High Notes on a Trumpet

[El_Cid_Viscoso]

I appear to have hit the wall. What can I do to physically condition myself to play long, sustained high notes on a trumpet?

[RickG]

@El Cid Viscoso

I appear to have hit the wall. What can I do to physically condition myself to play long, sustained high notes on a trumpet?

You need some High-note Grease:

@Louis Prima

Well…you take a buketful of steam
And a dozen roos’* eggs
And you mix 'em up gently with a bushel full of goldfish legs
And ya hang 'em on a sky hook in the midnight sun
Mmm and then you fry them until they’re done.

-From “The Lip”

-Rick (Yip, yip, yip!)

[spingears]

@El Cid Viscoso

I appear to have hit the wall. What can I do to physically condition myself to play long, sustained high notes on a trumpet?

Practice.
Practice, practice.
Practice, practice, and more practice.
Increase your wind capacity and toughen the lips.
Practice.
Practice, practice.
Practice, practice, and more practice.
Increase your wind capacity and toughen the lips.
Persevere!

[Inigo_Montoya]

And try to get past the fear after the first time your lip explodes into the mouthpiece–it’s a toughening process.

[vertizontal]

First, go to www.ask.com and type in “How do I play high notes on a trumpet?”

This will bring up about 10 pages of hits.

OK, let’s see… that fifth one looks interesting…
From www.TrumpetStudio.com

PLAYING IN THE UPPER REGISTER

There is a systematic approach to playing high notes on a consistent basis. The four most important aspects are: (1) High Pressure Air Tank (2) Tongue Position (3) Lip Position (4) Super Fast Air Stream

(1) First, you must have air the reserves ready to be called up at a moments notice. I believe that the type of air needed to play lead is most closely related to a High Pressure Air Tank. You must tank up on the air and release the valve, releasing the Super Fast Air Stream. When playing lead one should ride this high pressure air stream. Let the High Pressure Air Tank and the subsequent Super Fast Air Stream help do the work. It’s not the QUANTITY of air, but the SPEED of the air stream. Playing high notes actually requires quite a small quantity of air.

(2) Next, Tongue Position should also be addressed. Saying ‘ah’ lowers the tongue and increase the ‘VOLUME’ of air. We don’t want volume, but a Super Fast Air Stream. Saying ‘ee’ arches the tongue and ‘INCREASES AIR SPEED’ for high note playing.

(3) Lip Position. Imagine you have a tennis ball in your fingertips - now squeeze! This squeeze or pushing of your lips together is needed to play high. I personally use what people have called the ‘Superchop Method’ I pivot to push the lips over the top teeth and arch my tongue to alter the air stream. My lower lip curls in over the top of the bottom teeth. The top lip slightly overlaps the lower lip. The lip compression comes from pulling all of the muscles in toward the center.

(4) Finally, one must use a Super Fast Air Stream. The key is to achieve an incredible velocity of air, not quantity. The velocity must be so fast that it screams through the horn like a Mach 4 fighter jet. I mean fast! You should not puff your cheeks at anytime, check in a mirror. If you are puffing your cheeks, take your hand and literally hold your checks in, until your muscles are strong enough to do it on its own. Your goal is to obtain this Super Fast Air Stream INSTANTLY. It is the air speed, combined with lip and tongue position, that will give you success in the upper register.

Using the Air Tank, Tongue Position, Lip Position, and Air Speed YOU must also practice high note playing EVERYDAY. I often take the Clarke Studies up to the next octave for practicing. Or perhaps you could practice the leads to your favorite big band or pop charts. Either way, nothing happens without practice and hard dedicated work.

And keep reading all the links that follow and try to find advice that makes sense to you.

[pmh]

It’s been 20 years since I played seriously, but here’s what I recall:

First, relax. Your natural inclination is to screw the horn into your face and blow as hard as you can. This is self-defeating (and painful). Hold the horn with only enough pressure to keep air from leaking at the mouthpeice.
You will need a greater volume of air, but keep in mind you don’t want significantly more air pressure, but greater velocity. Tighten your lips by pulling the corners of your mouth back (like smiling), but don’t press them together tighter.
Arch your tongue, and blow “downward” into the mouthpeice instead of straight through (well, not really, but it helps me to think of it that way). It’s kind of like a combination of (2) and (3) from vertizontal’s post. Imagine blowing at the lower wall of the mouthpeice.
A shallower mouthpeice may help. Switching from a 7C to a 3C increased my range by an octave.
And, of course, most importantly:
What spingears said.

[Klaatu]

This is anecdotal and based on old memories, as I haven’t played trumpet since high school almost 30 years ago, but I will second the shallower mouthpiece thing.

My band friend found some really shallow mouthpieces based on a badass high-note trumpet dude back then. (Maynard Ferguson?) and it was amazing. We could hit “double high C, or super C” easily and sustain it a bit. I actually forget what we really called those notes back then.

However, in regular ranges, the mouthpiece sounded tinny and bad. The band director only let us use them at football games playing the fun stuff.

I for one could never hit those notes with a standard 7c? type mouthpiece, and it felt a bit like “cheating”

[R.P.McMurphy]

I don’t mean to hijack the thread but isn’t it possible to “blow out” your lip? The muscles get damaged to the point that you can’t hit notes you used to be able to play much less reach higher ones. I seem to recall that this happened to Donald Byrd.

I guess what I’m getting at is that there may be some physical limitation within an individual where overtraining or overuse will only lead to damage. An analogy would be a runner that trains to improve speed but eventually hits their own physical limit.

[carlb]

@pmh

First, relax. Your natural inclination is to screw the horn into your face and blow as hard as you can. This is self-defeating (and painful). Hold the horn with only enough pressure to keep air from leaking at the mouthpeice.

For me, this made the most dramatic difference. My teacher in high school had me perform exercises playing what he called “pedal tones;” notes below F#. I could eventually produce a C# below what a trumpet was “supposed” to be able to produce (I’m not saying the tone quality was great, but it was clearly a musical note). You had to have very loose, limber lips, and use very little pressure on the mouthpiece. After a few weeks of this, I had added 2-3 whole tones to my useful upper range, and a couple of occaisional squeaks above that.

What was so much fun was being able to do this with good tone. The guy that sat next to me was a big Maynard Ferguson fan, with a tone to match. During warm ups he would take great pride in punching out a tinny sounding E. Then I’d give him a full-throated F just to shut him up.

The best part? I was playing on a 12E mouthpiece. I think he was using a 3C.

And then I discovered girls, and suddenly had less interest in practicing. Although, I’d like to think the lip exercises helped.