Chords for Trumpet Sub-Tone | Trumpet Technique w/ Marquis Hill

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[G] _ _ _ [Dm] _ _ _ _ _
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[Dm] My name is Marquise Hill.
I'm a trumpet player from Chicago, and we're here in Chicago at Reverb, and we're going
to be talking [D] about a concept called subtone.
It's really a saxophone [Dm] technique made famous by jazz legend [C]
Lester Young.
He had a famous [D] recording of Body and Soul where he [Am] introduced a lot of air into his sound.
So, I have a lot of students, they ask me, oh Marquise, how do you get this sound?
[D] And I tell them it's a saxophone technique called subtone, [G] and really what it is, is
[A]
allowing the excess air [Gb] through the mouth to go into the sound.
So you're creating this sound that's very similar to a human voice, or adding the airiness
and the raspiness into the voice.
You listen to recordings of Miles Davis.
He has recordings where he's using this technique, subtone.
Freddie Hubbard, Nicholas Payton, Roy Hargrove.
So the technique behind it is, I'm going to talk about [Eb] specifically for the trumpet.
There's a couple things that I do to practice this, and the first thing is breath attacks.
What a breath attack is, it's producing a sound on the instrument using only the air.
So normally when we're taught to produce a sound on the instrument, we're taught to use
our tongue, right?
We'll go two, to produce the sound.
But with the breath attack, [G] we produce the sound [Ab] using only the air.
So we'll _ _
[Bb] go_ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [Eb] So even in the breath attack, you hear the air before you hear the pitch, right?
So that's really the entire concept, getting that air within the sound.
[F] _
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_ _ [F] So what I would do to practice these breath attacks, I would start blowing air through
the instrument to the point where I can only hear the air, and then gently speed the air
up so that I can hear the sound as well.
So I'll give you an example.
So this is just the air. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ And then you gradually add the sound to the air, right? _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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_ _ _ _ _ And [N] the goal of this is to get it to the point where you can start the sound and keeping
the air within the sound at the same time, you know, starting the pitch on the downbeat.
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[D] _ _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _
_ [Eb] And the same way you started the pitch, you can reverse it and bring the sound out of
the pitch and leave the air there.
[Bb] _ _
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_ _ [Eb] This mouthpiece that I'm using is on the smaller side, but _ in terms of mouthpieces, the larger
mouthpiece that you're playing on a brass instrument, the easier it will be to produce
this subtone, _ because the cup is bigger, the throat is more open, which allows more of
the air to seep through.
So the bigger the mouthpiece, the easier it is to create subtone.
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[D] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [Bb] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ You can use vibrato the [G] same way you use when [Am] you're holding [A] a pure pitch.
Vibrato is really just bending, bending [Am] and shaking the pitch [Eb] to, again, add that vocal effect.
[Em] So _ [Bb] _ I _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ can do that with the pitch and I can also do that with the air, you know? _ _ _ _ _ _
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[F] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [Eb] _ It's very effective on ballads and slow, softer movements in music, you know, that's when
it's really effective.
So we talked about the breath attack.
Now the second thing, and especially on brass instruments, it's a technique called pitch bends.
And a pitch bend, I'll play an example of it first.
[Bb] _ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _ _
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So what I'm doing is I'm going down a half step chromatically with using my air and my
armature without technically and physically changing the pitch on the instrument, right?
So what I'm doing, _ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[F] _ _ [E] _ _ [Bb] _ but I'm cutting out the valves and I'm doing that with strictly the air, right? _ _ _
[D] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Em] _
_ [Fm] _ _ _ [Gb] And being able to master this and have control over this is also a really good technique
that will help us with getting this subtone in the sound.
When you lower the pitch or bend the pitch, you want your corners, and now I'm talking
from brass aspect, you want your corners to remain tight, but you want the excess air
that's coming within the jaw [Bb] to go through the mouthpiece, if that makes any sense to you, right?
[Bb] _ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ So when I'm bending that pitch, the excess air is going through, right?
And it's creating that _ subtone.
_ [Fm] _ _ [Em] _
_ [F] _ _ _ _ [Fm] _ _ _
[Em] _ _ _ _ _ _ [C] And _ another key thing to keep in mind, when we are practicing these pitch bends in the
subtone, it's very important to make sure we're practicing with the tuner and make sure
that these pitches are in tune, because when we do bend the pitch, it tends to go flat.
So keeping in mind, we want to keep the pitch in tune while bending at the same time.
I've learned over the years, your sound is naturally in your head.
So whatever you hear in your head, that's what's going to come out of your instrument.
And I've learned that I naturally hear a sound that's darker and warmer and has a little
air and a little fluffiness to the sound.
So I naturally hear that, and that comes out when I also [G] play.
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