Canadian Musician - January/February 2019 | Page 30

BRASS
Paul Baron is one of today’s most highly respected lead and commercial trumpet players. His sound is distinctly bright and powerful and
carries with it decades of experience in a wide range of musical styles from jazz to rock, big band to musical theatre, and TV jingles to movie
soundtracks. As well as being a performing artist for Jupiter Instruments and Pickett Brass with his signature line of mouthpieces, Paul is also an
author, educator, and clinician. www.paulbaron.net.
By Paul Baron
The Care & Feeding of
Your Chops
Part 1
T
he idea of organized, purposeful practice was not something
given to me when I was a younger player. It has taken me a
lot of trial and error to come to an understanding of how and
why to practice certain things.
That is not to say I did not have some good instruction
along the way, but learning how to lay out a progression of exercises
where the flow and order had as much to do with the development of
chops has proven more helpful than the exercises standing alone.
I was given a number of very good exercises to work on, but these
were not necessarily laid out in a logical progression, or one that would
evolve with my needs.
As well as learning from my many mistakes, I have had the great for-
tune to sit next to some of the best players in the business and absorb
what I could from their knowledge and experience. I also have some
good friends who had some excellent instruction and were kind enough
to share their experiences with me.
As well, in studying martial arts, particularly Aikido, I began to equate
and assimilate some of the lessons of Aikido into the treatment and
development of my chops and trumpet playing. The biggest realization
came with the concept of efficient use of energy and the flow of the
energy to the task at hand, making music.
Lessons Learned
Many of us fall into the trap of using more arm strength and brute force
to play, especially in the upper register. I have also found myself blowing
too hard at times to compensate for sound issues in performance, loud
bands or section mates, or very sound-absorbent orchestra pits. I have
also mistakenly tried to force the notes out by using larger amounts of air
instead of a more concentrated and faster air flow. As I tried to compensate
by overblowing, I got the results I was after, but only temporarily. Before
long, my range had dropped and the amount of vibration I got from my
lips decreased. Soon I was back to the same place I was before, not able
to hear myself well, but then I had less upper register left as well.
Balance
As I mentioned, some of what I learned was through Aikido, and what
helped me most was the idea of balance. The idea that all energies have
to be balanced is the same idea as Newton’s third law of physics – that for
every force, there is an equal and opposite force. This is certainly true in
the amount of pressure used in playing. The more arm pressure you use,
the more your teeth will push back, in a matter of speaking. Unfortunately,
there is some tissue between that will take the brunt of that physics lesson.
I found that by holding back on the volume of air and sound to about
85 per cent, assuming zero is not blowing at all and 100 per cent is
over-blowing and forcing everything I had to give through the horn, my
endurance, range, centre of pitch, articulation, etc., greatly improved.
Ironically, by playing more efficiently, the volume was actually louder
as well. It was more focused and centered, and projected better. The horn
is built to play centered and responds much better to this approach than
the “strong arm method.” It also leaves me in better shape for the next
day of playing.
Sometimes, with a tough schedule, there is just no way to avoid some
serious fatigue, but playing more efficiently will really help avoid injury,
and the recovery time will be much faster.
Athletics
Playing an instrument as physical as the trumpet means we are athletes
in a sense. Some styles of music are certainly more athletic than others,
but if we use some common sense and approach the trumpet with more
knowledge as to the athletics and mechanics involved, we will play more
efficiently.
We wouldn’t decide to run a marathon without first building up to
the stamina and distance. Many players do exactly this on the trumpet,
though. When things are going great, we sometimes feel like we are
unstoppable and do not pay attention to the proper mechanics of play-
ing, only to pay the price later.
Alternately, we decide to try a new routine and push it to sheer ex-
haustion, and then when things are not working as well the next day, we
decide the routine is not the right one. Rest is often a neglected part of
the practice routine. Remember, muscle is built by exercise and rest. It is
the rest period that allows the blood to return to the lips and flush the
built-up lactic acid from them, and returns the muscles to a more useful
relaxed and flexible state.
This is based on a lesson from Paul’s book, Trumpet Voluntarily – A Holistic Guide to Maximizing Practice Through
Efficiency, containing more expanded information on this subject as well as 19 chapters with music examples and
exercises. The book serves as a guide to teach the player how, what, and when to practice. It is available now through
qPress, www.qpress.ca.
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