Sing, Buzz, Play

A widely accepted adage with respect to sequencing in brass pedagogy is Sing-Buzz-Play. The human voice is the most natural instrument we possess, and instrumentalists spend a good deal of time trying to replicate its tone and expressiveness. If beginning students lack the ability to sing, instrumental music teachers need to help students develop the necessary skills. It is possible for a few students to hear and understand pitch without possessing the physical knowledge to correctly pitch their voices, but most who cannot sing do not have a good understanding of the musical sounds they hear. Instrumental music students do not need to sound like accomplished vocalists, but they do need to demonstrate competence in using their singing voices accurately and expressively in order to develop good musical sound conceptions.

 

Beginning students of all ages are understandably excited to pick up their new instruments and start making sound. As teachers, it’s fun to show students how to produce a sound on a brass instrument and move fingers or arms to change those sounds. And there is value in such exploratory play as students take ownership of and experiment with the variety of sounds they make. But most students will quickly reach a ceiling on this type of play, and once instruments are introduced, many teachers unfortunately focus almost exclusively on the mechanical aspects of refining sound. Music becomes secondary to instrument technique, and embouchure, air, instrument holds, and fingerings displace the music in instrumental music. Add in the further variable of notation in these beginning stages and instrumental music education necessarily becomes instrument training as student try to assimilate and juggle all of the very challenging and disparate tasks they are expected to perform simultaneously. While some talented students will succeed in such a curriculum because they are able to make their own connections between technique and music, many others will grow frustrated at their lack of understanding or bored with the emphasis on mechanics.

 

From a pedagogical perspective, students’ singing represents the best tool for teachers to assess abilities to hear, match, and successfully manipulate pitch. Whistling and humming can serve the same purpose. These abilities are separate from the potentially confounding variables of instrumental techniques and mechanics.

 

Brass performance depends on the ability to hear pitches since one fingering pattern represents a wide range of possible notes. Playing on a mouthpiece alone (known as “buzzing”) is much like singing in that there are no physical or visual cues to pitch placement. Accurate sound depends on a player’s ability to audiate correctly before making the necessary physical adjustments to produce that sound. A brass instrument will help to refine a player’s sound, but inaccurate buzzing will produce inaccurate playing. Singing reflects what a student audiates, so teachers should ensure students have the ability to sing everything they are asked to play by often asking them to do just that.