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I have a number of exercises that I like to use to develop strength, and I will address each of them in future articles. For now, though, I will discuss an exercise I got from John Hagstrom during my time in Chicago. This exercise originated, as he told it, from the great jazz trombonist, Tommy Dorsey. The exercise is very simple in content: play a G in the staff, very softly, for as long as you can. Eventually you will play it for an entire hour, but you have to build up to that. At first you may be able to do it only for 5 or 10 minutes (or even less) before the embouchure gives out. Find your starting point, and then gradually lengthen it over time until you can do it for an hour. It is a simple exercise, but there are a few details that need to be addressed in order for us to get the full benefit from it and still avoid injury.
First and foremost, we must learn the golden rule of strength-building exercises: pressure is never to be used to improve sound or control. You may not play anything else this way, but when you sit down to do these exercises, it is pertinent that you keep pressure to an absolute minimum. The use of pressure during these exercises hurts us in two ways. First, excessive pressure when applied during these exercises can result in battered lip tissue that will take days to return to normal. Second, by applying pressure during these exercises, we are transferring the “weight” of playing over to the left arm and away from the muscles of the embouchure. This results in less training effect on the muscles, which reduces the overall strength gain from the exercise. To summarize, pressure used during strength building exercises increases lip damage and decreases benefit, hardly a desirable combination.
It is a good idea, especially when you first start doing this exercise, to use a mute. The increased resistance makes it a bit easier to sustain the buzz and reduces our desire to use pressure to compensate for the inevitable breakdown in the embouchure muscles.
Obviously, you will need to breathe while doing this exercise. I find I get the most benefit from this exercise when I breathe through the nose, leaving the embouchure in playing position, and with no change in muscle tension during the breath. This results in the closest thing we can get to actually sustaining the G, unbroken, for as long as we can. If you happen to know how to circular breathe, you could try that technique for breathing as well.
When you do this exercise, you will get to a point where the lips begin to quiver, the sound starts to break down, and pitch begins to fall. This is a critical point in the exercise. Do not apply extra pressure! Try to re-establish your sound and pitch with the embouchure, not your left arm. If you cannot get the sound to clear and/or the pitch to go back up, don’t worry about it. Simply continue working the embouchure to stabilize the note. Usually people find some way to overcome this initial breakdown and are able to continue with a G of reasonable quality. If this is the case with you, then continue the exercise at least to the point where the breakdown occurs for a second time. If you are not able to re-stabilize the G after the initial breakdown, then simply hold it until the sound stops for at least 3-5 seconds. At the end of this exercise the embouchure muscles should feel exhausted, but the lip tissue should feel warm and limber. If the lip feels tender, or is very puffy, then you are using too much pressure. If you have made it to the end of the exercise without using excess pressure, and you have done no damage to the lips, then your next day will not be negatively impacted by this exercise. In fact, it will likely feel better for having done it. On the other hand, if you have played this exercise with excess pressure, your playing may feel out of sorts for days and you will have reduced the positive benefit that you should have received from this exercise.
When you get to where you are holding the G for 20 minutes or more, you may want to start watching television while doing this exercise. While I do believe discipline is paramount when learning a musical instrument, I do not believe in torture, and holding a G for an hour while sitting alone in a room may well qualify for that. Also, the most important thing about this exercise is to do it every night. If watching TV or otherwise occupying your mind while doing this makes that happen, then I say go for it. Remember, though, you have to pay enough attention to keep the pressure at a bare minimum, and to track the gradual fatigue of the muscles. These two things are paramount!
With all of that said, grab a clock or stopwatch, your trumpet with a mute (I prefer harmon), take a nice deep breath and play a beautiful G in the staff as softly as you can. Hold it as described above with an absolute minimum of pressure. When you have reached the end, put your horn in the case for the day, knowing you have made one small step towards improving your playing in ways that you can only imagine.
Hi Craig, Lex here writing you from NYC. First, thanks for putting up such a great site with those great articles! I wanted to ask you about the G exercise you posted. I am mainly a lead/commercial/jazz player and already have pretty strong chops. I have been working with Bob Odneal’s Casual Double C method (www.bobodneal.com) which basically are expanding scales done at a ppppppp volume, in a specific way, up to your highest notes. I can really feel the burn when I take it up to my highest range. Right now I have good endurance, sound, and am consistent to G above high C but I am seeing things open up range and endurance-wise from practicing Bob’s stuff. The range to double C+ is opening up and slotting and, after some things in my embouchure ‘changed’, I am using even less overall effort to play the horn. I’m planning to record my first solo album in the next couple of months which will be all flugel with my friend on various woodwinds (all free improv) and I really want to have my chops super strong so I don’t have to think about them. I wondered what your opinion was in comparing doing moving tones at ppppppp up to the top of your range, to the ‘one long G’ exercise. It seems to me that the burn comes quicker when doing the pppppp scales. Also, I would be curious to know if you have any more detail on the benefits you and/or your students have experienced with this particular ‘long G’ exercise. Thanks and all the best to you, Lex.
This is a simple yet very effective exercise. The real key is using the least amount of pressure possible. Don’t worry about how long you can play the G, just concertrate on using the least ammount of pressure. If you die out in two minutes then fine…..don’t worry about it!
Bill Chase would play a middle C and hold the trumpet on his fingertips and would change hands back and forth. When he felt that he might be using pressure he would bend over at the waist so the horn would be pulling away from his face. He said “I do long tones for hours ….untill I can’t talk” He also said as far as volume, he does them “at room temp.” I guess he meant soft.
I have gotten so much from this exercise. I recommend it to everyone. Also, I recommend getting Walter White’s long tone CD http://www.walterwhite.com It’s really nice to listen and tune to. If you can afford it, the Shulman System http://www.shulmansystem.com also works great!!
Nate
Lex,
Great question. When most trumpet players think of strength or endurance, they tend to think one dimensionally. In other words, they do one particular strength exercise assuming that will improve both range and endurance to the highest possible level. This approach, however, is overly simplistic. There are at least two types of strength exercises for the trumpet: endurance and explosiveness.
The one long G exercise is an endurance exercise. It is designed to help you play for long periods of time without getting fatigued. Of course, it will improve your range because it will build strength, but the most effective way to build range would be doing explosive exercises, i.e. exercises that don’t last as long, but require much more work to play. A good example of an explosiveness exercise would be the Caruso 2nds. This exercise requires a great deal of exertion from the lip muscles over a relatively short period of time. The long G, however, requires a low amount of effort over a long period of time.
The answer to your question, then, is another question. What type of strength do you want to build? Do you need more staying power, or do you need more explosiveness? From your post I would gather that you want to be able to play things that you are already capable of, things that are in your range, but that you want to be able to do it over a longer period of time. If that is the case, then the one long G exercise would be something I highly recommend.
Any strength exercise will build endurance and range, but you will get better results choosing a strength exercise that is geared to what you want to achieve. I hope this helps.
Craig
Hey Craig, thanks for your reply. That makes a lot of sense. Actually, I am looking to increase my consistent range while keeping the good endurance I have up into the new range. The Bob Odneal stuff is helping me take pressure off the lips and showing me where the slots are for the notes above G. I know that when I am playing with very light pressure on the lips everything feels very easy and I am even able to play with power into the extreme upper register. But this very light pressure does not seem to last for too long…I go back to using my normal level of pressure (which isn’t a super amount, btw)…the time that I am able to play with light pressure seems to be increasing as I continue with the Odneal stuff. It seems to me that the ‘one long G’ exercise would be really good for me to do on days when I don’t have to do a lot of heavy playing. Thanks and all the best, Lex.
p.s. – Nate, right on about the Walter White CD…that’s a great practice tool for long tones!
Craig,
Playing a G for an hour makes sense to build stamina for playing, but it raises the question in my mind, “Couldn’t I find something more productive to do with an hour than playing one note while watching television?” I realize it is just a different approach to strength building than other time-consuming exercises (Top Tones, Caruso) but it seems that the hour spent playing one note could be spent playing Concone or Bordogni etudes that would simultaneously improve endurance and musicality without being disjunct from normal trumpeting like holding a G.
This coming from a kid who does a twenty minute Caruso set every day (for better or worse).
Thanks for your guidance,
Aaron Norlund
Aaron,
That is quite a comment for an incoming Freshman to post on his own teacher’s website. Taken by itself the post is fairly innocuous. When one considers that it is a student’s public challenge to his own teacher’s ideas, then its complexion changes drastically.
Reading your comment reminds me of the story of a man seeking enlightenment from a Zen Master. The man came to the master telling him all the things he had learned, and he expressed his desire to become enlightened. The master replied, “I cannot teach you, because you are already full. You can only learn if you come empty.”
Your post reminds me of this because I don’t see your mind as open, but closed with an open sign. Much like an abandoned storefront with the “We’re Open!” sign dangling on an unhinged door. Perhaps it is more obvious to me since you are a student of mine, but it is true nonetheless.
In this particular case, you are doubting, misrepresenting, and misunderstanding a concept presented by me, and used by countless others, many of whom are top players. First of all, the purpose is not to play “one note while watching television”. The purpose is to build the strength necessary to solve the single most crippling problem for most trumpet players, endurance. You mention that time could be better spent playing Concone or Bordogni. Have you ever looked at those etudes? The range for almost all of them is 2 octaves. This is a far cry from one note. If you read the article you will see the point to the exercise is to be able to play with as little pressure as possible. If you are playing something that has a lot of musical character, such as the Bordogni and Concone etudes, then you will be tempted to use pressure to maintain the musical character that is desired. This is where your idea becomes extremely dangerous. If you played for even ten minutes with no rest, using a normal amount of pressure, you would likely be unable to play “normally” for a few days thereafter.
You also express displeasure at the exercise being “disjunct from normal trumpeting”. Fist of all, rest assured I have no interest in “trumpeting”. My teacher, Ray Crisara, did not appreciate being called a trumpet player. He viewed himself as a musician who happens to play the trumpet. Being called a trumpet player was almost like an insult; it left out the music. He understood very well that making music is the only true value of playing an instrument. Secondly, having an exercise that is disjunct from a main activity is a basic building block for every type of athletic training. A football player goes to the weight room to build strength to improve his game, as does almost any other athlete. This kind of focus on strength is the only way to build up a level of strength beyond what the normal activity requires. So the fact that this exercise is disjunct from our normal playing is actually an enormous advantage, not a disadvantage.
Another thing I would like to mention is that the “Long G” exercise is by no means the only way one can build strength. There are many exercises that can do this, but you have to pick the one that will build the type of strength that is desired. If you need to improve range, then something that is shorter but more explosive in nature would be good, like the Caruso “Seconds”. On the the other hand, if you need to develop staying power, then an exercise such as the “Long G” would be a good choice. The point is, we need to develop strength separate from our trumpet playing, so that when we play the trumpet we are able to devote our full attention to making music. Also, this exercise should certainly not replace any of your regular practice. If you normally practice three hours a day, then you should simply add this exercise to it.
Of course, all of these things would have been obvious if you had approached this with an open mind, but your mind is full. It will need to be empty in order for any real progress to be made. I hope this answers your question, and gives you something to turn over in your mind for a while.
All the best,
Craig
Thanks for the explanation. It’s nice to be able to question a musician as experienced as yourself and receive positive guidance in response.
Aaron Norlund
Hi Craig,
When doing the Long G, are we holding the G until the air is exhausted, inhaling and repeating; or is there a meter/note duration we should go for?