Hey everybody!
Here’s a quick update on the evolution of one goof-ball’s practice routine.
September has been spent focusing on four main areas:
- 192-Scales (Melody/Harmony)
- Ballads
- Range Building
- Mouth Workouts
Take a read, you might find something helpful, entertaining, or at least completely idiotic and laughable. In either case – you come out a winner!
#1. The 192-Scales
OK, if you’ve been following along, you know I recently exited a lengthy affair with some slow-ass lip slurs. If you knew that, you may also be aware of the fact that I intended to “maintain” those slurs. Well, I tried, and what I’ve learned is that I’d rather enjoy my life. I didn’t even feel bad quitting.
To fill the expansive void left behind by the removal of over a year of neighbor-cringing flexibility practice, I went for the next big thing – tongue and finger coordination. Why? Because my tongue and finger coordination sucks. And as far as I can tell, practicing what you suck at is a great way to stop sucking so much. Yippee-Ki-Yay, Mother-F*cker!
Essentially, the 192-Scales are your plain-Jane, bare-bone basic major scales – with an added bonus. The first part is to play your major scale, up and down. You can go to the root or the 9, it doesn’t really matter. The point is to line up the tongue and fingers and listen for sound and pitch (I like to tongue every note Mendez-style). The idea is to do it well and go for a product you’re happy with. It probably won’t be perfect but you can always aim for “a little better.”
After playing the scale and getting the sound of that key in the ear and under the fingers, I have then been playing a simple ii-V7 melody that starts on the 4th note of the major scale (also the flat-3rd of the minor two chord / flat-7th of the dominant chord) to work on vocabulary. Here’s how it looks in F Major.
Some days I play the scales rubato and stay where everything feels comfortable. You know, whatever tempo the tongue & fingers are doing their thing “automatically.” Other days I push it with the metronome by kicking the tempo up 2 beats per minute or so from the last time I used the metronome. I have been doing these scales as a warm-up and like to start on an easy note – somewhere around F or G in the staff and play up and down the scale, one octave. From there, I’ll go either up or down in half-steps, working through the keys to the limits of whatever range feels reasonable on that day. After a break I might go through the keys again in the other direction. This could be anywhere from 2o minutes to an hour or two.
I call them the 192-Scales since their inception came one serendipitous evening as I was grooving along to a cool minor blues tune featuring Art Farmer and Donald Byrd. Dig those 8th note lines! And then it hit me – a bolt of lightning jousted through my squishy insides by the great jazzy Zeus himself. Get your scales to THAT tempo! EUREKA!
Turns out it’s around 192 beats per minute.
#2. The Horrifying Revelations of Ballads
Have you ever had a teacher or book suggest to you to practice your lyrical studies? Or lyrical playing?
I sure have – and of course promptly never did it. But just recently I was listening to John Snell interview Michael Sachs on Bob Reeves Brass’ awesome podcast, “The Other Side of the Bell,” and Sachs’ words cut straight to the core.
For those of you unaware, M. Sachs (Monster Sachs?) is the principle trumpet player of The Cleveland Orchestra and a total mother-effer trumpet player to boot. Among the many eye and ear-opening suggestions for the developing player, he mentioned his practice of lyrical studies to find more “color.” That is cool. And it’s great to hear from a trumpet player. One of the reasons I love the tenor saxophone so much is that the instrument can sound a lot of different ways, and I appreciate the players who “switch” their sounds mid-phrase. It’s a pipe-dream of mine.
After the podcast ended I started practicing ballads, the jazz-player’s “lyrical study.” So far what I’ve discovered is not a new and wider color-palette, but rather an awareness of my inconsistent support habits. I think support is something I’ve taken for granted for many years, because as a lead player, the support is going to be there. It has to be there! Good high-notes take the juice! However, playing long phrases that start in the lower part of the horn is something that can quickly derail my playing.
To begin correcting this issue I just started contracting the abdomen isometrically like I’m going to get punched in the gut before taking an open breath. At first I wasn’t getting as much air and the phrases got shorter, but the issues of losing control of the aperture/sound from low to high got WAY better. I quickly developed the habit of bracing the abdominal in all registers by doing it before I put the horn to my face – every time. This was easy to do after getting in the habit of setting my horn down after every repetition a few years back. Opening up that space sure has helped!
There are still issues. For example, I really have to think about it when taking a breath in the middle of a phrase, and keeping the chops in a good place while taking quick breaths has historically screwed me in the pooch. But all-in-all this little tweak has made a lot of positive improvement. That said, I still can’t get through the melody to “My One and Only Love*” without my shit falling apart.
*Spend the $1.29 on that mp3. It’s a great recording of a great tune by three great players. Go, John Marshall!
#3. Range Routine
Are people still excited about high notes or has that fad gone by the way-side?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Anyways, I’m doing my best to work on range intelligently and using the embouchure I’ve learned over the past seven years. To do that I’ve taken an approach that’s treated me well so far – minor, monthly increases in intensity & working range every other day-ish. I’ll add that I count gigs and rehearsals as “range” workouts because most of the time they are and practically all of the time they tire me out a bit the next day.
I’ve been at it since June and am happy about the way things have progressed over the last four months. Throughout June and July I did the basic trills of a 2nd on each note from G on top of the staff up to high C, August was up the harmonic series to the 3rd (G-A-B; Ab-Bb-C; A-B-C#; etc.) and September I added to that by “trilling” or “shaking” or “slurring” a major third (G-B-G; Ab-C-Ab; etc.). This has made high E the highest note in practice and I end every set of trills with a descending slur, hitting all the harmonics down to the lowest note of that series and holding out a nice, full low note.
It’s a lot less confusing to just check out the PDF.
#4. Mouth Workouts (Yes, Mouth Workouts)
In recent years “mouth-workouts” as I like to call them, or “Embouchure Isometrics” as more respected individuals like to call them, have become like Pringles to me. Once you pop you just can’t stop! Or is that Lays? Bet you can’t eat just one! Anyways, my current preferred mouth-workout apparatuses are the JAWZRSIZE (yes, you heard me) and the better known and perhaps better named Facial Flex (is that really any better?).
I’m not affiliated with the JAWZRSIZE people but let me take a moment to sing its praises. Lalalalaaaaa! This little gizmo is marketed as a golden road to a more chiseled jaw-line, presumably so you can attract a mate or feel better about yourself, but it’s done way more than that for me. I have jaw problems related to and unrelated to trumpet playing and this thing is legit. It has helped me more than anything else I’ve tried, and I’ve tried a lot. I bought the blue level 1 and built up slowly. It did add some meat to my face and I expect more to come as I work up through the higher intensities. If you have jaw issues it’s worth checking out.
The Facial Flex is yet another beauty-enhancing device that will tire out embouchure muscles you didn’t even know you had. If I do too much it can screw with my playing for a day or two, but at an appropriate intensity it feels great and seems to help the embouchure feel more “whole.”
Of course no BTB progress report would be complete without a fancy graph, but this month we’ll settle for a color-coded calendar to show which days I did each mouth workout!
June 2018:
Jawzrsize – 35 seconds (smooth, continuous movement)
July 2018:
Jawzrsize – 35 seconds (smooth, continuous movement)
Facial Flex – 31 seconds (smooth, continuous movement)…
August 2018:
Jawzrsize – 41 seconds
Facial Flex – 36 seconds
September 2018:
September was a little different. I had a few weeks off from any external playing commitments (BTB Headquarters has recently relocated to the east coast – more on that later) so I decided to really go for it.
The days I did a bit extra are signified by a fire ball – ’cause that shit was ¡Fuego! You’ll notice I eventually settled back into the “regular” programming because that ¡Fuego! was ¡Caliente! and Papa got ¡Burned!
Ouch!
Jawzrsize – 46 seconds
Facial Flex – 41 seconds
¡Fuego! – About 2 min each
Gonna keep it going through October with the five second increases. I think I’ll make them five-second static holds somewhere in the middle of the workout. The JAWZRSIZE will probably end up as a nightly thing unrelated to playing. Maybe it’ll get me brushing my teeth too.
October Plans
Basically going to stay along these same lines next month. I’m getting ready for a five week tour with the Setzer band come mid-November and want to be in tip-top shape for that so I might give it a little extra gas until the start of the tour.
That’s it! Best to all of you, my friends! Feel free to post about your adventures in the comment section below.