TromboneChat

Fast lip slurs and fast playing in general is an area of my playing that I really want to improve. What are some concepts and techniques you use to work on speeding up lip slurs? What Lip Slur books and exercises do you use and what has been helpful for you?

Brad Edwards Lip Slur melodies are great. the Remington book also has a lot of great lip slur exercises.

When or if you are working on lip trills, maybe try bringing them lower and lower. It is possible to lip trill between low Bb and F , which is a crazy sound.

Marsteller has the Mac daddy of lip slurs books, and of course Arbans.
https://www.hickeys.com/search/products/sku021394.php

I always try and make the air flow very even and each note even and consistent in sound and tone quality. I like some of the Remington slur exercises, the mid range slurs are very telling as to how your air is working. The Michael Davis warm up books have Remington based exercises to backing tracks which are great!

Have a lesson with someone like Doug Elliott to make sure the soft equipment is working as efficiently as it can

Lip slurs are controlled mostly with the back arch of your tongue. How fast you can go is directly related to your control of this muscle.

I've heard Brad Edwards and Doug Elliott do them live and in person from a few feet away. What I think I hear is that they avoid popping the note change with air, they're careful to do them smoothly almost like a lip bender or gliss.

All of the method books mentioned are good for finding exercises, but a good starting point is to just pick a note to start on (say middle b flat in 1st) and start slurring to the next harmonic up (or down) using quarter notes in 4/4 time. Then move to eighth notes for a bar - then eighth note triplets. Next is 16th notes - 16th triplets - etc. Stop and take breaths as needed - I often just add a quarter note to breathe at the end of a bar.

Try to get clean slurs without accents or delays in response. Take this up to the fastest subdivision that you can control, and while it's OK to fail, don't spend too much time at a subdivision that you can't control. Keep trying to get these faster, and work your way down the slide on that harmonic, always starting back at quarter notes. Then try on different harmonics the same way. Eventually, your speed will improve as will your cleanliness on the slurs. Lots of QUALITY repetition will pay off. If the rhythm gets wonky, you're going too fast for your abilities at that time. Try to avoid anything that sounds like "bad" swing - keep it even between the notes rhythmically and dynamically. Enjoy! Have patience when you practice this - it will work if you stick to it.

Jim Scott

In terms of books, I use the following with my students:

Embouchure Builder for Trombone by Lowell Little (the basics done very well)
Advanced Lip Flexibilities for Trombone (all three volumes in one book) by Charles Colin

My flexibility improved when I learned to buzz smoothly through all ranges in controlled glissandi. What I learned through buzzing was to connect registers. Also being able to be more accurate with pitch at the embouchure was useful. (Yes, the horn changes the buzzed pitch, blah, blah, blah... without perfect or even great relative pitch developing ear and lip coordination helped.)

Others can (and prefer to) do it other ways, but I had crap flexibility until I got the horn out of the way and learned to buzz smoothly.

As far as maintenance,lately, when I am in a practice cycle, I go through the Charles Colin studies.

http://charlescolin.com/product/advance ... -trombone/

harrisonreed wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 4:55 am Lip slurs are controlled mostly with the back arch of your tongue. How fast you can go is directly related to your control of this muscle.

CalgaryTbone wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 8:04 pm All of the method books mentioned are good for finding exercises, but a good starting point is to just pick a note to start on (say middle b flat in 1st) and start slurring to the next harmonic up (or down) using quarter notes in 4/4 time. Then move to eighth notes for a bar - then eighth note triplets. Next is 16th notes - 16th triplets - etc. Stop and take breaths as needed - I often just add a quarter note to breathe at the end of a bar.

Try to get clean slurs without accents or delays in response. Take this up to the fastest subdivision that you can control, and while it's OK to fail, don't spend too much time at a subdivision that you can't control. Keep trying to get these faster, and work your way down the slide on that harmonic, always starting back at quarter notes. Then try on different harmonics the same way. Eventually, your speed will improve as will your cleanliness on the slurs. Lots of QUALITY repetition will pay off. If the rhythm gets wonky, you're going too fast for your abilities at that time. Try to avoid anything that sounds like "bad" swing - keep it even between the notes rhythmically and dynamically. Enjoy! Have patience when you practice this - it will work if you stick to it.

Jim Scott

VJOFan wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 1:48 pm My flexibility improved when I learned to buzz smoothly through all ranges in controlled glissandi. What I learned through buzzing was to connect registers. Also being able to be more accurate with pitch at the embouchure was useful. (Yes, the horn changes the buzzed pitch, blah, blah, blah... without perfect or even great relative pitch developing ear and lip coordination helped.)

Others can (and prefer to) do it other ways, but I had crap flexibility until I got the horn out of the way and learned to buzz smoothly.

As far as maintenance,lately, when I am in a practice cycle, I go through the Charles Colin studies.

http://charlescolin.com/product/advance ... -trombone/

Yes, these are good.

It sure seems like pitch determination is a two dimensional thing. One dimension is chop tension/position and the other is mouth volumes. So, from any note anywhere, a change in mouth volume toward ee can move up a partial, toward ah can move down. From a different note with the same mouth configuration but different tension/position, the same ee or ah pertains.

Some people focus on tension and can dance tension to make slurs fly. Personally I find that very effortful. Others focus on mouth volumes for everything. I had thought that was where I was, but it is now clear tension moves independently and in coordinated fashion.

The starting point is as above, start on an easy no-stress middle partial, then use ee-ah or ah-ee to get to an adjacent partial, then flog the heck out of that. Move it all over everywhere as it develops.

Then an interesting buzzing exercise is to buzz some note with ee, and by moving toward ah, gliss down an octave. Then back up towards ee no change in chops. It seems like magic. Same chops, different configs.

Then after experiencing that for a while (weeks?), add this. After getting back up, move toward ah, but maintain the same pitch. It forces tension to handle the non-changing pitch. I call this a stationary gliss.

All these movements should begin and end with exactly the same chops and mouth configs.

So while slurring fast on the horn, especially with the subdivision routine mentioned with metronome, try this. Do the first slur at ee but stationary gliss toward ah and back while still slurring, and through the divisions. This works all associated tensions and incidentally all associated tone qualities.

All those statements about low tongue, open throat, jaw movement, they all flutter away like so many fall leaves in the wind after this routine. I can attest, whatever the horn range, it can all be accessed in free buzzing with things like this. And you can choose. Control the pitch and flexibility with tension. Or control the range with tension and the flexibility or partial selection with ah-ee mouth volumes. Unfortunately there is not enough pitch variation in mouth volumes to do the whole thing like a whistle. At least I think so. Trombone range seems wider than whistle range. Anyway, these routines lay bare the mechanisms for pitch determination.