Rebuilding Range after brief hiatus

[pregel]

Hello all! I recently had to take a few weeks off of trombone with minimal to no practice due to work. I went to pickup the horn again today and after warming up for a bit I realized my high range was almost non-existent. Up to G4 feels secure (though a bit weak as one would expect), but I found that I am unable to sustain a Bb4 for more than a few seconds before I feel like my embouchure gives out and the pitch suddenly sags to around a Bb3 and anything above a C5 is non existent. The muscle memory is still there but obviously the strength is not. Now I know it will eventually come back after playing for a few weeks but my high range was never as secure as I wanted and I felt like I had to muscle everything and my endurance in those registers was not great. So I figured that this would be a good time to break those bad habits and rebuild my high range from scratch the correct way.
So, I wanted to throw out a life-line and see if anyone has any suggestions on how to go about this. I tried to pay pretty close attention to what was happening and I think I narrowed it down to my air not being focused. For instance, I could feel my lower lip wanting to curl inwards and make the opening in my embouchure unfocused. I think part of this could be tongue shape/voicing as well. I know you can't diagnose exactly what is happening over the internet (I will be back with my private lesson teacher in a month) but if you have any recommendations on exercises or methods to develop the high range back, I'd be very appreciative.
*I know there are probably alot of threads asking about similar things and I'll look through as many as I can find as well, but feel free to link any you find particularly helpful.

[imsevimse]

I have no clue what happened but to repair an emboushure and build a register you could.
1. Be sure you use your air. Do some breathing exercises. I'm sure you can find some examples of this on internet.

2. Play with no tongue. This means you blow long tones in the most comfortable register with only air starting the note. No leaks! If it leaks it may be too loose mouth corners, too much pressure or too tense lips. This is not possible to foresee but the point is you should do this exercise without moving your emboushure and keep your mouth corners firm. The lips don't touch or barely touch and the area that should vibrate must be loose enough. You blow air and the sound should start immediately as efficient as possible.One thing you train with this practice is you try to find the sweet spot faster where the sound starts and with the leat effort. You can Google "Caruso" and "six tones study".

2. As soon as you think sound production works well. Build range with chromatic scales. Two octave scales from F to F, or as you find convinient. Go up and down in halvsteps to cover the whole register or as much you find nessecary. If you are doing this right you may feel tired in your mouth corners. If you are doing it wrong you feel tired in your lips. Go eventually as high as you can and hold the top note. Be sure that note sound nice. Can you do a nice slide vibrato on the note and it warms like Bill Watrous then you now you are getting there. Never loose your mouth corners.

Good Luck!

/Tom

[timothy42b]

Now I know it will eventually come back after playing for a few weeks but my high range was never as secure as I wanted and I felt like I had to muscle everything and my endurance in those registers was not great.

If you are playing incorrectly, more practice will not help. It will only solidify bad habits.

A few lessons with Doug Elliott would probably put you back on the right track. Maybe even one lesson depending on how much you're doing wrong.

We sometimes recommend the Wilktone web site, but if you're the type that is very focused on self diagnosis (there are some hints in your post) that might be counterproductive. <g>

[pregel]

I would definitely be open to a lesson. I try to not self diagnose something as big as an embouchure adjustment, but it just comes out of necessity over the summer. I don't think I'm doing anything that was drastically wrong in that range (or atleast I hope one of my teachers would point it out). My usual course of action for this type of stuff is to do some longtones ppp to ff in the good range and mp in the upper range along with slow lip slurs until I feel like the partials are opening up and locking in. I saw some things about free buzzing but I don't know if that would do more harm than good.

[timothy42b]

At the risk of an unskilled long distance diagnosis: FF in the good range is ensuring you set your embouchure in a way that will work low, and can't be pulled up without much effort. Setting correctly in the upper range can be pulled down to work well in the low range. Give Doug a call or PM, he does Skype if you can't get up to DC.

[AndrewMeronek]

My usual course of action for this type of stuff is to do some longtones ppp to ff in the good range and mp in the upper range along with slow lip slurs until I feel like the partials are opening up and locking in.

To throw an idea into discourse here, I'm a big fan of false tones relating to this.

Every note has some amount of 'false' bending possible before the instrument 'locks' the pitch into a different partial. Practice exploring this space can be really good for helping people center their tone. Lots of people are familiar with practicing false tones sounding below the bass clef, but I think they're also useful in the entire range. As a general rule, on trombone there is not much room to false-tone the pitch up before the horn 'slots' into the next partial; and the room down is roughly half the distance in pitch to the next partial down. Thus, can be slotted down about to D; b can be slotted down to about A-flat, and so on. These tendencies will vary on different instruments.

I like to reinforce this when introducing slow slur exercises to students - to have them think about really 'slowing down' a slur to the point where some of these false tones are audible in the course of a slur. Besides helping to feel 'slotting' better, it's also a great way to make sure air is constant and there's no weird articulation 'helping' a slur.

[timothy42b]

Every note has some amount of 'false' bending possible before the instrument 'locks' the pitch into a different partial. As a general rule, on trombone there is not much room to false-tone the pitch up before the horn 'slots' into the next partial; and the room down is roughly half the distance in pitch to the next partial down.

It feels like that but this feel is misleading. Really, the whole perception thing of how the instrument feedback pulls our pitch into a partial remains a mystery. You can do the math for how the physics of reflections off the bell interact with the lips, but that doesn't address what it feels like.

Actually in some ranges I can bend a note through an octave and I think I might have posted an mp3 during an argument with Geezer on the old OTJ. Dave Wilken recently posted a video where he does some pitch bending through a fifth or so, it's a standard Reinhardt exercise. I don't think it would be useful for the OP's range problems, it's a little advanced.

[AndrewMeronek]

It feels like that but this feel is misleading. Really, the whole perception thing of how the instrument feedback pulls our pitch into a partial remains a mystery. You can do the math for how the physics of reflections off the bell interact with the lips, but that doesn't address what it feels like.

Actually in some ranges I can bend a note through an octave and I think I might have posted an mp3 during an argument with Geezer on the old OTJ. Dave Wilken recently posted a video where he does some pitch bending through a fifth or so, it's a standard Reinhardt exercise. I don't think it would be useful for the OP's range problems, it's a little advanced.

Maybe this is an aside from the OP, but I've never seen someone be able to false-tone octave glisses without 'breaking the seal' or otherwise do something to force the tone to be bad through the whole gliss, or half-valving or something. I've always seen a 'snap' happen when someone lip-glisses from a note with good tone to another note that settles into a good tone. My suspicion is that this happens related to the mode-locking of the vibrating air in the horn. Forcing the pitch to bend causes the nodes/antinodes to move, and at some point they move enough to cause a different antinode to be generated at the bell. At least, that's a hypothesis. I have no idea how to test something like that.

[Doug Elliott]

I can do it, I guess I didn't show you when you were here.

[pregel]

So it looks like part of it may just be shock from being back on the horn. Everything seemed so much more secure today although my endurance isn't great (as expected). I guess I'll see what happens with regular practice over the next week.

[Vegasbound]

Have a lesson with Doug

You say you will be back studying with a teacher soon, so until then establish your practice routine

[SaigonSlide]

Up to G4 feels secure (though a bit weak as one would expect), but I found that I am unable to sustain a Bb4 for more than a few seconds before I feel like my embouchure gives out and the pitch suddenly sags to around a Bb3 and anything above a C5 is non existent.

I know that people use this nomenclature, but what exactly do the numbers refer to? I assume you're talking about G above middle C, and the Bb, and C above that. I usually use numbers to represent partials. So Bb2 would be 2nd line of bass clef. Are you using numbers as absolute octaves above lowest notes on trombone? So pedal G, low G, middle G, then G 2nd line treble clef?

[AndrewMeronek]

I know that people use this nomenclature, but what exactly do the numbers refer to? I assume you're talking about G above middle C, and the Bb, and C above that. I usually use numbers to represent partials. So Bb2 would be 2nd line of bass clef. Are you using numbers as absolute octaves above lowest notes on trombone? So pedal G, low G, middle G, then G 2nd line treble clef?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_pitch_notation