Exercise 15

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Exercise 15 develops your high range and improves your tone and control.

To play Exercise 15

• Take a deep full breath
• Aim right in the middle of your mouthpiece
• Tongue the first note cleanly
• Play as brick-shaped notes as possible
• Make the slurs happen as suddenly as possible
• Play a long controlled decrescendo on the last note

It's imperative that you control the decrescendo from Place #6. If you don't you'll get a wobbly decrescendo, or a note that stops speaking or your tone will go dull. Keep a bright tone color all the way until the note fades out.

Exercise 10

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Exercise 10 develops clean slurs and builds fingering technique and tonal awareness.

To play Exercise 10

• Start with a big deep low breath
• Play the accented notes louder than the tonic note and play them louder until the end of the notes
• Try to have the same tone color as you descend to the lower scales

Exercise 9

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Exercise 9 is to develop a way of playing that does not decresendo on the note before a tongued note.  It also helps us to play large sudden intervals using the air to change notes.

To play Exercise 9

• Breathe correctly and tongue cleanly
• Speed is not important. Go slowly and be careful
• Play the dotted quarter notes all the way until you absolutely have to tongue the eighth notes
• Make brick shaped eighth notes and sudden slurs
• Use more air on the eighth notes than the dotted quarters. Aim at them with the air, right in the middle of your mouthpiece

Exercise 5

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Exercise 5 is designed to get you to play with the same tone color in all ranges.

The first note must be brick shaped with no hints (tightening, going sharp or flat) before you slam the air straight ahead to hit the sffz note. Play with a little separation but not short notes. Whatever you do do not stop the notes with your tongue!

Exercise 5 is an aiming exercise. Our goal is to play with as little mouth motion as possible. We know it is working when the notes have the same tone color all the way through the ranges.

We use the sffz note as a template for the other notes. It needs to sound vastly different than the note before it. Blast that sucker!

To play Exercise 5

• Tongue the first note cleanly and make it as brick shaped as possible
• Slur down using a blast of air, as if someone punched you in the stomach
• Make the sffz note LOUD. Hit it hard
• Try to play the subsequent notes by aiming in the same place as the sffz note

It will be difficult at first to play the sffz notes going up. This is normal and shouldn't worry you. Even if the note is fuzzy or weak or even if it doesn't speak that's ok but note where you aimed at it and play the notes going up in the same place, aiming at the target and pushing from Place #6 every time.

Soon enough you will find that your high range has the same bright sound as your midrange and your control over your low range will increase.

This exercise was inspired by the Til Eulenspiegel solo.

Exercise 4

Exercise 4 is our basic arpeggio exercise.

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It is imperative that you 

• Begin with a clean tongue
• Do not let the notes go sharp as you go up or flat as you go down
• Do not football (get louder in the middle) of the notes
• Make the change between notes as quickly as possible, with no hints before the change, using a sudden blast of air
• Make the last note good
• Take a breath whenever necessary and use lots of air

We want brick shaped notes with the fastest change of notes possible.

One of the most common mistakes when arpeggiating is changing the shape of the mouth or the tension of the lips before the air changes. To get this to work you must breath from Place #6 and blast the air.

Controlling the air higher than Place #6 will cause your throat to tense up making it almost impossible to get the blast of air necessary to get you to the next note.

Articles related to this exercise

Understanding Note Clusters
Air Based vs Face Based
What is The System?
Chop Management
Strength and Efficiency

Exercise 1

Exercise 1 is our most basic exercise. We do it daily no matter our ability level. It is the equivalent of a chef sharpening his knives to get ready for the day's work, or a flower arranger cutting and laying out the flowers before arranging them.

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The main goal of the exercise is to produce three totally brick shaped notes. That means that it starts with a clean T tongue and blow through all three notes as if they were one note. The air flow should not increase or decrease during the note.

This is most important at the ends of the first two notes. Do not go flat or get quieter at the ends of the notes.

Let your fingers do as much of the work as possible. We want the lowest note at the end of the exercise to sound and feel as much like the first note as possible.

You will find of course that some notes do not speak as well or have the same tone color as the others. While this may be cause by numerous factors it is most often because of intonation. When you hit a note that doesn't speak well try moving your right wrist to adjust the intonation.

Go as low as possible every day. For many students the lowest notes will be out of your range. That's ok, just play as low as possible every day. If you can play all of the notes here just try to go lower every day.

This is a wonderfully extensible and leveragable exercise. Sometimes we alternate between hard accent on the first note and sneaking in as quietly as possible.  You can play the middle of the three notes stopped.  Sometimes we tongue all three notes, the first one very hard, the middle one normally and the last note legato tongued.

But whatever variation you are working on do it the same way every day for at least a week.

A great way to learn to control the air from Place #6 is to put a decrescendo on the last note, dying away without letting the tone color change. If you move the control up from Place #6 while you are playing your tone color will get dull and thin. You want to hear a bright shiny sound all the way down.

If you control the air from too high up your throat and the thick part of your tongue in the back will move, changing the sound of the note. Try to keep the note as boring and simple as possible. You will see that the only way to do it is to control the air from Place #6 through the entire note.