Bobby Shew

Background: Bobby started the clinic by telling a bit about his background as a trumpet player: • • • • • •

Never studied the normal way No lessons as a kid No Arban, Clarke etc. Learned by ear, by trying Self taught – "one of those people" In a way "I had a better system" – no one said "Bobby do that" – I had to think

Students: Students I see today are afraid to think. A lot of teaching I see (at clinics, etc.) states that "This is the way" – I am amazed – there is no such thing as "one way" to play the trumpet. The important things I try to communicate to my students are: • • • •

Proper listening Think! – Do it! Copycats – NO! Confidence – find your own voice.

How Bobby developed his knowledge: As I said I never studied in the normal way - Arban bored me. I just started out by playing. Things worked. I got jobs in better and better bands. When I was in the Buddy Rich band there was a lead player that Buddy did not like. A sax player said "Buddy why don’t you try Bobby?" Buddy then said: "Bobby, get over there" Now, I started to get nervous, I had never practiced high notes. The song was some simple shuffle stuff and only one high F at the end. I put my knee up to get it and managed to get through it – you know I could swing – and Buddy, being a drummer wanted that. Buddy then said: "You are now my new lead player". I said to him "I have no chops". "Go home and get it – have it for tomorrow", Buddy then said. Well this was the beginning with problems for me, like muscle problems, hernias – I’ve been through a lot of problems. I now see that students do the same I did. Man, I have to help these kids. This is no fun memories. To find out things I decided to buy books, Maggio, Gordon, Callet, etc. There are a lot of dangerous attitude among methods out there: "Do what I say". This is the egomania or "guru-syndromes". Remember: "The best teacher is yourself" You know earlier I though Maynard Ferguson was "inhumane", but because of Buddy Rich I had to learn how to do this. One day I had the courage to ask

Maynard behind the stage: "How do you do this". He showed me a book called "The science of breath". This was a yoga book not a trumpet book. Later I asked Bud Brisbois to show me his system. It was very opposite of the normal stuff, like lift your shoulders, etc. I went home and tried it. I played from the back of the Clarke book, the glissando exercise, a gliss from E to high E. Suddenly I went above that high E and ended on a big fat high A. This was my first high A. With this new system I also got up to double C. Facts versus opinions: I have done more than 25 years of research in this field now. I have read a lot of medical books, etc. There are a lot of opinions about breathing and misconception like breathe from the diaphragm etc. I needed to know and a doctor showed me some facts. I have been talking to a lot of people. Several of my students are in medicine, physics etc. I always ask my students questions. Some points: • • • •

High notes = fast air, not lot of air Avoid over blowing Back off = access to upper register Relax – wrong word, efficiency – good word

Warm up: Bobby Shew has an effective and quick warm-up method. 1. Flutter with completely relaxed lips, by blowing carefully with a closed mouth (sounding almost like when a horse blows through the nose). This stimulates the blood circulation and removes the milk acid, and should be done as often as possible, also in breaks during performance. 2. Do "lip buzzing", that is isometric lip vibration, as if you play without the mouthpiece. Not more than 15 - 20 seconds each time. This is also a good test on the lip condition. He said that the lip position when buzzing is not equal to the lip position when playing on the instrument. 3. Play on the mouthpiece with a clean sound. He said that he would try to find the good feeling – "The Bobby Shew feeling" that he felt when he was playing good. This was what he was looking for and he would do 1 and 2 until the sound was good. Then he was ready. He had discovered the flutter by watching people doing this when they where playing.

Breathing: Bobby demonstrated his "6- step" breathing technique: 1. Intake (small), abdomen moves outward slightly, but relaxed. 2. Intake (large), abdomen moves inward (horizontally) to create wedge position. 3. Intake, abdomen holds position (not tense) shoulders lift straight up. 4. Grip (isometrically) abdomen muscles, maintaining innermost position (lock wedge tension) 5. Relax and lower shoulders to comfortable playing position. 6. Blow (as if spitting rice) The important thing with step 1 is that it makes the diaphragm drop down. Students with pinched sound: Often students came to see Bobby and wanted to play difficult things right away. But he would first ask them to simply play a low C. By listening to the sound of that note, Bobby could tell right away if the student had potential for a double high C in his low note sound. Very often students had a pinched sound that they had accepted as ok. Bobby now took up his trumpet and demonstrated how it sounded (playing with a pinched sound). Now the first thing was to make the student aware of this by opening the sound. Bobby demonstrates, calling the pinched sound "NO-sound" and the open sound "YES sound". He then played slowly: "YES – NO – YES – NO " The next is to have the student play a simple ascending scale. Even if this first notes are open he often goes into a more pinched sound as he ascend. A lot of people can hit a high note but it is pinched. Bobby demonstrates a pinched double high C – then an open one. Do not become obsessed by high notes. The most important thing is good sound ! Tape yourself and listen closely. Good practice habits: Bobby did not get time to go into this subject deeply but he pointed out some important points to remember: 15 minutes 4 times a day is much better than 1 hour practice. Why?

Because after 15 minutes you still feel good and the body remember that "peek feeling" Try this for a couple of weeks and see for yourself. To one and all, I've answered a couple of you personally, but there have been several more requests so here we go. Generally speaking, the system Mr. Shew showed me involved breathing for those high compression situations that come up so often with trumpet playing. In other words, this system is designed to encourage easy access to a fast air stream. I know how weird this must sound to some of you already. As we begin the inhalation, the belly button area expands a bit (not nearly as much as singers and most brass players encourage.) This step is only responsible for about 5% of the air intake according to Mr. Shew. As we continue to inhale, the chest expands dramatically. This is step two. Also during step two, the chest might rise and the belly button area returns to its original position. This step is responsible for about 75-80% of the air intake. On a side note, I reread Rafael Mendez's "A Prelude To Brass Playing" the other day and his description of the proper inhalation was very similar to Mr. Shew's up to this point. The next step, however, is where this method is pretty unique. Step three involves raising the shoulders!!! Apparently this allows the lungs to fill up more freely if we do it in a relaxed manner. Step four is to bring the belly button area in as if driving a "wedge" into the gut. We do this as aggressively as necessary for the phrase at hand. Step five is to return the shoulders to a lower position and the last step is to exhale. That's a total of 6 steps. It is pretty mechanical and slow at first, but after a few days of practice, the steps flow together, the whole breath can be taken in an eighth rest, and the rhythm/momentum of the whole process starts to work. Personally, the part that has helped me the most is the added leverage my abdominal muscles have in pushing the air out when this area is not expanded as far as most people teach. Also, I used a scaled down version of this method for most of the playing I do. I know how different this must seem from how many of us were taught. All I can say is that it has been useful to me and me students, and it pretty well describes the way Doc has always appeared to breathe. I would strongly encourage anyone interested to get in touch with Bobby Shew. My apologies to him if my description isn't exactly right, but this gives everyone the general idea. Since many of you have asked, I don't believe anyone is truly qualified to teach Jacob's approach to breathing except Arnold Jacobs. So I won't even try to compare the two systems except to say if they both work, then at their essence there must be the same fundamental principles at work. Remember, the primary application of Mr. Shew's system is to play high and loud. HOPE THIS HAS BEEN HELPFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! John Daniel Prof of Trpt Penn State Univ.

Bobby Shew Breathing and Warmup Here is a distillation of my breathing and warmup notes with lessons from the SHEW! Breathing types for various needs of playing: 1. intake (small), abdomen moves outward slightly, but relaxed. 2. Intake (Large), abdomen moves inward (horizontally) to create wedge postion. 3. The Shew Breath: - Intake (Large), abdomen holds position (not tense) shoulders lift straight up. - Grip (isometrically) abdomen muscles, mantaining innermost position (lock wedge tension) - Relax and lower shoulders to comfortable playing position. - Blow (as if shooting a blow-gun) He said to do the shew breath 60 times for 20 days and it would become automatic, so I could use it when i need it. As for the warm up, i know pretty much everyone knows this, but flap your lips in a controlled manner, then buzz isometrically with the lips, then play the MPC with clean tone, and a small warm up on the horn. Pretty effective, i tend to add some long tones in the warm up, and then some stamp stuff. The breathing is phenomenal for really screaming. -My memory of a Shew clinic 20 years ago is a bit different. My old man's understanding of the three-part breath is as follows: 1. The "normal" breath, which used to be called "diaphragmic" or "abdominal" breathing, in which the abdomen does expand (the symptom, but not the cause, please note!) 2. Continuing, the rib cage starts to expand (old-school "chest breathing"). 3. The shoulders raise naturally as a result of packing even more air in (again, a symptom, not a cause). With practice, the three steps become one mf big relaxed breath. When playing loud screaming high-notes, the air gets compressed, using the wedge and pushing down at the shoulders at the same time, "shooting for the moon," as he put it. Letting the air "fall out" works great for loud beautiful high notes. Thanks for the reminder, gdong! Air is everything!