Posted by Tom on June 22, 2000 at 16:30:52:
In Reply to: Hearing fast notes posted by Scott Roeder on June 22, 2000 at 00:47:16:
In many ways there are no short-cuts to achieving technical goals aside from practice and time for development. That being said, there are certain "tools" that players use to improve problem areas. Any good teacher can aid you in these sorts of things.
A few things that have helped me in the past while trying to improve certain technical problems are:
1) Make the problem into an etude - isolate the specific problem (articulation, slurs, etc.) and work only on that aspect of the problem.
2) Try to play the problem area in various styles (very short, very loud, very soft, very slow!, etc.). This helps to save the brain as much as anything.
3) Play things slurred. This seems to help a lot for me. I figure if you can play things slurred, then you take the tongue out of the issue. Then adding the tongue will (hopefully) only make things better.
4) Practice away from the horn. If your problems lie with rapid articulations, you don't even need the horn to practice. In fact, taking away the horn enables you to hear what your articulations really sound like, without the "sonic" interference from the instrument.
I hope that this helps some. Good luck!
Tom Bratten