DON JACOBY

First, let me say that I don't claim to be any sort of authority on Jake and his methods. I studied with him briefly a few months before he died. His health was failing and he was often forced to cancel all lessons for a week or two. There are hundreds of other people who knew him better and studied longer.

What follows are excerpts from the notes I took at my lessons. For more on Jake and his methods look at his book Jake's Method(RBC Publications, PO Box 29128, San Antonio, TX, 78229), or "Jake" by Keith Winking, ITG Journal, December 1992, pages 36-42. You should be able to get either of these by InterLibrary Loan.

• No negative thoughts allowed in my studio.
• The Speed of the air controls the pitch. The Mass of the air controls the volume.
• Blow thru the horn - not into it. Don't Let anything get in the way.
• "G" is 5 more further in front of "C" - not a 5th higher.
• Play to please yourself and others will be pleased.
• Playing is 5 percent physical, 95 percent mental.
• The surest way to make a problem worst is to draw attention to it.
• There are three parts to a note: Begining, Middle and End. None of these takes precedence over the others. (Don't worry about the attack, go for the entire note.)
• Spend more time in front of the horn listening and less time behind it working so hard.
• The motion of the tounge when playing is the same as when speaking. NO EXAGGERATION.

1. The part of the lips inside the mouthpiece should remain completely relaxed at all times. They should be regarded as nothing more than vibrators.
2. The use of the tounge to determine the direction of the airstream.
3. Develop good, strong corners of the mouth with the amount of the firmness to be dictated by the register in which we are playing plus any volume desired. (To demonstrate the action of the corners Jake often used the following exercise. Hold your hands in front of your face, palms facing inwards. Next make and relax a fist several times. Next, "make a fist" with the lips.)
4. The correct, Unexaggeerated use of the "diaphragm" to control the "speed" and "mass" of the air. (Jake commented that to avoid a lot of "pedagogical junk" he intentionally misused the word diaphragm to mean what most students take it to mean.)

© 1997 matthewstock@sbcglobal.net

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