Lip slurs

[JeffBone44]

It's very important to practice lip slurs. I get that. How long should I be practicing them per day? Should I do them at the beginning of the practice session? The middle? Do some at the end? How do I know when I've done enough, or not enough?

If I try lip slurs when I first pick up the horn, they are very difficult, uneven, and the sound suffers. I feel like I need a couple minutes of soft long tones to get my chops warmed up and the blood flowing properly. Should my goal be to eventually sound good on lip slurs as the first thing that I play?

I think that part of my problem playing them stems from when I was younger. I tried to play them too fast before I was ready to speed them up. It seems that right now my best course of action would be to play them slow so that I can control them. And I shouldn't be straining hard at all when moving between partials.

[Doug Elliott]

Not a very wild guess...
You're not using enough mouthpiece pressure.

[JeffBone44]

Not a very wild guess...
You're not using enough mouthpiece pressure.

Thanks for the reminder. I will pay more attention to that when I play.

[Rusty]

I’d say most players would do lip slurs as part of their warm up, or covering the fundamentals earlier on in their practice, but there’s no rules about when you should do them. There are great books like the Brad Edwards Lip Slurs and Lip Slurs Melodies that have longer exercises and whole etudes that only use lip slurs.

I like to focus on my tongue position and changing inside mouth shape, if you can whistle or lightly blow air at the right pitch, whistle a simple lip slur exercise and notice how all that actually changes the pitch is the tongue and in turn, the oral cavity/inside of your mouth. Another way to achieve similar tongue position is to think of different vowel sounds or syllables for different ranges, 'ah' for lower notes, 'oo' for mid range notes, and 'ee' for higher notes, or variations along those lines.

Start slow and controlled and get the mechanics right before expanding out range and speed. While I could start with lip slurs, I also prefer to start with long tones to start feeling warmed up before working on slurs and flexibility.

[Trombonic]

I don´t understand the lack of mp pressure..Maybe Mr. Elliot (as a mp seller) is very focussed on mouthpieces? I do not use any (or very little) mouthpiece pressure when playing the trombone. I use the tongue as my "control stick" and lip slurs are my favorite work out. I slurred for one or two hours a day when I was younger.

[Doug Elliott]

You need a certain amount of pressure to maintain a good relationship in your chops between the mouthpiece and teeth. Otherwise, in real playing - like moving your slide - things will suffer. And it's simply not possible to play loud with no pressure. Focusing on using the least possible pressure WILL cause playing problems in real life. Maybe not playing simple exercises.

And, the OP has taken lessons from me off and on for probably 20 years so I'm pretty familiar with his situation.

[harrisonreed]

I do not use any (or very little) mouthpiece pressure when playing the trombone.

This makes me skeptical. You need mouthpiece pressure to play a brass instrument, period. If you used none, lip slurs and playing in general would not be possible.

There is a certain amount of "purchase" or protrusion into the cup that your lips do, and this is a dynamic thing that changes depending on the register and volume. This can't happen without some level of mouthpiece pressure, and you even put in parentheses that you actually do use some.

If that all checks out, then using not enough pressure could be a valid point that would cause issues with any type of playing including lip slurs.

[JeffBone44]

Doug's advice regarding the mouthpiece pressure was solid. In my lesson with him last month, he gave me a lot of valuable information. Mouthpiece pressure is the one thing I forgot about. So when I tried lip slurs again yesterday with more pressure, it definitely made things easier. Still a lot to work on of course, but another piece of the puzzle has locked into place.

I should invest in the Brad Edwards Lip Slur book, that sounds like it will be a good one.

[hyperbolica]

As someone who studied with John Swallow, I look at lip slurs as part of everything you do, just the same as any other articulation. Lip slurs come at the end of my warm up when I do that, but are also peppered through out practice. Scales, arpeggios and intervals = lip slurs. Cello suites = lip slurs. Rochut = lip slurs. Anything that's not a hard articulation = lip slurs. Anything that goes across a partial break (or you can force it across a break using alt positions) = lip slurs.

[baileyman]

Try starting on 6th partial F, then slur down in good time to 3rd partial F and back: F D Bb F Bb D | F repeat ad infinitum. If that's no effort, add your choice of tongue, repeat till no effort. Try all your other tongues, same. Take it easy. If this works well, you may be able to stretch from 6th partial to pedals and from 6th to whatever you consider high. Only takes a minute.

[Crazy4Tbone86]

Two observations:

1. Many players start their lip slur regimen on the lower end of the horn (B-flat to F). This can make it difficult to generate SMOOTH lip slurs because the intervals are so wide, especially with smaller mouthpieces. Starting a little higher makes it easier to play smoothly because the pitches are closer together.

Some have mentioned that starting on partial 6 F is best. I don’t recommend this to all players (especially young kids) because that can introduce a lot of stress and tension into the early parts of the practice routine. Partial 4 B-flat might be best for many players.

2. With many of my students, I try to find a pair of pitches that they can lip slur very smoothly. From there, we go higher and lower and try to achieve the same success. The transfer of success is not necessarily instant. It can sometimes take weeks of repetition before the smoothness in different registers becomes routine.