Its wierd... if you can already play high notes, what he is saying is 100% spot on. If you cant, you understand what he is doing, but not how he is doing it

“It’s easy to play high and soft” I don’t even wanna think about how many years it took me to figure that out. I’m still trying to convince my body that that is true when I play. This guy seriously gets it.

Why am i here, im in percussion

“Giving the air instructions”. My air is just in its teenage years rebelling against its parents. Wonderful example. Time to hit the shed.

Lip setting plays an important toll add well. If you're playing too open or closed it changes the game. It would be nice to explain both as they work together.

So few words but you’ve managed to encapsulate everything I’ve learned over the past year into just a few minutes, great video!

Johnny sins

You should post an MRI video of how you play high notes. That way, we will visually see how exactly you produce high notes with no effort

This is great as long as you lips are shaped well and evenly set to get a free buzz. I've struggled with upper range all my life and no amount of arched tongue would fix it because I didn't have a proper buzz. A teardrop upper lip and a flat, clarinet-like chin resulted in no range or endurance but an okay sounds on the staff and below. So it is only this "simple" for people who have that other stuff already working.

Fantastic Technique on 2:25!!

I play high notes using exactly this concept. However, make no mistake, it took me a LONG time to develop the strength and endurance for my chops to be able to hold a very small aperture. Doing lips bends in the middle register helped enormously in helping to develop the required strength and endurance without developing a bad habit of excessive mouthpiece pressure.

I'm totally impressed! I've played trumpet since I was 10, I'm now 73 and still play. I'm a professional entertainer (mostly a singer) and I've never known this about hitting high notes. I could usually play fairly high but not with this much ease. I just tried this and was able to play ridiculously high notes and hold them clearly. Thanks for that lesson. Wish someone would told me this 60 years ago.

I shared this video with every brass student in all of my bands. In a matter of a few days, those who took a bit of time to listen, digest, and experiment came back with a better and effortless sounding high range. Thanks for the clear explanation.

Man i love music and KZfaq. All the answers are here now . Thank you for posting and sharing.

Great job on the short simple explanation. Keep up the good work.

thank you for these precious advice, I'm starting trumpet and cornet and it helps ALOT! I was by instinct sure that technique will make it possible to do things really easier.

This really helps! You explain it in easy ways to understand, and now I'm finally reaching into that higher register!

Thanks a lot for you calm, natural way of leading with such "tabu" as high notes. Beautiful concepts. I am sharing with trumpet section of my youth Big Band. It will help a lot. Congratulations, Adam. God bless you!!!

Hi, I begin playing trumpet again after about twenty years of pausing and I'm so happy about this helpful advice. When I started learning trumpet about 35 years ago, I should have been told about tongue arch and other invisible techniques to achive that at that time unreachable goal of playing those nice higher notes. Now I believe in a quite early success.

Great video! Thanks Adam!

It's a known fact that our tongue is a secret on how to play effortlessly on trumpet. Claude Gordon emphasized that in his video and books. I really enjoyed that demo by Adam. Great guy and great musician. Thanks for the post

great video. I have such admiration for Adam. He is a master of trumpet. I learn so much from him every time I watch.

This helped me A LOT. 8th grade band chair placements are up in 2 days and I’ve mastered the song with the help of this guide

I was taught the same approach by someone who studied with Bill Adam in Indiana; clear, easy, sensible. (Best way I've found, in my opinion)...But, it took me a long time to find the coordination and balance. Thanks for sharing this Adam!

This is what i needed. I play inn 2 marching bands, and the one marching bands used alot of high notes, so this will help alot

Adam, you are so bad ass, great trumpeter.

I understand everything you are explaining, EXACTLY. But now applying it is a completely different game 😅😅😅

I've been playing trumpet for three years with the wrong embouchure and just now realized I need to fix it. This video helped me realize that I need to push air from my abdomen and not my chest. Thank you so much!

Thats great! Thank you!

Great explanation Adam Rapa, Thank you so much for sharing it

Really interesting! I need to try this!

Thank you! I've been watching hours of different masters try to teach this. I watched this for 3 min, picked up my trumpet and ascended to a double high C. It wasn't pretty but was effortless.

Excellent!

Yes! It's easy to play high, soft. Playing high and going low to high etc like in the Irons book takes some coordination from the tongue level, keeping the throat open, and there's some funky shit I'm figuring out with the diaphragm and all this has to be coordinated. The lips are pretty much a non-issue just slap the horn on your face and go to work. I love the Irons book - it really teaches you there's one embouchure from your highest to your lowest note. And once you start to get all this coordinated, it actually is pretty low effort.

This video has helped more than anything I've ever heard. It instantly doubled my range!! Seriously Thank You!!

Thank you for sharing!!! You change people’s lives for better. Most of wind players don’t know this.

As a trombone player, this increased my comfortable range by almost an octave, nearly instantly! 😱 A week after tying this, I hit my first concert double F and G!! Thank you so much!!!!!

After afew weeks of a lot of practise with this, i findi use a stupid amount of tension when playing. . I find it very hard to just relax and let the trumpet follow the whistle. its something I must work on. Even half playing this method my playing has improved 100 fold. My sound: i dont think I have ever been so happy. All my notes even at my personal extreme, sound as full as the others now so for instance my high C does not sound high and thin, it just sounds full. Or I no longer come into a high note slightly flat and then suddenly correct its pitch, I play clean. With the high register, i struggle with the tongue coordination, so for intance, I find it as he says, to go from high C to a double high C is nothing now, but i find it very hard to lock onto a note between, and when I try to say play high E : I can start to add tension and effort . This then makes my bad habits re surface, and is not what is needed. So I still have a lot of work to do, just relaxing. If your thin lipped, small teeth, short tongue, i would give this a go

This is one of the best explanations on the topic of air efficiency 🙌

Adam, just Thanks so much.

Awi, Beautiful

There is actually 2 things to playing high: 1. physical ability (what he is teaching in the video), 2. ability to hit the right pitch instantly. Due to so many natural harmonics in the very upper register, it is easy to hit the wrong pitch and VERY hard to nail the right one instantly!

By far the most helpful guide

The advice from this video allowed me to add an extra 1/3 onto my range in 5 minutes. Thank you so much!

This guy is a genious. Thank you Adam, it really works. I might save for a LOTUS.

The simple statement that it's just a different whistle made all the difference in the world! Now I know how to work on the high notes.

Thank you so much I got my first jazz band solo in 6th GRADE because of your help thank you

OMG dude, I needed this as I am returning to trumpet after 34 years. I wish you were in New York! :(

This video is really cool. Really enjoyed! 🇧🇷

I quit trumpet over 30 years ago over frustration with inconsistency. I'd be playing great, and then fall apart in one day where I couldn't play above the staff. I've goofed around with it since then, but am actually practicing again consistently for the first time since then. One change I'm making is that back then I couldn't get a seal unless the mouthpiece was bone dry and then I had a funky setup. Coming back I'm playing with moist lips, which eliminates the setup issue. After just a little adjustment period my flexibility is like it never was in the 80s, but building strength is taking time. Also finding that reaching high notes (high right now being maybe a soft C# or D, tops) playing softly is achievable pretty quickly, but gotta do the work for volume. So I saw this video about a month ago and the "big, fat steak" idea Adam stresses right at the end resonated majorly (no pun intended). I think I used to stretch out my embouchure, making it thin and tight, a that would really mess me up. Having trouble with the concept of controlling the airflow with the tongue, though. Unrelated - I didn't know Monette blew up into such a big thing. Met Dave Monette in 1985 in a master class in Wisconsin. My professor had, if I recall, the 11th Monette ever made.

Gracias , siempre se puede aprender algo más.Saludos

Wow, I took a good college try with your 'whistling' suggestion tonight, and it got me reaching a little higher right away. I've been playing for a couple months and am struggling simply to play cleanly between the first two Cs. The upper C has been elusive, but your advice helped me tonight to find my way to it a little better. I managed to also push beyond, the first time ever for me with any degree of control, playing chromatically up and down between that upper C and the next E. When I'd lose it, I'd take the horn out of my mouth and try to emulate the whistling you demonstrated, and it would help me get back on track. I got a lot of next octave Cs out tonight, so I'm really pleased with that, but I did notice I still seemed to be using a lot of force - from my lungs, throat, mouth... I was wondering Adam, if it's not asking too much, based on this description how I should proceed? I'd like to get higher up, but with the ease you describe as all it should take in this video. One thing I'm planning to do is simply pick up the habit of whistling as done here. If any similar sorts of exercises or tips come to mind that you might think fit my case, I'd definitely add them to my practices. Anyways, one more time - thanks a lot for this video. Most I check out don't seem to help, but I am amazed how this one connected for me immediately!

This is so contradictory to how I was brought up as a lead player. Carmine Caruso exercises and using an incredibly low amount of mouthpiece->lip pressure. I'd love to explore more of this in my quest to get back to my lead chops. I had on most good days a high g or a above c depending. But getting up closer to double C's was never comfortable. How amazing!

Nice job Adam.... Showing this to my middle school trumpet players. (Furtado - East Coast Jazz)

Yall don't understand how many times I'm going back to this video as a warm up EXTREMELY HELPFUL

all this does is humble me. with just how well this guy can explain it.

i think this is one of the best instructional video on trumpet. 100% spot on

The better lesson about. ...thank you

Arching your tongue increases the air speed. Although there are a LOT of factors that make high notes easy or more difficult for each individual player. Tongue placement is an important part of the equation , but most definitely not the only part. Isnt that. right Adam? 😉

This video help me alot on hight register !!!! Thank you so much adam rapa in my heart !!!! Thanks you a gain !!!! I'm from thailand !!!!

Mr. Rapa, your tonguing method you described sounds VERY much like Tongue Controlled Embouchure. I'm going to have to review your video a few times more to better understand it all, but it was GREAT- THANK YOU.

OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH, I JUST PLAYED THE HIGHEST NOTE I COULD EVER DREAM OF

Thank you

Thanks Mr. Clean

Amazing

Nice video Adam...Maybe In the future make a video helping players dialing in the back pressure from the different mouthpiece gaps that might give us that nice "padding" (Steak) we might feel with lips on the mouthpiece..lol Keep up the great work in helping students!

Guauuu cuánta simpleza !!!!!

Mind & Body Coordination ❤

fascinating!

I THINK I'm decent with range. I dont really use pressure. I could relate to the high and loud thing feeling like work. The only force I ever really use isnt to play high. Just to play loud, so air doesnt slip out

How do you place your tongue up? When I do it it doesn’t make a difference because air passes my tongue on the sides still, do I have to make my tongue “fat” to block all the areas?

I this man he is too good when it comes to 🎺 I don't regret watching him

Great video! thanks for posting. I am not only sure about where 'exactly' place the tip of the tongue. Should it be just behind upper teeth or touching the hard palate?

OK, so yes make a high pithed wind blowing sound and the pitch gets higher. BUT there is a lot more going on when you blow into the trumpet. such as how to shape your mouth, aperture, where the air should start, where to place your tongue, and how to move the tongue. This video shows the concept of how air changes when you make the air stream smaller, which is an important concept. buttt. how do I take this exercise and actually apply it to my trumpet? I tried to just take what you talked about and practiced to no end but without results, I just want to know what I am doing wrong and improve !

I'm a Bassoonist, but was given a trumpet by a friend. I marched Mello in high school and college, obviously wasn't the best, and now I have this trumpet to fool around with. I can't play anything above top line F. I have a 7c mouthpiece and some said that a 3C may help with higher notes and overall tone quality. I've just been doing longtones everyday in hopes that my range will extend, but it hasn't.

Super erklärt. Danke.

Damn, I really need to try that today

EXCELLENT demonstration of what I have been trying to do for the last 60 years. I have however managed to turn a trumpet into an alto baritone, alas.

OMG You have made is so much easier I tried and tried to hit the high D and couldn't and was out of breath. Now I can getting to high D with such little effort! Thank you Thank you so much!

s~~ sh~~ ch~~~great instruction thank you! i believe these enunciations make perfect!!

I have to hit a high F# for one of my auditions in January.. hoping this will help me lol

Makes me wanna go back and learn trumpet again. As it is, I found that I can get those notes on my sax. I suppose I am a trumpet wannabe 😉

Great video! Where's the rest, with the important details :)

Você é o cara...explica muito bem👊👍

Very well said sir my problem now is how to reach that note. Hehe I'll be trying this. Air control.

I feel as though I'm listening to a chamber choir of dental vacuums.

Thanks

Very interesting

I have been playing for 21 years now (cornet/flughelhorn) but have been struggling with high range all my life. Varying from tightening the lips, louder, mouthpiece pressure etc etc etc, nothing works. I have watched all these theory video's, i think that i have been buzzing a bit differently (little bit overbite). I watched all these video's and know the theory behind it now and either i still can't play high or i'll need to re-educate my mouth coordination in some situations which will take a looooot of patience!

Reminds me very much of Phil Snedecor's approach

The orbicularis oris needs to be developed to such a degree where it has enough strength and endurance to be able to hold a very small aperture in the extreme upper register. It isn't simply about having a high pitched "hisssssss" for the high notes at a low volume.

Sarah Willis used a plastic mouthpiece, long plastic tube connected to a hand horn (no valves) outside of the mri chamber.

bruv that actually works super well

where were you all this time!!

Thanks bro

Bruhhhhh one word! And I can buzz better, this needs a second like button.

Might I ask what trumpet that is? It looks exactly like mine, but mine is silver, and Ive been having doubts about this being a real Bach Stradivarius.

this is adam rapa from three years ago. It would be great to have another one from him. Just a more complete one about the very beginning. I can't find anything. anyone know any place please give a link or some clue..

hope this helps me. As sn absolute novice, some days I hit high notes-nowhere near this high- with ease and others they're as hard to reach as if i were singing them.

Can someone answer this... I can’t whistle high at all. I’m a good whistler but my range is incredibly limited... similar situation with Trumpet. Can I not play high the same reason I can’t whistle high?