The Octave Key

I've on the edge of a breakthrough on trumpet. Was working on doits and falls, read a couple articles, ended up watching a batch of videos, and there's a whole bunch of related stuff in there.

Okay, simple stuff first. The key to the fall is the half-valve trick. I'd already learned half-valve as a way to slur between two valved notes. Well, if you hold the third valve at the right spot, you can gliss all the way up and down your range.

But the more important thing. I knew not to grind the trumpet against my lips to reach the higher pitches. I was consciously avoiding hauling back on the pinkie hook (what some wags have called the "octave key" on the trumpet for just that beginner playing fault.) But I was still pulling back, only with my support hand instead.

One of the sillier-looking exercises is to put the trumpet on a table (with a towel to protect it) and see how far up you can get without pushing it off the table. For me was better approach to continue playing as softly as possible, but being conscious of keeping the pressure as light as possible and the air flow high.

While doing this I stumbled on a nice controlled pedal tone. And that, too, is considered a good exercise; work from the pedal tone up through the slots, instead of starting with the usual "lowest note."

(Refresher here; the trumpet plays a harmonic series based on multiples of the physical length of the piping involved. The "Bb" of a Bb trumpet, usually considered the lowest open note, is actually the first harmonic of a series that starts an octave below. Or, putting it in standard nomenclature and transposing to C -- it is a transposing instrument after all -- the series goes CC, C, G, c, e, g. )

And, yeah, it worked. At the end of all this I could play longer with less fatigue and reach most of the slots with less effort. And snap between them faster as well.

(Oh, yeah. And after reading some technical stuff about adjusting mouthpieces, I tried changing the gap slightly with a bit of electrician's tape around the stem of my current 7C. It didn't hurt, and it actually feels like it may have helped.



Went to the practice room today. Looks like the pedal tone I've been discovering is with my lower lip -- also explaining the nasty sound I'm sometimes getting; it is actually a split tone, with each lip vibrating at a different pitch. The relaxation techniques have ended my left hand death-grip and made the first octave smoother and faster, but the upper range remains a difficult push.