Loud Playing:   relax to play loudly; must let air out quickly

Clevenger – as loud as possible for  5 min/day; ignore tone

100% full volume tires students and leads to bad habits; keep them at 80% or less and let the volume increase as the semester goes on

Soft Playing:  more gentle; air must always be moving across the lips into the horn

Practice soft to play soft – balanced diet, opposite of what you’re rehearsing/playing – Lew Soloff

An entrance should call attention to itself (unless dovetailing a sustained note) – it needs to intrude on the listener’s awareness; if not, why play?

Play without fear; what really is so bad about missing a note?  The band director can build confidence or fear in his students

“Control” – tends to oppose muscles and you partial out which muscles wins and by how much; like moving a bottle of oil vs. a bottle of nitroglycerine; isometrics – what if the inhaling muscles overpower the blowing muscles?

Attacks at soft dynamics:  start mf and relax it down into softer dynamics; the tongue will move too slow otherwise

Practice softer than needed to build confidence; always be able to do something harder than what is required – what if you’re having a bad day??

Hickman – whisper tones