Some excellent advice here! (Also, from Roger Manners, in another post on this thread).

I suppose this is a "me too" response, but this is "AHA! stuff", insofar as brass-playing is concerned!!

According to the teaching of the late William B. Best.
"A brass player's overall development can not go beyond the ability to 'lip-trill'".   As flexibility is the essence of brass paying,  so the
lip-trill is the essence of flexibility."

He would have simplly said "You can't be any better player than you can lip-trill".

Keep 'Em Flying!

Clyde Hunt
http://www.erols.com/bflatmus

PATTON wrote:

> Hey Michael
>   Don't sweat it if you don't got the shakes... I have a sure fire method.
> First learn the shake by developing a good lip trill, many of the cats
> who learn shakes by "shaking the horn against their lips get goofy
> sounding shakes"
> I find that if you break your trills up by seconds and work from 1 per
> second to 2 and then to 3 per second, that at this speed you should be
> able to throw out a good Jazz shake.
> Next you need to get a small cotton rag, like a handkercheif. stuff it
> up the bell, and hold it there. The added back-pressure will allow your
> trills to occilate faster and you'll get a shake. Then all you do is practice
> shaking and pull the rag out slowly. Soon the shakes will be easy with
> out  the rag. I find that many of my students can do impressive shakes once
> they  have felt them and know how to reprodeuce the same feeling. Try on a
> fourth space E, or a G the lower you go the further the partials and the more
> difficult it is to shake. After a while you learn to actually shake the
> horn in an alternating fashion against the motion of the trill, and
> you can get a real Chicago sound.
> Believe me it really works. Next you can try shaking between larger and
> larger intervals.
> Good luck