September 11, 2019
Lawrence Clemens: Trumpet Fundamentals First
The former principal trumpeter for the New Jersey Symphony and current Music & Arts instructor talks foundational techniques, embouchure problems, practice routines and that time Leonard Bernstein thanked him personally.
Equally warm and wise, the veteran trumpeter Lawrence Clemens — Larry, to his friends and students — is the kind of educator who always has a thoughtful answer at the ready. His ideas about music education are sturdy and time-tested — the sort of concepts and analogies you can only gain by teaching, and developing strategies for teaching, for over four decades. On a recent Zoom call from his home in Virginia, he reflected on his life in music and unpacked the expertise he brings to his studio at the Music & Arts in nearby Chesapeake.
He talked about how a player’s sound is the first thing an audience will notice, and about the perils of trumpet students getting braces. He highlighted the value of practicing long tones, tedious as they might be. Like it happened yesterday, he told the story of how the University of Southern Mississippi offered him a full music scholarship, seemingly out of the blue after he was scouted at a band competition. And he recounted the student teaching he did as a grad student at the University of Illinois, where he discovered he loved working as an educator.
Clemens also reminisced plenty about his 18-year tenure as the principal trumpeter for the New Jersey Symphony, an illustrious orchestra in a part of the country teeming with the world’s best musicians. After leaving that chair more than 20 years ago, he moved back to his home state to better care for his wife, who had lupus. At the time, he fully expected to retire; somehow, he ended up with a robust performance and teaching schedule instead.
Today, in addition to his studio at Music & Arts, Clemens teaches at Virginia Wesleyan University, furthering the college-level instruction he offered for years at Seton Hall University. He also freelances regularly and performs often with the Eastern Virginia Brass, a stunningly versatile quintet. “Just when you think you’re out,” he began, paraphrasing Al Pacino in The Godfather Part III, “they pull you back in.” A hearty laugh and a wide smile followed.
Over the course of an hour, he seemed at a loss for words only once. After his interviewer asked him what experiences in his career were truly mind-blowing — what particular pinch-me moments stand out in retrospect — he paused. “There are so many,” said Clemens, 67. Off-hand, he pointed to the multiple symphony performances he gave alongside two of his all-time-favorite artists, Luciano Pavarotti and John Denver, and that time he grabbed dinner with the latter.
But one particular evening stands above the rest. In 1990, shortly before Leonard Bernstein died at the age of 72, Clemens and the New Jersey Symphony gave a concert in tribute to that American icon at Carnegie Hall. Bernstein’s music is fertile ground for inspired trumpet performances, and the program that night was especially trumpet-rich. The man of the hour was in the house.
“After the concert,” Clemens recalled, “he came backstage and shook my hand and said, ‘Thank you. Your trumpet playing on my stuff is gorgeous.’ Leonard Bernstein! I’m never washing this hand again!”
When Maestro says you sound great, you sound great. Over Zoom, another hearty laugh ensued, and another wide smile.
Clemens brings these remarkable experiences, and his trust-building kindness, to the lessons he gives at Music & Arts. Throughout his half-century-plus as a dedicated trumpeter, he has delved into all kinds of music, from marches to baroque to big-band jazz. (He named Doc Severinsen as his number-one trumpet hero.) Consequently, the core of his teaching philosophy is a focus on building technique that will serve all trumpeters, regardless of genre.
“I don’t teach a style unless the student specifically has something they want to learn,” Clemens explained. “I teach my students how to play the trumpet. I teach trumpet techniques: tone, tonguing, range… If you can do all of that, the rest of it is just a matter of styling. You’ve got to have the basic techniques first.”
In that spirit of building a foundation, we asked Clemens for his thoughts on helping young students meet the considerable physical demands of playing trumpet. “Brass is the only instrument where you have such a personal connection to creating the sound on the instrument,” he said. “Brass players have to learn to control the embouchure in order to make the sound.”
Embouchure — that combination of lips, teeth, tongue and muscle that Clemens called “the foundation of everything you do on the trumpet, and of your sound.” He returned to how brass playing can be defined against all the other horns. “The woodwind instruments, they have a reed,” he said. “Well, our reed is attached to our face.”
With beginning child musicians, Clemens pointed out, that means a woodwinds player will have an easier time simply generating a decent sound. “And then you hear most brass players come in, and it’s like, what’s going on?” he said. “Because it can take at least six months to a year to create some kind of a sound.” In the following nuggets of wisdom, Clemens offers guidance for students young and old who want to make that sound and begin to shape it into music.
The Paper Test
To Clemens, the alliance between air and embouchure is paramount. To illustrate this point, he uses a clever test involving a small square of paper, about one-fourth the size of standard computer paper.
He has the student stand facing the wall, with their nose and the wall separated by the width of the student’s balled-up fist. From that distance, the student needs to blow hard enough to keep the paper stuck to the wall for four seconds. “Most students right away feel how normal breath isn’t gonna do it,” Clemens said. “So I work with them until they can sustain that paper for four seconds, and then I tell them, ‘OK, that is the air you need, minimum, to play the trumpet.’”
Embouchure, for Sure
Whether Clemens is guiding middle-schoolers or troubleshooting problems with an expert trumpeter’s technique, it all comes down to fundamentals. “The first thing I assess is breathing,” he said. “And then if that’s OK, how’s your embouchure?”
No two embouchures will be identical, “because everybody’s mouth is different,” said Clemens. But there are general principles at work. Players should seek comfort while centering the mouthpiece against their lips both horizontally and vertically, Clemens explained, “so that the air is unimpeded as it goes through the mouthpiece.” The trumpet should be held up and facing outward with a similar blend of comfort and poise.
Embouchure is a muscle, Clemens reiterated, “and how you can learn to control that muscle is going to control your tone, your endurance and your range. The air is important because it makes that muscle work. But the muscle has to do all the work.”
Long Tones, Long Tones, Long Tones
“I have everybody do long tones, as boring as they are,” Clemens said. “They can play a C scale, whatever’s a comfortable range for them, and hold each note for at least 10 seconds.” Older students in or around the eighth grade should strive to hold their notes for a minimum of 20 seconds. “If they can’t hold a long tone for 10 seconds, they’re not taking a big enough breath. So this exercise helps them realize that it’s not just the air out but the air in that’s important, because that is what sustains the note.”
When it comes to breath, precision is just as important as power. “I make sure that when they take that breath in, they’re not just going full-blast out,” he said. “I use an analogy and ask them, ‘Is it harder to walk up the stairs or down the stairs?’ Most think about it, even the young ones, and say it’s harder to walk up the stairs. Yes, it takes more energy; going down the stairs, though, takes more control.”
Tonguing Before It’s Too Late
In addition to keeping their air steady with long tones, Clemens’ beginning students will focus on lip flexibility, or the art of navigating from one note to the next with grace. Soon enough, he starts them on tonguing, which gives players the ability to articulate individual notes out of a continuous airflow. “It’s the hardest thing to master on the trumpet,” Clemens said.
“Most band directors don’t even get into tonguing until maybe seventh grade. But usually by eighth grade, before they really start to focus on it, students have formed all their bad habits, tonguing between their teeth. So almost right away, I don’t care how young they are, once the student gets that air and they start to get the feel of it, I start working on articulation.”
The Clarke Studies: The Book You’ll Love to Hate
Like many trumpet instructors who’ve cultivated their own sterling sound and technique, Clemens continues to use the method books developed by cornet master Herbert L. Clarke and first published over a century ago. “The Clarke Studies is the book you’re going to love to hate,” he laughed.
“If you can play this book,” he continued, “you can play any piece of music I ever put in front of you. Because you’re developing your finger technique, which, if you don’t have that, you can’t play advanced music. In addition to that, you’re also developing your breathing and flexibility through the different studies.” With that foundation in place, Clemens seeks and finds music the student is interested in and will have fun practicing.
You’re Not Doing It Right
“I know things are wrong right away,” Clemens said. “If something’s not right, it’s going to be in the sound.” When the embouchure is being developed correctly, a steady musical buzz will generate sound with ease. It shouldn’t feel as if the pressure the player is transferring from their embouchure onto the mouthpiece is being returned. One of the most common mistakes, Clemens said, is for trumpeters to “start pushing real hard back onto their lip with the trumpet.”
“Once you do that,” he said, “you start getting tired after about 10 minutes, and playing gets to be really difficult.”
And then there are orthodontic braces, “Kryptonite to all brass players,” as Clemens described them. When the teeth shift, the embouchure shifts with them, and “it’s a whole new game.” He can never quite predict how great a problem braces will pose for any one student; he’s seen two-week learning curves and talented trumpeters nearly quit. But he recommends students work in front of a mirror to keep their embouchure centered, since the changing feel of the lips and mouth can lead to poor embouchure placement as the student seeks comfort.
Practice, Please
“Like any muscle in your body,” Clemens said of embouchure, “you have to use it or lose it.” Consistent practice is non-negotiable. He connects with his students’ parents, asking for their help in maintaining a steady practice routine that will lead to real progress. For children just starting out, that means 20 minutes at least four days a week; if a child can’t comfortably hold a trumpet, Clemens will start them out on a cornet for a more “user-friendly fit.”
By eighth grade, dedicated students should be practicing a half-hour minimum, at least six days a week. (Their regularly scheduled school-band rehearsals do not count.) He recommends two hours max of daily practice for his advanced students. If they want more musical engagement after that, listening to recordings can be hugely beneficial.
As for Clemens himself, he practiced between six and eight hours a day in high school, a habit he says he kept up into college. That ended when a master clinician visited and listened to him play. “Your sound is gorgeous,” he told Clemens, “but when you’re playing, you have to follow through. You sound tired. How much do you practice?” Instead of more exercises, Clemens was basically told to get a life: no more than two, two-and-a-half focused hours of practice per day, “then the horn goes in the case. Go to a party, enjoy life, socialize, be part of the world.”
In the end, Clemens has managed to have it both ways, leading a great big life while keeping his trumpet sound on point. And he’s still hopelessly devoted. “As long as I can breathe and play,” he said, “I guess I will.”
Cue the laugh, and the smile.
