I am not sure that buzzing is really bad.

How do you evaluate your own playing?

How do you sound?

What is your range like?

Do you feel like your choking as you play higher?

Do your lips hurt after playing?

Do the aah-ooh. You have corner tension and there should be space between your upper teen and lower.
Do like Greg and release the air into a tissue held in front of you.

The lips are not buzzing. Do it again putting the mouthpiece to your lips.

Try backing off the pressure using just your mouthpiece held by the fingers of your non-dominate hand. Also angling the mouthpiece either up or down may create buzzing.

Your goal is not to be totally tensionless. Your goal is to learn the shape of each note without pinching the lips in the middle and gripping your abdominal muscles and closing down your throat.

Your lips buzzing may not be a bad thing.

I believe the idea of freedom is not anti-buzzing it is getting rid of inappropriate tensions. Learning when to play passive and active breath.

Don’t let the idea of your lips buzzing stop you with your training. Use your minds magnifying lens to find where you can get rid of unnecessary tension. Being aware of what you are doing can feel awkward, be careful to not obsess over it. Be aware while doing WindWorks, but spend some time playing only to make music and concentrate only on the music.

Cheers

You made my head swell with pride. Don’t worry though, I practice my horn today and come back down to earth. 🙂

The first exercises in Largo phase are crucial to repeat over and over daily. The new sensations and new ways of playing need to become your habit. You want these habits to translate into your normal way of playing. Even as you proceed to the other portion of this course, you should continue to practice these simple exercises because new habits take time to develop and old habits are hard to extinguish.

Riding a bike is a good analogy because we do a lot of that by what is called muscle memory. Many actions that repeat over and over become part of that muscle memory and if we have inefficient motions in muscle memory our abilities will be poorer. Using WindWorks, we are retraining our brains and bodies. Just opening your horn case and picking up the trumpet will stimulate old habits.

Do not rush through the beginning. You will need to come back to it often, or better yet make these exercises part of your routine. You will be relearning how to play each note if stay with this course to stop muscling out notes and stop squeezing out high notes that raise your blood pressure making you dizzy. Playing that way can actually kill a person, literally.

I would be interested in reading your progress and frustrations.

Truly,
Ronald

I did not really address overblowing. Overblowing is muscling the air out of your body. Later in the course, you will learn about active breath, how to support for loud playing.

You will learn to play softly in the upper register with passive air. Your body naturally acts like a balloon. You may think of the passive breath as sighing. Try sighing normally. Sigh with you aah-ooh embouchure and you’ll see it extends how long you sigh. Repeat that same exercise but this time use your tongue to release the air.

Overblowing is when you are forcing more air into the horn than you need to play a certain loudness. You can play a loud low C with just passive breath no muscling required. This will take training, not to “blow”. You will have to support and engage muscles in playing loudly. Greg will teach the difference between passive and active.