As many of you know from reading my past posts I am a huge fan of Pat Harbison. He is a great player, teacher and human being. Today before practicing I dropped by The Trumpet Herald to review a few posts from the Bill Adam forum. One in particular really improved my playing on long tones and I wanted to share with my regular visitors… Pat Harbison said:

The mental picture you want is that the sound is made at the front of your mouth and beyond. The sound is made out in front of your face and the mental energy and the energy of the breath moves through that point and projects the sound into the room. The moving breath turns on the sound in the trumpet.

Imagine the sound of every note and phrase happening out in front of your face. The body simply falls in line with the sound coming from the instrument.

I imagine the sound starting at the bell and the breath also starting to move out from there. When I articulate I say the syllable of the sound at the front of my mouth. The flowing breath keeps everything to the front. Practice singing what you are going to play with your vocal pronunciation to the front of your mouth.

This will definitely be easier at first to accomplish if you play on the loud side of mezzo-forte. Eventually you can play through the sound at all volumes.

Remember, this is a mental concept and a picture that will produce the desired result. The actual way your body works will be an incidental response to that picture. When I focused on the sound in FRONT of my instrument I seemed to get much better results. I can’t tell you where I thought of sound prior to trying this… probably all around me rather than what was going on in front of me. To me it really made a difference in my tone. Give it a try and see what kind of results you get. Also be sure to read this post. Regardless of the “method” that you use to play the trumpet you should find something to help you.

I also focused on hitting my pitches when I start instead of sliding up or down into them… a very bad habit of mine.