From: jed14@psu.edu (John Daniel)
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 18:14:42 -0400
Subject: PED My lesson with Gil Johnson revisited
Gang,
Thanks to all of you for your kind words of support regarding this thread.
First of all , every practice session since my lesson has brought much
enlightenment to me personally so I'm curious if any of you have tried
any of the ideas I mentioned and have any questions or comments.
One thing I didn't mention in the first post has to do with a very subtle
breathing trick that I believe many great players use. Mr. Johnson
did not specifically mention this but as I practice his ideas it seems
to be central to "getting it right." The idea is that with a really
smooth transfer from inhaling to exhaling, the timing of the initial articulation
becomes an extremely sensitive issue. I remember a lesson with one
of Gil's former students, Richard Giangiulio in which he discussed beginning
the exhale a nearly imperceptible moment sooner than the articulation.
In other words, if the note is light and legato, we would play "hoodoo"
or something like that. Again, the amount of exhale before the breath
is very small. For me, this approach gets the breath in control of
a larger percentage of the whole playing mechanism and thusly more in control
period. I think there are a lot of players who do this at times even
if they aren't aware of it. (There was an unintentional pun in that
last sentence in case you missed it.) I can't remember
who asked about the concept of more "d" and less "t" articulations, but
my impression was that Mr. Johnson simply thought it was more musical in
most situations, especially when trying to match the rest of the instruments
in the orchestra.
Again, I'm not about to argue any of these points
with anybody but I would be happy to join anyone in an honest search for
every possible musical approach to playing the trumpet.
John Daniel
