Maintaining Your Best Tone Through The Day and The Week

[MichaelBarski]

I wanted to get your opinions on reaching your best tone quality in your warmup and then maintaining that tone throughout the day and the week. How do you go about getting to your highest level of playing for the day and maintaining that as you practice, rehearse etc. . I'm mostly concerned about tone, as I feel this is one of my biggest problems, but the topic can be applied more generally to encompass how everything feels on the instrument, too. Thank you for any input you have!

[Burgerbob]

Once you establish a good habit in the warmup, don't let it slide later. Remember the physical sensation of the ease you had when you played with your best sound and just copy paste throughout the day.

I have a relatively difficult job playing bass trombone all day outside and it took a good while to figure out how to play well throughout. Most of it was me playing with worse and worse habits as I got tired, hungry, hot, what have you. I just had to remember what it felt like to play well.

[norbie2018]

There is a mental side.

From bulletproofmusician.com:
"Step 2: Form Your Clear Intention
A clear intention is in essence, a specific goal statement. What do you intend to do when you step out on stage? How exactly do you intend to sound? What, precisely, do you intend to communicate to the audience?

Use assertive, declarative language, such as “I am going to perform brilliantly, with passion and clear dynamic contrast,” as opposed to “I hope to pay well.""

[Kbiggs]

Listen to other players (including recordings) whose tone you admire. Record yourself, and then ask yourself whether you like what you hear. Ask others for feedback on your tone. Play long tones in all sorts of configurations—loud, soft, crescendo, decresendo, crescendo-diminuendo, diminuendo-crescendo, etc.

Tone isn’t just the middle of the note. It includes the front (articulation) and the end of the note, so make the beginnings and endings of the notes beautiful.

Set the intention in your mind’s ear of what you want to sound like (visualize? auralize?), and then strive to sound more like that every day.

[SimmonsTrombone]

I had not heard of bulletproofmusician, but several years ago I realized that having a specific intention was essential to a successful practice session. I have a line at the top of my practice log on which I write out a specific statement, even if it’s only “I play with excellent breathing.”

[BrassedOn]

There is a mental side.

From bulletproofmusician.com:
"Step 2: Form Your Clear Intention
A clear intention is in essence, a specific goal statement....Use assertive, declarative language, such as “I am going to perform brilliantly, with passion and clear dynamic contrast,” as opposed to “I hope to play well.""

Absolutely, positive mindset. Intention. Of course the physical side and endurance, and of course the foundation of a strong routine, and listening. Times 10 on listening. And I agree, a musical intention is key to great performance, so it is critical to great practice.

You might consider "The Inner Game of Tennis" book for ideas on the mental and focus part. One aspect of stress around performance is not letting go. Attachment to stress about whatever it is your trying to do well is harmful, the attachment more than the stress itself. Don't mistake the goal (e.g., great tone, technique, etc.) for the obstacle (my lips are not physically responding, I'm a little worn out from 3 rehearsals today).

If find that if I am warmed up and something is not happening, it can be good to put down the horn. It is a vehicle for music making, it is not the music maker. That's a good time to do other great practice habits such as breathing practice, stretching face and whole body, listening, listening with a score, and transcribing. I am also a proponent of a good duet session. And playing passages in unison with a colleague. Something about interacting with even one musician helps turn on my musicality.

If someone were having a problem, here could be a couple of ways to diagnose:
1) If you find some aspect like your tone is inconsistent, that is normal. And that can be ameliorated. If you imagine a sine wave, you have performance peaks and troughs. I recall a lesson where I played an excerpt markedly better than I had ever, in practice or performance. Could not replicate that 2 minutes later! But I know that I had it in me and eventually could recreate that musical intention. At the level of our trombone heroes, their sine wave is very flat. Their troughs are not so different from their peaks. We don't notice their bad days, but they sure do! Therefore, make "quality" central to your routine. Play scales and long tones musically, with great tone, articulation, release and musical direction. Some players might like to think like a body builder and plan for days where some aspect of your playing is in the front seat for your focus (MWF technique, TThSa on tone), but horn playing skills are integrated. So the alternative is being responsive to what's happening. If you're warmed up and tone is good but tonging is bad, focus part of your session on tonguing, but don't let tone suffer. That works on the tonguing trough to build consistency.

2) If you find tone to diminish over the course of a session or week, that's either endurance issues or a loss of focus. So balance practice for trying to sustain focus (and sometimes putting it down when your unfocused) and for working on endurance, like longer long tones. Could also be a symptom of something inappropriate, a pitfall like playing beyond your current strength, too much of something that is taxing like range extension activities, insufficient rest, playing the "mouthpiece game" (switching up gear) instead of working on you. If you're mindlessly playing thru passages, your expending energy but not necessarily getting the benefit. Used up endurance for no gain. Maybe try, "Do less, better." You might improve focus by trying to play 4 bars great rather than burn through a whole excerpt or passage "meh". 20 minutes of great practice is better than an hour of beating your face. If you're goal were to play for 3 hours, then your setting yourself up for mindless playing. For me, I set weekly goals or one month goals, so each session is incrementally working towards that, and incremental progress is de rigueur. In "Inner Game" mindset, there is less attachment to small failures and large obstacles, and I can focus on "Do less, better." Right now, that is mostly electric bass playing, and "time" is in focus, which for bass playing is part mental (musical intention) and part physical (the fingers moving). And right hand walking is more in focus than left this week. Between practicing and working on playing changes (with a recording or just solo), I play a couple minutes on the metronome on the same changes with focus on playing good time, while keeping the articulation and tone quality.

Best!

[VJOFan]

Take your first note of the day very seriously. It is possible (for most of us most of the time) for it to be beautiful; it is possible (for most of us most of the time) for it to be your best of the day.

"Warm ups" are really practice routines: you start with what you know you can do and work toward stretching that a little.

If you can get into the habit of making your best sound on your first note that becomes your normal. (All the discussion above of intent and visualization etc. is what you do to make this happen.)

[baileyman]

During warmup, and during long tones, and any other time you can pay attention to the sound, listen for higher harmonics. These can show up individually, but more generally they sound like "brilliance" or "richness". While listening, squidge your mouthparts around this way and that and keep listening. Some arrangements of parts will be more brilliant than others. Especially play with adjusting the size of the space in your mouth by shrinking and expanding it with your tongue: ah-ee fashion.

Everyday attention to this can result in near continuous improvement in sound for years.

[AndrewMeronek]

squidge your mouthparts

This is the most entertaining description I've seen today! Maybe all week!



In a sense, I do this, although with a couple of lessons with Doug Elliot, I have more formal ways of thinking about this. Occlusions and whatnot.

I find myself thinking in terms of tone that aren't directly tone, though. For example, if I'm playing Tommy Dorsey, I'm thinking more like sounding like a cello and using portamentos and maintaining a beautiful vibrato and so on. If I'm playing some kind of aggressive trombone section part in a big band, I think of having a fierce attack, a big edgy 'impact' that enhances the section, and a super-clean note ending. In a sense, I kind of lump 'tone' into a part of 'style' all the time.