Brief Teachings of Arnold Jacobs

[davewerden]

Arnold Jacobs was an amazing teacher whose advice was sought by all manner of brass players, as well as other musicians such as singers. He was definitely not one to focus on moving the tongue in this manner or holding your chops in this manner. Michael Grose shared many of Jacobs' quotes, and I'll pass them on here. Here's the first!

When you have the sound that you want you’ll also have the air that you want. But, it’s always based on the sound, not the air. … Play by sound, not air. … Don’t make a science on the study of the breath. Instead, make a science on the study of resonance and tone, and use the breath as needed. I think we make too much out of the study of breath.

[davewerden]

Arnold Jacobs:

Hear the sound in your head and then duplicate it on your instrument. ... Having a song in the head is the blueprint for making music.

[davewerden]

Arnold Jacobs:

Blow your attacks, don’t release them. … The shorter the duration of the note, the greater care you must use. Great playing is in the details! … You don’t have to stop a note to start another one.

[davewerden]

Arnold Jacobs:

Be concerned with the product, not the process. Think music, not meat. … The instrument has no brains; the human does. So, the development of the person is our challenge. … In your playing I need your search to be for excellence, not correctness.

[davewerden]

Arnold Jacobs:

If you treat the embouchure as vocal cords and sing with them it’s simple. But if you treat them as tissue that must do this or that then it becomes enormously complex and there comes a danger that the seventh cranial nerve will not transmit the signal to the lip. Ordering an embouchure shape or embouchure tension may lead to nothing coming out simply because you haven’t ordered a sound, you’ve only ordered a tissue shape. Sing in the brain while playing. … Don’t control your lips, but instead you must imitate the sound you hear in your head. As soon as you imitate, your playing will be fine.

[ChristianeSparkle]

Very great tips. I recalled reading his stuff online back when I was starting off as a total beginner in high school. That said, I should revisit them, like these teachings you shared! the one about vocal cords is definitely an interesting one!

[ghmerrill]

It's also interesting/important to step back and see that this isn't just a set of clever observations/hints/aphorisms. Taken together, it's a comprehensive model of playing a wind instrument.

[davewerden]

Arnold Jacobs:

I don’t like to take young students and teach them how to breathe because they already know how to breathe in nature. ... You never play a tuba by wind, you play by song, but use wind as your fuel.


And:


By imitating others you are getting the materials so you can work on your own artistic ideas.

[davewerden]

Arnold Jacobs on mouthpieces:

There is nothing wrong with experimenting with mouthpieces—different thickness and lengths. By experimenting you’ll have greater control over your spectrum of sound. Switch around depending on your musical requirements. However, all your mouthpieces should have similar rims—either all flat rims or over-rounded rims. This has to do with the development of the protractors and the retractors in your lip. I used to change mouthpieces to keep things interesting in the orchestra in terms of variety of sounds.

[davewerden]

Two quotes for today, one very short!

• Perfect your thoughts and you'll perfect your lip.
  
  
  
• If you have a larger quality of sound, you’ll also have a larger volume of sound. The tendency of putting larger physical effort for producing a larger sound is like lying to your own body. The other approach has more to do with the methodology of how to produce that sound.

[davewerden]

Performance tip:

Don’t prepare yourself to play your instrument. Instead, prepare the sound in your head. … We should not concern ourselves with the physical details of playing a brass instrument but concentrate instead on how we want the instrument to sound. … How our embouchures feel is not important, just how they sound. My lips haven’t felt good in years, but I can still fool the audience.

[jeffn60]

This is so timely for me as just this week I started to read Arnold Jacobs: Song and Wind by Brian Frederiksen. I recommend the book to anyone desiring to know more about Jacobs and his ideas.

[davewerden]

Today is a two-for-one day! Two good quotes below:

When taking in an inhalation, I want the concept of air moving into the mouth at the lips, not into the abdomen. ...Breathing is not a complex subject. It shouldn’t be a method. You want to take a breath, take a breath. Suck air at the lips.

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The study of any art form is the study of the mind – of the individual – the creative process. But for any musician who plays a brass instrument it is so important. Your pitch source is part of you – controlled in one way or another by your nervous system and your mind. The instrument has no brain. The player has to put the pitch into the instrument and have it resonated. We have to send in a frequency that the tube length can respond to. That frequency comes from our thoughts, as if we were singing with our voice, but we use our lips instead.