In light of the recent high range thread, it is apparent that players find different keys to unlock their high range. (Obviously obvious, but it still caused a lot of discussion.) If we collect our individual “things” then we’ll have a tool chest of things to look at for those in need. [A thing could be putting together a bunch of things.]

My thing that put it together to have a dependable high range was first by accident and then on purpose using the appropriate placement and movement patterns (finding my pivot) for my anatomy.

A set of exercises that have been amazing for me of late are Norman Bolter’s High Range Exercises.

Whatever worked for you is what worked for you. I don’t want to debate people’s choices. I just want to see what others have done,

Now that I have some sort of real chop setup, my biggest breakthrough is just trusting my air and BLOWING. Don't worry about the little minutae of the face (speaking to myself here), just sing through the horn.

When my chops were... less good, if I tried using air, it didn't work. So I am having to unlearn that avoidance habit.

If we are talking about”one thing” I would cite the Louis Maggio system for brass.

However it is more than one thing for me, plus many years of conscientious practice.

Doesn’t happen overnight!

My high range came when I was in high school just starting with a good sound and then playing scales and intervals. I didn't play above f (bottom of treble staff) for a long time. Then teachers or situations introduced higher notes, and I went up slowly.

But I'll tell you, if you don't use it, it goes away. I've been playing too much bass recently, and the upper range facility and "ear" isn't as natural any more. Even if it's natural, you can still lose it.

High register has always come more easily for me than extreme low (odd for a dedicated bass trombone player, I know), and I think it has always been due to having a feel for the necessary angle of the airstream - down for me.

Over the years I think I've achieved that angle in various different ways; I used to roll in the lower lip more than I do now, and I like the sound better with more obvious adjustment to the instrument angle and less lip roll.

Of course, nothing works if I don't hear the pitch clearly before I play it.

Not one thing, but I'd say 3 things, in stages over several years:

When I worked on getting excellent control in the high range at very soft volume, instead of trying for a great useable sound. Power is not the answer while you're developing.

George Maxted 20 Studies, to develop accuracy and control in a useful way. I worked up to playing 6 or 8 of them every day. Still playing very soft.

When I solidified my mouthpiece placement and jaw position to where I could get a lot more power in the high range when needed. It was a happy accident when I discovered that placement toward my left side was far more solid than in the middle, in all ranges.

I’d go with the change to use my tongue shape and think about my mouth cavity to guide the airflow. The simple manifestation of this was getting used to feeling how things are when I whistle the high notes, transferring that as a starting point to a mouthpiece buzz and then to the full horn. For me it’s not 1:1 whistling and playing but it got me to a good starting point and more or less transformed my high range. Might not work for everyone, YMMV!

I noticed things were going in the right direction when I was improving on high notes towards the end of a practice session or rehearsal, rather than only being able to squeeze them out with brute force whilst fresh. This shows I was refining my technique, not just building muscle.

Now I’m at the point I can play anything I’m likely to find in classical music (main focus atm.), for example I hit the high Eb in Symphonie Fantastique on large tenor in most rehearsals and the concert on a recent project, which is something that would have brought me out in cold sweats a couple of years ago.

My next step would be to develop more focus and power on my Eb, E and F, they are totally usable but still not quite as resonant as the notes just below. Probably I need to work on my high G-Bb to get that more solid, then the Eb-F will become better I hope.

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I mentioned in Dana's rant topic that the one thing that finally allowed me to access the upper register was to move my mouthpiece placement quite low on my lips, eventually ending up with the rim right on the red of my upper lip (and off to one side). I had been instructed to play with a centered mouthpiece placement and had a couple of teachers (one in high school, one at undergrad) who instructed me to move my mouthpiece placement more centered whenever it would start creeping away from that.

When I was in my late 20s (27, I think) I had my first lesson with Doug Elliott, who identified that I should be playing with an upstream embouchure. In about 30 minutes he had me playing F above high Bb, a note that I had never gotten close to playing before.

Of course there was more to it than that. I also had to work on playing my entire range with that setting. Some of the best exercises I used to work on this start in the upper register and then descend from there.

[quote="GabrielRice"]High register has always come more easily for me than extreme low (odd for a dedicated bass trombone player, I know), and I think it has always been due to having a feel for the necessary angle of the airstream - down for me.[/quote]

Interesting. Were you ever pushed away from bass trombone as a student because you had a solid high register? When I was a student before my change to an upstream embouchure I had been encouraged to try bass trombone because I had an easier time back then with low register and didn't really have the tenor trombone upper register. I enjoyed playing bass trombone, but I didn't want to specialize in it, so while I did some performing on it I never approached it too seriously. \

Dave

[quote="Wilktone"]Interesting. Were you ever pushed away from bass trombone as a student because you had a solid high register? When I was a student before my change to an upstream embouchure I had been encouraged to try bass trombone because I had an easier time back then with low register and didn't really have the tenor trombone upper register. I enjoyed playing bass trombone, but I didn't want to specialize in it, so while I did some performing on it I never approached it too seriously. \[/quote]

I wasn't. Some of the reason - and a big reason I moved to bass trombone in the first place - had to do with simple math. There were a lot of tenor trombonists my age at my school, and I was going to have less competition for good ensemble assignments on bass. Also, I like the role at the bottom of an ensemble, and even though it took me a long time to have as much facility in the low register as I wanted I was able to develop a characteristic bass trombone sound pretty quickly. Finally, my strengths - clarity of pitch and articulation, ensemble skills, and security in the upper register - outweighed my weaknesses early in my professional career and led to good opportunities.

For me, it's not really one thing, it's more like one principle that encompasses a lot of technical elements. But it helps me to think of it as one big thing and not fifteen small things. My principle is to tune my inner feeling of resonance to the note I'm playing.

The background is, as I said in the other thread, my high range finally started being remotely decent once I accepted that playing high feels different than playing low, and I stoped trying to play high with a super big open feel, and huge slow breaths. It started with realising that I could play much higher if I allowed my embouchure to change depending on the register (gradually, without shifts and using a completely different set-up), instead of actively fighting any movement at all and trying to stay super open. Then Catherine Motuz (who is a superb high player) really helped me further with that, with the idea of breathing into the resonance feel of the note, like some singers do. Having voice lessons also then helped understand it better (even though I never became particularly good at singing). When you sing in your chest voice, you shape your oral cavity differently, support differently and feel the resonance in different places than when you sing in head voice, or in falsetto. You don't need a huge deep "abdominal" breath when you're about to start a phrase singing in falsetto. If you breathe very low and with everything super open as you would for your bass range, you then have to shape up your inner resonance apparatus in a split second at the end of your breath right before you start singing the note. For me that doesn't work, in singing or in playing, and it creates all sort of tensions right at the moment of starting. If instead I already have not only the pitch in my ear, but also the entire physical feeling of the note set in both my mind and my body, and I breathe into that already-prepared support and feeling of resonance, and then sing, my breath can be fully relaxed and is exactly proportioned to the note I'm about to sing. I find that if I apply exactly the same principle to playing trombone, my breathing becomes one with my playing, the breath intake is exactly proportional to the note I'm going to play, my sound is the right sound for the note, and everything is more relaxed. This approach applies to all registers, but because the default feeling most of us are taught is actually pretty much the the right one for the low range, the feeling in the low range is pretty much the familiar one, and it's the feeling in the high range that felt foreign at first.

If I dissect it, it translates to the proper embouchure for the range being already set before playing and the tongue arch being right, but then also to a different feeling for the soft palate in different ranges, a breath centered higher for higher playing (it's still relaxed, and not shallow), and the right feeling of abdominal support already set. It's basically "set-breathe-play" but applied to the entire system and not just the lips. A lesson with Doug about a year ago made me realise I was not actually applying that philosophy to the lips themselves (I was doing "set-breathe-play" for everything else, but "breathe-set-play" for the lips), and helped be figure out the right pivot axis for my embouchure, both of which I've been working to integrate and has helped make my high range more secure. I'm still not a great high player and I don't have insanely high notes in my playing, and I don't know that I'll ever have them, but the notes I do have are way more secure and reliable and sound better, and my endurance is very improved, since I've started adopting this approach and with every next element of it I try to implement or further work on.

I've been enjoying an exercise in Megumi Kanda's new method book. It has a series of ever rising glissando's (mostly 6 - 1) followed by low glissando's (1 - 6) in the low range to loosen up. The exercise eventually gets you to high F. Played at a comfortably soft dynamic, it really feels good on your chops, and keeps your sound even and your playing relaxed. I recommend her book - some nice additions of exercises to anyone's routine.

Jim Scott

Honestly, the thing that really solidified my high register up to G5 was learning alto. Since the partials in that register are easier to hit on alto, it allowed me to learn the right way to lock in those notes much faster, and when going back to tenor they were locked in like they were on the alto.

The conventional wisdom I've read here and on TTF many times is that alto doesn't actually make high notes any easier...I'd personally disagree.

I think the idea with alto is that it doesn't automatically give you *more* range. I can't really play any higher on alto than on tenor. But it is much easier to play the range I already have on alto, for a longer period of time.

The higher you go on the "big horns" as in trombone, euphonium and tuba, the more the small muscles of the embouchure are engaged. So for myself and others out there who come from trumpet, we enjoy easily playing in the high range of the big horns. I still have gigs playing trumpet so that is maintained. Just something to think about.

I have not found out how to do it my self But think Im on the way. The last day's I have started to do everything softer. And in the hight especially. I always believed strength is the solution. And I can play up to super high E flat and F in a good day. But no control like playing a bordogni musical even up to high B flat. Can hit the high notes yes, but not control it like two octaves down. Is it normal to lot of use muscles in the stomach to get the really high notes? I still have to do that, even when playing soft?

It does take more air pressure for higher range, but that's not "more air," it's actually less air quantity but at a higher pressure. So yes you would feel tightening of the stomach muscles to create the necessary air pressure. Even to play soft.

I think I might have overshot on the tightening of the abdominals, especially when my face starts feeling tired. I expect it's an incorrect balance of forces, plus years of misinterpreting "providing support". Does anyone have any good exercises for finding the right effort?

[quote="sf105"]Does anyone have any good exercises for finding the right effort?[/quote]

Without watching you play and getting more information about where you're already putting the effort and where you need more I can't say. It's really not about *one* thing, it's about how you coordinate the many different things that go into playing the horn.

It's very common to overblow to play in the upper register. Often we talk about lack of support in the upper register, but I tend to see that less. Maybe that's just a fluke unique to me.

Dave