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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.
