and the higher we play, the farther back it should hit. So, if we take a pedal F, you can see my tongue is actually hitting outside my teeth. We go to the F above that. See, the tongue's hitting all the way back there, and all the notes in between there, the tongue is hitting somewhere in between. Once again, arpeggiated exercises are great for allowing the tongue to figure out where it needs to hit inside the mouth. So, the tongue has to hit in the right place. The slide arm has to be in the right place. The slide has to be in the right position. Now, when most of us begin playing the trombone, we're told there are seven positions on the trombone, and that is absolutely the truth. There are seven major positions, but as you try to achieve higher and higher levels of artistry on your instrument, you've got to realize that there are lots of micro-positions that you have to be aware of and have a clear understanding of. There aren't just seven positions. There are hundreds of positions on the instrument that you have to be aware of. Let's take second position, for instance. The pattern that I'm going to show you, starting on a pedal A, is the pattern that applies to all of the positions. You've got to find those micro-positions on your slide, and the last thing I want to say is that those three active things—the slide, the tongue, and the embouchure—must move together, and this is where a metronome is super important. A metronome gives leadership to those three active things in the body, and it helps them to learn to move together. When those three things are not moving together, you get attacks that are super inconsistent, and a sound that's not very clear. Let's play a B-flat major scale, focusing on those three things moving together. Those three things must move together. The slide can't move ahead of the tongue. The tongue can't move ahead of the slide. The embouchure can't change before them both. Very important. Now, point number four. If the first three points of air, buzzing, and the active parts of the body moving, if they're not in place, this leads to physical tension in your body while you're playing, which is a cancer, and I hate to use such a strong word, but tension in the body while we're playing the trombone is a cancer, and it will hinder your sound. It will make your sound strident and unclear. It will cause your attacks to not be clear, and it will limit your development of range and fast technique. You've got to be constantly aware of pockets of tension in your body, getting rid of tension in your shoulders, in your legs, getting rid of that extra unneeded compression in your upper body. Get rid of as much work as possible. Be as relaxed as possible when you play. Point number five, which has to do with the mental aspect of playing. It's super important that we know where we are on our playing journey, how we sound on a daily basis, and it's also super important for us to have a good mental image of how we want to sound. How do we know how we sound currently? There's only one way, and there's no getting around it. You've got to be recording yourself every day, video recording yourself every day, and listening back and really developing a clear, true, honest picture of where we are, articulations and our sound quality. We've also got to be listening to examples of great artistry on our instrument and getting those images in our head too. We've got to know where we are currently, and we have to know where we want to be. We have to have very clear pictures about that. What are some specific exercises after we discover those five points and think about those five points? What are some new specific exercises that we could do? One of my favorite exercises is a slur that, a slur tonguing exercise that's arpeggiated and moves up through the partials and back down, slurred and tongued. We'll start in first position. So in one exercise of slurring and tonguing, another scale pattern exercise that I really love to do just to try to think about being relaxed and blowing air, using it in the right way, is this pattern. I'll turn my metronome on. So slow, scalular pattern that helps me to think about those things. I recorded a video of Bordogni's in different ranges earlier. That's another thing that you can do. Working out of the Coprosh and the Gregoria for any articulation book slowly helps you really start achieving clear attacks. So those are my ideas about sound and articulation.