Trumpet Tension: Is Your Throat Tightening as You Play Higher?

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M no collar is what makes must maintain all the way through the horn I won’t even take a breath here nice and [Music] loose if you were here and you had your fingers on my abdominal wall you won’t feel a thing activate congratulations I’m wanting to take the shortcut to easy a brass plane good day Greg speds here from Mystery to Mastery and windworks this week’s Sunday sessions is going to be an absolute Ripper we’re talking about what I call the collar we got the collar

around here we’re got a neck tie that’s a noose have you ever felt when you’re playing that feeling of tightness and we think of your highest note you got to play it does everything tighten up I see it everywhere and even a couple of students this week were like I’m losing resonance as I go higher and I’m saying to them that there are if if we’ve got the whole concept of the body’s concert hole down open in the chest nothing engaged anywhere throughout the system we

there’s a feeling attached to that okay so if we can guarantee a everything’s open what are the other options what are the other um interferences or obstructions that there can be to the sound either the tongue’s in the wrong position in the mouth or the lips are providing a resistance there are a lot of methods around that really focus on forming an omishore now whilst we have to do that generally it’s it’s done with the psychology of of pinch the chops down okay versus what I

call the bed sheet the milk spout and I talk about the aperture Corners to get the air through and one of the massive things that I talk about is actually imagine the sound coming back in because the instruments already got air into it we’re providing the energy and all we’re doing is creating an oscillation in the airst Stream and the lips actually respond to that uh oscillation of the air column rather than trying to make the sound with the lips so bottom line is at somewh

it’s generally around the fourth space e in fact that things start to just tighten up a little bit and I work on everything we start off just passively using the expanded body turning that into energy and turning that into sound air in no blow then as we go up when we start to engage the abdominal muscles as we do we’re got to incre we got to create more uh energy so people call it compression now the psychology of compression can encourage all of this collar tightness

that I’m talking about whilst there is compression in the air we don’t want the feeling of compression so everything I teach is about the feeling so if I can get you to recognize that the uh collar here the tightness here is because we don’t understand what’s going on inside the mouthpiece cup we pinch down we blow too hard so if that sounds like something that you’d be interested in the Sunday sessions this week is all about the the collar and how to unlock all of that

strain and stress in the system to get rid of this internal compression that we think that we have to have to play with right so I’ve spent the last three months in the Sunday sessions talking about every single part of the anatomy the way the brain learns the neur really fast way of learning how to let go of anything that we don’t need to use until we do need it so if you’re having problems with your playing why is that and why haven’t we fixed it

what isn’t working and it doesn’t matter what level of play you are if you’re a pro player but you’re having inconsistencies or whatever why is there inconsistency if you’re a beginner or intermediate player and you want to get better why aren’t you getting better what I teach isn’t meant to replace the arban schlosberg stamps Gordon all that stuff what it is is an understanding of the mechanics and a psychology of how the system works based on the feeling of efficient playing and when you understand these

simple steps of body resonance generally as we start going up each harmonic and everything starts to tighten when you understand what needs to happen in the cup and we keep the body cool and we don’t pinch down vertically what I want to teach you and what I’m going to cover in depth in the Sunday sessions this week is how the aperture Corners work how to spot when you start going from efficient resonant open Easy playing to trumpet’s hard work you have to buzz you have to

blow that’s where it all starts to break down so my teaching is meant to accompany you no matter what method you’re working on so approach the ink of these books with an understanding that I’m teaching rather than reading the ink and thinking that’s going to get you to the next stage and how many of you have tried this book and then this book and that book’s going to help and that book’s going to help and you read the ink the second that you read the ink

you using your 1.0 brain and you’re going to get the same results and I know that I experienced that for years and years and years and years years and years and didn’t get anywhere no matter how much practice I was doing so I needed to figure out how the system works and it turns out that the feeling of easy playing is the most efficient playing and that’s what got me all over the instrument and it’s really counterintuitive so if you’re not prepared to be open-minded and

accept something that’s going to feel different and uncomfortable this is not going to work for you because you’re going to just want to keep doing the same thing but if you’re open to some new ideas and you’re stuck and you actually want to learn to improve why am I hitting that uh ceiling why is my throat clicking why is my jaw bouncing why is why am I having all these issues with my playing and I’ve got ceilings that you shouldn’t have everyone’s got the capacity to

play whatever they want on the instrument and recently someone said range is limited by um your your jeans it’s like no there is a simple system of body roll where creating energy from the breath and converting it to sound if we stay efficient uh we don’t need to activate outside the rim anywhere near as much as people think we’ve got our sound system here and this no collar is what mes must maintain all the way through the horn I won’t even take a breath here nice

and loose [Music] if you were here and you had your fingers on my abdominal wall you won’t feel a thing activate because for short notes you don’t need to for long loud notes the body gets involved and that might already have made half of you switch this video off but if you’re prepared to learn something new to make your playing easier to get past your range limits or open your sound up mainly this is about resonance in fact the the color stops what I call the

bod’s concert hall from being being open rich and resonant if what I’ve said to you today sounds like something that might be interesting I implore you to either come and watch it live if you can and you can ask questions you can get involved or you can sit in the background or you can watch it afterwards we’ve got a support network and you can go back and watch all the videos that I was talking about now because a lot of you go this guy is nut

or doesn’t sound like something I’ve heard before I hear that all the time that’s my life so if you’re thinking that come along and check it out and see yep I’m truly nuts or gee whiz there’s something in what this guy’s saying that’s actually really helpful and you might have seen one video or two videos it’s not until you put the whole thing together that you start and get beyond your playing ceilings I see this every day of my life what I’m going to share with

you you won’t have heard anywhere else and you won’t reading these books they don’t go into it and they can’t they don’t have videos attached so if you want this it’s not going to cost you anything you can’t even buy it come along sign up now just go below and fill out your details you get invited to the entire windworks course not just the session but step by step I will show you every step of the way what to do not only that I’ll give you

the tools to self diagnose what you’re doing wrong things that you didn’t even realize you were doing I guarantee you will find things in your plane that you didn’t realize that you were doing that are holding you back I can guarantee it right now if I get you to do this no blow relax body release the air that’s what playing should feel like most of you will go this guy’s nuts you can’t play like that until you do that’s what I do okay so if you’re

remotely curious fill out your details before of course we need to um verify your um identity and set up a profile for you so you’ve got to fill in your your details below that’s the easy bit right then come along if you want to organize a chat with me we can do that won’t cost you anything a free playing assessment to see if what I do will help you you can upload a video I call it the snapshot of your playing and I will look at

it and go hey try this try this try this and if you have a look at the videos below you’ll see the way that I can help people and they had a lot bigger playing problems than what you’ve got so if you’re interested in learning some new information and discovering why you’ve played with these issues that you’ve probably had for a long time you can have the session on uh the the collar on Sunday you can have access to the entire windworks course which goes through

from pedal C to Double C how to do it easily efficiently consistently without hitting these obstructions and ceilings and if you get to the end of the seven days and go I’ve got as much as I need now I can go away and work on it on my own well well done well done for coming in and checking it out and learning new things if you want my ongoing help hang around come for a month come for 3 months come for a year the longer you

stay the cheaper it is and but in 12 months time you will not believe the player that you will become it’s entirely up to you we might not be a good fit we might be a great fit but you won’t know until you come in and give it a try so I hope to see you on one of the sessions on Sunday there is absolutely no risk no obligation I’m covering the cost of it for you come in and sit there open the mind open the

body open the sound up and you’ll learn some things that you’ve never considered and I’ve done this with some of the best plays in the world and they go wow why didn’t I know that before so I’m here to share it with you if you’d like to know this is what I do I was a professional touring player around the world for 25 years and whilst I still do a couple of gigs you know occasionally play lead with James Morrison out the front in a big

band play with Ministry of Sound just different gigs that come along I still do them but I’ve stepped back from playing to run this Academy to share everything that I leared because I was on the brink of giving up playing it was driving me crazy that I couldn’t play like my heroes and I’ve broken it down in a way that you won’t believe so if that sounds enticing to you don’t hesitate take the plunge as I keep hearing Greg I’ve watched your videos for the last

two years and I decided to take the plunge well well done thank you and then you’ll realize what I’ve got to offer so I hope to see you on one of the sessions I hope to see you in the course and I uh hope to see a video from you if you would like to submit one book a free assessment if you’d like me to chat and see what you’re doing I’ll look at your playing and fix your biggest problem I’ll do it there and then

and won’t cost you a cent we’re here as a brass Community to help people get get better results if you want to get better results that’s what we do and that’s what I’ll do for you hope to see you soon have a great day