John Haynie is a rarity among musicians, a virtuoso player and a pedagogue with the skill and patience to teach a lump of coal to play. Perhaps only those of us who heard him play in his studio know how great a player he was. I recall one lesson when he was discussing efficiency. Mr. Haynie stated that as he grew older, many of his students could hold a single note longer than he could, but he was still able to play a longer phrase. To demonstrate he picked up his trumpet and played the Goedicke Concert Etude from rehearsal number 5 to five bars after 6 in one breath, effortlessly, flawlessly. He was 69 or 70 at the time. I'm sure each of his students has a similar memory of a particularly inspiring performance.
Mr. Haynie's pedagogical concepts are throughly explained in his book How to Play High Notes, Low Notes, and All Those In Between, and "How to Play the Carnival of Venice in Four Easy Lessons," which appeared in The Instrumentalist in May 1967 and is reprinted in The Brass Anthology. (Please refer to my Interlibrary Loan page for information on obtaining a copy of these works.) page Fred Sautter's video
Several of Mr. Haynie's teaching techniques deserve special mention. On many occasions rather than specifying how something "must" be done he would simply guide me to discover something on my own. While this might have been more time consuming than giving detailed instructions on the mechanics of playing it offers two advantages. First, I find that I retained what was learned in those lessons better than any others I have taken. Second, this made me much more skilled at solving problems on my own. A second tool he often employed was referred to as "learning through paradoxical intent." For example, after working on my sound for most of a lesson and making considerable improvement he made what struck me as a very odd request, to play with the sound I had produced at the beginning of the lesson. After switching between the two tones several times what I was doing to produce the improved sound was fixed much more clearly in my mind.
I have come to think of this as a vocabulary book for the trumpet. Practicing this book correctly will lead to being equally comfortable in all keys and across your entire range. I will not try to restate what is already well explained in the introduction, instead my notes are aimed to correct a couple misprints and clarify a couple of points that might be controversial. As in any playing, the sound is the ultimate guide.
The most basic, and frequently overlooked factor in the embouchre is the position of the jaw. By moving the jaw forward the lips are kept roughly even with one another and the pressure on the upper lip can be reduced. As you ascend, the jaw begins to recede slightly. For more extensive details on the formation of the emboucure Mr. Haynie suggested Phil Farkas's The Art of Brass Playing. He mentioned that he considered the pictures of the members of the CSO brass section to a wonderful guide.
Lip buzzing is briefly discussed as an aid to young students or experienced players using excessive pressure. He proposed that experienced players carefully experiment to see if lip buzzing is appropriate for them. Someone who has never buzzed could introduce a few minutes of buzzing into their routine for several weeks and decide for themselves if this is a useful technique for them. Players new to lip buzzing should be aware that the embouchure is more tense when lip buzzing than when playing the mouthpiece or the instrument. (Roy Poper explains this very clearly in his Guide to the Brasswind Methods of James Stamp.) Players who do buzz their lips might consider reducing (or eliminating)the time they spend on this part of their practice for several weeks to see if buzzing has caused their lips to become too tight, thus harming the tone. Personally, I have found that about 5 minutes of lip buzzing, being careful to avoid a "smile embouchure", is best for me.
The corners of the mouth should firm up to ascend. At the same time the tounge will arch. The tounge arch remains a disputed element in brass teaching. Mr. Haynie conducted X-ray studies of both students and professionals to study the role of the tounge. A favorite anecdote solved this dilemma for me. When Maurice Andre was appearing in Dallas, he took part in the experiment. Upon watching the replay of the tape and observing the motion of his tounge he exclaimed, "MY GOD!". He had no idea what his tounge did until that moment. The moral of the story? Everyone moves their tounge, although (obviously) not everyone needs to be aware of its motion. It should be pointed out that the syllables "ah" and "ee" are only a rough indication to the action of the tounge. As always the sound should be the guide.
The pivot is not a separate technique. Rather it is the result of the correct action of the jaw, lips and tounge. The coordination of these elements is developed with flexibility studies. The 27 Groups of Exercies" by Earl Irons was a favorite method (Haynie was a student of Irons), however there are many other books which will help the student accomplish this goal.
Little can be added to the description found on page 4 of How to Play High Notes, Low Notes and All Those in Between. Mr. Haynie advocated as a practice technique holding long tones to the very end of the breath. "If a student sustains a tone to the maximum length, the next breath will be a full breath through necessity, and nature will see to it that it is taken correctly." While this exercise is often criticized as creating excess tension, I found it very useful if done in moderation, particularly in helping to inhale quickly and naturally. It is also important to remember that this is just an exercise, music for performance should be phrased in a comfortable manner.
I confesses that this is the area of my own playing where the bad habits I developed as a youngster surface most often. While the description on page 5 is perfectly clear, for me a picture was worth a thousand words. Fred Sautter's video Sound the Trumpet has a demonstration of several ways to discover an efficient hand position. Also see Marvin Stamm perform recently was a wonderful example of how relaxed the right hand can remain while playing. (Mr. Haynie once commented during a lesson that he never met anyone who had faster fingers than Stamm already had as a college freshman. He was quick to add, however, that Stamm certainly had his share of other problems to overcome.)
More to come on tounging and how to practice as time allows.
Last updated November 29, 2001.
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