Trumpet: Changing Notes (Without Moving Your Fingers)

Hi, I'm Trevor Dimoff, and I teach music at BAND. In this video, I'm going to show you how to play two different notes without changing your fingers. So, the trumpet works by your lips vibrating against the mouthpiece, and then channeled down the trumpet. By pushing different valves, you can change the note, but you can also change it with just your lips. Now, with a short pipe like this, just the mouthpiece, it's really easy to change the pitch, but you can do it even more with the valves. So that's a C, a low note on the trumpet with no valves. You can also play higher notes. Now, there's different ways to imagine changing the notes. Some people like to say you change the speed of your air, you go faster, you go higher. Some people think about changing your throat or down in your abdomen, but what I really like to think about is just my lips. That helps me focus the sound the best. So what I'm doing is I'm changing the tension of my lips. Tighter goes higher, and looser goes down. Now, the challenge on the trumpet is picking the right sound. Those are the first two notes to try to find without using any valves. C and G. C, G, C. Sing it first. C, G, C. That was pretty good. Now, see if you can find those notes. And then with the trumpet. When you're playing, try not to change muscles that you can see in your face, just your lips. And you'll notice I do tiny little changes, but try to keep it as little as possible. If you can practice in front of a mirror, it really helps to get the visual feedback so you can watch what you're doing. What you feel and what you see may not be the same because of the way our senses work. So starting with sing it first. C, G, C. Sing it. That was good. Now with the mouthpiece. Swirl around until you find the C. C. See if you can tongue it. See if you can find the G. G. There it is. So you can try swooping up and down. And then try jumping by tonguing. Instead of your vocal cords changing, the same idea happens, but it's with your lips. Then, if you can do that with the mouthpiece, try it with the trumpet. Try not to push the trumpet against your face, but gently touch their lips. It's a bad habit and will make things harder later if you push hard against your face. It also hurts if you play a long time. So hold the trumpet still, don't move it around. Keep all the weight on this hand. This hand is just to touch and to move vowels, which you're not doing right now. And remember, this is not a finger hook. It's to put your finger on top. If you do that, you wind up putting a lot of strain on your wrist and it can hurt. So if you can find those two notes, see if you can go for bonus, which is a C above that. C. G. C. Sing it. Very good. Now with the mouthpiece. You have to speed up your lips, sometimes pushing a little bit more air, not a lot, but a little bit more air will help. But don't squinch up your face, because that will make it really hard. You actually have to keep your face pretty relaxed. If you can do it with the mouthpiece, see if you can do it with the trumpet. Now the cool thing is, if you can play those notes, you suddenly have a whole bunch more as soon as you learn what to do with the vowels. I'm going to play with my second vowel now. First vowel is next. First and second. Try that again. First and second. Second and third. First and third. And all three. Back to open. And that's how you can change your notes without changing your vowels.