Join HI-YR-BY-A-THIRD today! Material on page 12 only

Now that you have tried playing pedal tones for the first time or continued to play them, some may have questions as to how they can be played more easily.
This post will cover the art of playing pedal tones and by our next post, you should be able to play with the best pedal players in the nation, or at least improve in this area.

To make sure you are playing pedal tones correctly, we first need to check to see if your lips are in the correct position. To do this, place the mouthpiece to your lips and without tonguing the first note blow the air stream through your lips and into the instrument. If your lips are in the correct position, the notes should be started easily. If no note comes out, your lips may be overlapping and need to be repositioned. The upper lip and the lower lip should be positioned one above and in line with the other to make sure your embouchure is functioning correctly. If one section of your lip extends “over” the other as you play this overlap may eventually cut off lip vibrations and eventually limit your range and flexibility.

Now that your lips are positioned correctly, we will start our decent into the pedal world.

Your author suggests that you play each note in the first lesson loud, but for our purposes I would suggest that you take in a full breath and sustain the notes for a specific amount of time- fifteen seconds. You might ask why I differ from the text and the reason is that students beginning on this method are not conditioned for a few of the suggestions. This is one case. Many times a new person to pedal tones might over do the “loud” and do harm to their lip. Symptoms of lip abuse will show up as a momentary sharp pain in the lip. This is most often caused by playing too loud on a lip which is not used to loud playing. It would be similar to someone trying to lift heavy weights for the first time. Muscles have a way of telling us that what we are doing is not a good thing. So listen to your body as we continue in your range development.

Instructions for your first exercise, page 12.

1. Sit forward with your back off the back of the chair. Reason- you need to be able to take in more air than you are used to and the possibility of hyperventilation could make you dizzy.

2. Take in a big breath with your tongue as low in the mouth as possible. Reason- positioning your tongue low in the mouth will enable you to inhale with fewer restrictions.

3. Using the second hand on a visible clock, inhale slowly and start your first note when the second hand reaches 12 on the clock. Reason- you will need to play your whole notes for fifteen seconds and no longer.

4. After fifteen seconds, stop playing and rest for fifteen seconds. Reason- few are able to rest as much as they play and for that reason, you should use a clock to regulate your playing and resting.

5. Crescendo with reason on the whole notes. Reason- the crescendo is helpful to get more air out of your lungs. As you gradually develop more conditioning of your lip, you can increase the crescendo within reason.

6. If you are new to pedal tones, you may find them a little challenging and in order to help you, I have recorded them to give you a reference.

Download Practice recording here- HI-R-By-A-Third Practice recording