Mike Raleigh Hey Mike! Thanks so much for sharing. Your sound is wonderful, very resonant and rich, and this rendition of Concone is quite heartfelt. If we talk about sustain, you're doing an excellent job. Your air is moving all the way through the notes, and I like how nothing sounds stagnant. 

I would note that your D is sometimes sharp - this is the toughest note to tune. When you're practicing long tones of any kind, I'd advise working with a drone, bending the note in and out of pitch so you can really hear and physically feel when it locks in tune. You might even play Concone with a Concert Bb drone just to hear this in context. 

I'm sure you're aware of the trickiness of the G to E leap in this piece. It's completely normal to hear a C sound in between, but there are a few things we can do to try and remove this. Practice the leap tongued, and then gradually soften the tongue until you're slurring. Or use space - breath attack each note with a pause in between and gradually reduce the pause until you're slurring. Charlie Porter has a great lesson on Flow where he talks about some other strategies for working on these intervals.

The C-G interval (third to last bar of second line) also felt like perhaps you overshot that a bit. Work on moving from center-to-center! But this is me being extremely picky. 

Overall, amazing work!! Keep it up!! 

Ethan Ah, and that's a great range of trumpeters to reference. When listening to Chet, as I'm sure you're aware, keep in mind that his airy sound isn't created by using less air - it's more a function of his particular setup, chops, horn, etc. To get that sort of sound, you can experiment with loosening the corners of the embouchure, which often means we have to use MORE air to get the same vibration in the lips (since they're not pulled as taut). There are certainly LOTS of ways to get this sound, though! 

Mike Raleigh Great question! Both are wonderful and I practice them each daily, but they work on different things. "Hoo" activates the airstream while "poo" ensures the aperture is focused. Too much "hoo" practice can cause the aperture to spread too widely, while too much "poo" practice can in theory cause the aperture to constrict too much. Ideally, you're also thinking "hoo" when literally saying "poo". 

But I recommend "poo" practice to most students because it is an excellent diagnostic tool for potential aperture issues. For example, if you can get a clean soft "poo" attack on a G on top of the staff, you're confident that you've found the correct aperture size for that note. Whereas if you're struggling to do so after many weeks of practice, it suggests an aperture that's too tight or too spread. 

When doing poo attacks, it's very important not to spread the lips too much when they reopen. It's also important that when the lips close to form the "p," that they just barely touch. The lips shouldn't curl around each other. 

Ryan Darke has a great tonebase lesson on this called Response, as well. Like with all things in trumpet, moderation is the name of the game!

Ed Hi Ed! Thanks for sharing. I like those descriptive adjectives. There's power in striving for a sound that contrasts what the trumpet naturally WANTS to get (bright, strident, thin, tense...) When we words like "open, full, relaxed, mellow" we're also reinforcing calmness in the body. Just keep in mind that the trumpet is a delicate dance of tension and relaxation in different places! 

Roy is moving a LOT of air to get his sound! Listen to how he wails on Strasbourg St. Denis (I'm sure you've heard it) But also check out his sound on Never Let Me Go from "With the Tenors of Our Time". Unbelievably tender - almost sounds like a different player. And yes Chris Gekker is so underrated in my opinion! 

Happy you liked the lesson!! 

Ed Nice job with this and thanks so much for sharing!! Your poo attacks are off to a great start, and your sound is very stable. 

Be careful about breathing through the instrument (not the most clean!) Set the middle of the aperture in place with the mouthpiece, and then breathe through the left and right corners of the embouchure - you have to form a bit of a smile to do this. Take another look at how I'm breathing in the lesson (I hope I did it right LOL). 

I didn't talk about this in the lesson, but I recommend bending down a half-step rather than a whole step. It takes more control to bend a smaller interval, and it gets our ears working too! Play a normal G to F# and then bend... you'll hear how it's kinda tricky to make it exactly in tune - but worth it! 

Try to hold the notes a bit longer if you can (in my lesson I was quite brief for the sake of demonstration). I'd set a metronome at 60 bpm and try to hold each note for 16 counts... then you can take it up from there! This really forces us to take huge breaths and be efficient. It also forces us to find the center and maintain the center for a long time. 

Finally, you're doing a great job with pitch and I like the resonance of your sound when you attack!! 

Mike Raleigh Hi Mike! Wow, thank you for all of these & for going above and beyond. For me, I probably do a combination of multiple of these when I bend. In particular, 4 and 5.

We should disturb the embouchure as little as possible when bending to maintain efficiency. The goal is not simply to manipulate the pitch for a sonic effect (there are surely dozens of ways to do this)... but to arrive at a centered, resonant sound when we bring the note back into tune. The bend itself has no musical purpose, it's purely calisthenic. 

I'd say that whichever of these analogies work for you, great! I'd probably avoid #1 and #6 because they disturb the playing mechanism quite a bit. But I haven't experimented too much with some of these - definitely interesting and worth checking out!! 

Your bends sound great - I would say that in #3 you didn't start with a very centered sound. Perhaps you were a bit too relaxed. 

Your long tone is very nice. Notice how the note starts rising in pitch at the end. As we run out of breath, it's very natural to start squeezing a bit to get the last drops of air out, but take care that this doesn't turn into tension inside the throat or mouth, which can raise the pitch! Only go so far as you can maintain the pitch, otherwise you could be reinforcing bad habits. 

Thanks again for all your submissions, Mike. 

Mike Raleigh Yeah Mike, really nice! Wonderful singing sound. 

Careful not to back off when you go down from middle C to G. Keep moving that air forward through the note change. Stamp was all about "center-to-center" which Malcolm demonstrates really nicely in his course on this (although he does an extended variant on this exercise). Our task is to find the smallest possible movement of the playing mechanism that allows us to glide from C to G without breaks or bends. The notes are closer together than we think! 

And both of these links go to the same video for me! 

Mike Raleigh Nice - super solid pedal F!! No new notes on this one... smoothness on this is top notch. I'd keep going as low as you can / then try some other Stamp exercises (I like the "3b alternative warmup"...  do you have the book as published by Editions Bim?) 

Steve Hey Shawn! Thanks a lot for your submission. Also agreed that it sounds really nice. I noticed a few things regards to pitch:

- We tend to UNDERshoot the B to C interval (middle of the staff), causing the C to be flat. Make sure you're hearing these notes right in their centers. 

- Low D is a bit sharp a few of the times it appears (it's just the worst note!) 

- Make sure E above the staff doesn't go flat, either - that's a common symptom of not using enough air support. 

I'd give you similar advice as I gave Steve - practice long tones for 16 beats that change dynamic every 2 beats: mf << ff >> mp > pp and don't let the pitch change!