Pitch on the Pbugle: 18 Let’S Play High, Medium and Low 19 Let’S Play Some Music 20

Learn to play pBugle

The easiest way to start your trumpet journey

Chris Fower

• Looking after your pBugle • Buzzing & playing Notes • How to breathe and blow • How to make a sound • Learn great posture

Learn to play pBugle

The easiest way to start your trumpet journey

Chris Fower Contents

Welcome 5 Bugling! 6 What’s in the Box 7 Looking after your pBugle 8 Good posture 9 Holding your pBugle 10 Breathing in and Blowing out! 11 Getting your first buzz 12 Getting your first note 13 The elements of music, pulse 14 The elements of music, duration 15 Let’s play some notes! 16

The elements of music, pitch 17 Pitch on the pBugle: 18 Let’s play high, medium and low 19 Let’s play some music 20

4 Learn to play the pBugle Welcome

Hello and welcome to “Learn to Play pBugle”! pBugle is designed to give learners their very best beginning to learning the trumpet. pBugle is essentially a normal Bb trumpet with no valves...made from plastic! This book will guide you through making your first sounds and explain how the pBugle works. There are backing tracks and videos, look out for the links in the QR codes which will take you to a backing track or video. If you have downloaded this book, simply click on the link or you can scan the QR code with your smart phone if the book has been printed. Anthony is going to be helping us along the way. Watch the video to see Anthony introduce himself.

Most importantly have great fun playing your pBugle... Starting your trumpet journey

Playing a musical instrument is one of the most rewarding things a human can achieve! Music is an international language and every culture and sub-culture on planet earth has it’s own music, made for themselves by themselves.

Learning how to play an instrument has been proved time and time again to really benefit children, improving a host of skills that have uses and positive impacts reaching far beyond the music making it’s self.

Brass instruments are interesting in many ways, from the outside they seem technical and difficult to understand but to the experienced brass player playing brass is the most natural thing in the world.

In this guide I will try to make your first steps as easy, simple and natural as possible.

How do brass instruments make a sound? All sound is vibration travelling through the air. When the vibration reaches your ears the brain performs a magical transformation of this sensation into the sounds we hear. A brass player vibrates his or her lips together and this in turn cause vibrations inside the instrument that create the wonderful noise of a brass instrument...in this case the trumpet!

Brass players call this lip vibration “Buzzing or the Buzz” and it really is the heart of becoming a brass player. As you will learn, no buzz can happen without air blown through your lips and into the instrument so these two elements blowing and buzz are the heart of trumpet, cornet and bugle playing.

With these two simple skills in place you can begin a wonderful, life-long journey exploring the trumpet or cornet and all the amazing varieties and genres of music that the trumpet can join in with and contribute to.

This guide will help you take your first steps into the trumpet world using the simplest and purest form of trumpet: pBugle...the easiest way to start your trumpet journey.

Learn to play the pBugle 5 Bugling!

What is a bugle? Across the world, most ancient civilisations have used some type of animal horn for signalling during their religious or military ceremonies.

The Roman armies used a horn named after the Latin word “bulculus”, which means bullock. This is the origin of the name “bugle”.

It is thought that the first time a brass bugle was used as a military signal was the Halbmondbläser, or half-moon bugle, used in Hanover in 1758. It was U-shaped (hence its name) and comfortably carried by a shoulder strap attached at the mouthpiece and bell. It first spread to England in 1764 where it was gradually accepted widely in foot regiments.

18th-century cavalry did not normally use a standard bugle, but rather an early trumpet that might be mistaken for a bugle today, as it lacked keys or valves, but had a more gradual taper and a smaller bell, producing a sound more easily audible at close range but with less carrying power over distance. In some ways pBugle is similar to these Cavalry Trumpets which are still used in ceremonial events.

Most military forces around the world use some form of brass instrument with no valves and they call these instruments a wide variety of names, but we would generally see them and think “bugle”!

The bugle has also found other homes over the years with: The Boy’s Brigade, the Scouting Movement, Drum and Bugle Corps bands (very popular in the USA), and a whole host of other settings, spread across the globe.

Our “pBugle” is a plastic Bb trumpet without valves. We hope that both those who want an easy way to begin their trumpet journey and the broader bugle community can use pBugle to get more people, children and adults, involved in the fantastic world of brass playing.

Anthony Thompson demonstrates the traditional British Bugle

A US Naval military bugler sounding A Soldier of the Music of the French Foreign Legion playing the bugle during “A Call the Colors” 1917 the celebration of Bastille Day 2008 in Paris.

6 Learn to play the pBugle What’s in the Box

pBugle and mouthpiece

It couldn’t be more simple when you open the pBugle box. There’s just a care card, a pBugle and it’s mouthpiece inside...

Assembly Putting your pBugle together is very simple. Just place the mouthpiece in the receiver, the end with the small hole! Don’t bash it in with your hand or force the mouthpiece in as it may get stuck if you do this! A gentle twist will do for both putting the mouthpiece in and getting it out.

Remember: gently does it!

Learn to play the pBugle 7 Looking after your pBugle

General pBugle is pretty tough but please remember that it isn’t indestructible! Be especially careful if you have removed the main tuning slide as this forms a key part of the strength of the pBugle’s body! Most trumpet mouthieces will fit pBugle but remember that cornet mouthpieces will need an adaptor, the same as any trumpet!

Cleaning: pBugle is completely made from ABS recyclable plastic, making it very durable and robust. It is also includes antimicrobial technology–an agent that kills micro-organisms and inhibits their growth. To clean the external surfaces, use a soft cloth with warm, soapy water and dry the instrument with a lint free cloth. We recommend that you clean the instrument before first use. Tuning slide

The main tuning slide is what we use to make sure our pitch, or how high or low a note is, matches the pitch of other instruments we are playing with. It’s not very important to adjust this at the beginning but it’s still a good idea to move this slide about a centimetre out.

It’s also a good idea to put a little tuning slide grease or petroleum jelly on your tuning slide from time to time. This helps keep the slide moving smoothly and makes your pBugle more air tight which means a better sound!

Damage and repairs

Any minor damage, like cracks or parts that become dislodged may be mended with super glue. If you choose a gel type glue this will help stop spills and runs. Always practice your mend without glue first, once the glue is applied your repair will be stronger than ever and super glue dries fast!

If you aren’t sure, then please just contact one of our pPals at [email protected]

8 Learn to play the pBugle Good posture

“Good posture really matters when it comes to playing a brass instrument...”

That is true! but let’s start at the beginning...

What is posture anyhow?

Basically posture describes how we hold our body...what position it is in, and how we hold our instrument, especially in relation to our body.

This includes everything from our toes to our head and all are just as important. When we are playing a brass instrument we are using lots of air, both breathing in and blowing out, so holding our bodies in a way that makes this as easy as possible is vital...it’s also great for our general health and well being. Think about how important good, deep and controlled breathing is for our day-to-day lives! “take a deep breath!”. Controlling breathing and posture is also good for mindfulness and is used in meditation and yoga...so that’s all good!

Your head is up straight and looking straight ahead! This is really important because you need to slightly point your pBugle down and keep your head up to get the best sound!

Shoulders need to be relaxed and down... Lots of people think that by lifting their shoulders they will get a bigger breath...not so!..down and relaxed is best!

Arms are going to be holding your pBugle but again relaxed is best...this is easier because pBugle is so light!

Legs should be slightly apart, about the same distance apart as your hip.

Feet nicely flat on the floor!

Learn to play the pBugle 9 Holding your pBugle

There isn’t really a right and wrong when it comes to holding your pBugle, in fact there are a few different grips you might want to try.

Most important is that you have great posture so make sure that however you hold the pBugle your posture is still good...head up straight, eyes looking ahead and mouthpiece pointing sightly down, just like we have already covered in the opposite page.

When playing a brass instrument it is really vital that you are as relaxed as possible, this helps with lots of things including taking big, deep breaths in, blowing good, strong air out and avoiding any stress and strains on your body from playing.

Many buglers hold the instrument in their right hand, leaving the left hand and arm relaxed like the pictures on the bugling page (page 6). You can see that the US Navy Sailor and the French Foreign Legionnaire are both relaxed and have a strong, comfortable angle to their arm.

On the right Georgia is copying this traditional hold which really suits the pBugle.

Many trumpet players like to keep all the “holding up” work in the left hand as this keeps the right hand free to delicately operate the valves, this is a really good point if you are going on to play trumpet or cornet. (notice how you must change the angle of The traditional, right handed, the pBugle to make this work!) Bugle grip

“Holding up” work in the left hand

Following on from the trumpet or cornet players perspective, here is a two handed grip from Georgia which Trumpet style grip using both hands most closely mimics the classic trumpet posture. Make sure you don’t hold on too hard with your right hand if you’re planning on moving on to the trumpet or the cornet later, remember on these instruments the left hand does all the holding up work!

Which ever way you decide to hold your pBugle make sure you are comfortable and ready to have fun!

10 Learn to play the pBugle Breathing in and Blowing out!

Everyone knows how to breathe...right? so breathing is no problem! Did you Know? Playing the pBugle is all about blowing air out so...you will need The average person breathes some air to blow, in fact a strong, steady flow of air to make your in (and out!) over 8000 litres sounds on the pBugle. of air a day by taking around 20,000 breaths. Here are a few simple steps to getting a great breath in...

Step 1 Breath in through your open mouth and not your nose.

Step 2 Take a big, deep, relaxed breath in.

Step 3 Imagine the breath going deep into your body, feeling cool ad refreshing!

Step 4 When your lungs feel full of air, blow out through your lips...a bit like blowing out a candle

Blowing Games

Slow Flow Tower of Power

Dangle a piece of paper in front Put your pencil on the table (it of your lips. Fill your lungs with a big, needs to be a round one!). Fill your deep relaxed breath and blow the lungs with a big, deep relaxed breath. paper so it ripples. How long can you How far can you blow the pencil? You make it ripple for? Maybe you can might need to do this in the floor if change the speed of the you get really good at it! ripples?

Learn to play the pBugle 11 Getting your first buzz

Let’s get the air flowing Remember when we talked about posture, looking straight ahead with head up straight? Now is the time this becomes important! Look straight ahead, take in one of your big, deep breaths and blow some air at your fingers. Keep your fingers a little lower than your mouth to get a downwards angle.

Now try a buzz

Whilst you are blowing slowly put your lips closer and closer together, as long as the air flow keeps moving you should get a buzz! Always make sure you have a hole in the middle of your lips for the air to flow through, we call this the aperture! If there is no air flow there can be no sound.

If your buzz doesn’t start straight away, adding the mouthpiece often helps.

Make sure the mouthpiece is following the same path as your air and that it’s in the middle of your lips.

The mouthpiece should be central to your lips, both sideways and up and down.

Try to make sure there is a seal around your mouthpiece where it touches your lips, this will need to be quite firm.

12 Learn to play the pBugle Getting your first note

Before we play your first note Let’s remember what we’ve learnt so far!

1. Assemble your pBugle. 2. Good posture: Nice and relaxed. 3. Head up straight, looking straight ahead. 4. Find your comfortable grip or hold for the pBugle. 5. Practice a few deep breaths in and out. 6. Listen to the sample tracks link.

Playing your first notes on pBugle 1. Bring your pBugle to your mouth without moving your head from it’s good posture position, try not to bring your lips to the instrument.

2. Make a nice seal between your lips and the mouthpiece, just like when you were buzzing.

3. Also try to make the angle between your face and the pBugle the same as when buzzing, pointing down a little. You may not point as far down as the picture but that’s OK.

4. A big breath in through the sides of your mouth.

5. Now buzz into the pBugle...we should have a great sound!

6. Practice some long, relaxed notes, if the come out different, that’s OK, if they are all the same, that’s OK too!

7. Concentrate on making a really nice sound, like in the video.

Learn to play the pBugle 13 The elements of music Pulse or the beat

Outside music, time is measured in seconds and minutes. Inside music we measure time in beats and bars. Lots of things naturally make a beat such as; a clock ticking; soldiers or a band marching; your heart beating.

Try listening to the world around you...what do you hear? All around us the human and natural world is full of beats!

Foot beats walking down the road, the ticking of a clock, your heat beat, trains racing down the track, dancing, tapping your feet or a finger to music...the beat is already a powerful part of your life...now we can use the beat to control our sounds and make music!

Music is often divided up into groups of 4 beats. Try counting ‘1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4…’ How about clapping along 1,2,3,4! Now let’s try counting 1,2,3,4 but only clapping on 1 and 3? Can you make up some clapping games of your own? Always try to keep the beat even so it doesn’t get faster or slower but “keeps a steady beat”. Have a listen to the beats in the link at the top of the page.

1 2 3 4

Shh! Shh!

14 Learn to play the pBugle The elements of music Duration or how long a note is

Now we are counting and clapping the beat we can start to use the beat to measure how long notes last and when to play them! Each note is music is measured in how many beats they last for. Always be sure to allow for the whole of the last beat of a note, a four beat note doesn’t end on the count of “4” but the count of “4” is where the last beat of the note begins, the note won’t end until the fourth count is over:

1st beat 2nd beat 3rd beat 4th beat

Play (blow!)...... End (stop blowing!) Four beat note Count in... 1, 2, 3, 4, 1 2 3 4 1

We can create notes that last any length of beats we like, until our breath runs out! How many different beat notes can you play? Try using the beats link to give you a beat to play along to whilst you create lots of different length notes?

With all the hundreds and thousands of beats in a piece of music we usually organise our beats into smaller groups that we call bars.

To show where a new bar begins we use a vertical line called a bar line “|”.

All the music we’ve played and listened to so far in this book has had four beats in every bar.

Below I’ve created a simple piece of written out music, or notation, with just one horizontal line (the horizontal lines are used to show pitch). I’ve divided it into two bars with bar lines, the beats are written above the bars. Two, four beat bars! Can you count them out? Imagine what length notes you could play in these bars. At the end of a piece we usually put two bar lines so I’ve added that.

The two numbers at the beginning of the music, that look a little bit like a fraction: 4/4, are called a Time Signature. This tells us two things; the top number tells us how many beats in the bar. 4 in this case (we knew that!). The bottom note tells us what type of note we will use for each beat, “4” means one beat notes. So this time signature means four, one beat notes in each bar.

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 Top tip Most great brass players 4 always count themselves in and breathe on the last beat 4 of their count in. 1, 2, 3, breathe, play!! Time Signature Bar Line Double bar Line

Learn to play the pBugle 15 Let’s play some notes! Making notes of different lengths

Now you can play some notes on the pBugle let’s put your sounds to music!

“Dancy” and “Funky” are backing tracks for you to play along to.

Join in and make some notes...you can’t play a wrong note, every pBugle note will fit.

See if you can make notes of different lengths, how many beats do your notes last?

Dancy Funky

Backing track Backing track

Reading Traditional Music Notation: duration

In music notation it’s the shape of the note that tells you how long each lasts for... Remember the length of notes is measured in beats! This is how one beat, two beat and four beat notes look:

Four beats Two beats One beat

16 Learn to play the pBugle The elements of music Pitch: how high or low a note is

Pitch in music simply means how high or low a note is. As we become more experienced in working with pitch we can become really good at hearing tiny differences in pitch and understanding how to label these gaps (called intervals).

For now, at the beginning of our journey into brass playing, hearing and understanding big differences in pitch, really high or really low is a good place to start.

Generally speaking the bigger a musical instrument is the lower the pitch it makes and the smaller it is the higher the pitch it makes!

On the pBugle there are only certain pitches you can play, especially when you first begin. This should make recognising the high and low notes you make easier.

Have you been making sound with different pitches when we practiced making notes of different lengths? Maybe they were all different or all the same? It doesn’t matter because we will need all those skills of playing different pitches, playing the same pitch and changing pitch to play pBugle.

Now we have learnt about the basic building blocks that all music is made from:

The beat, how long a note lasts for and how high or low a note is.

We call this Pulse, Duration and Pitch!

Learn to play the pBugle 17 Pitch on the pBugle:

The harmonic series Every brass instrument makes a sound by the player vibrating their lips and the air inside the instrument vibrating along with the player’s lips. Because of the way that physics works any brass instrument wants to vibrate at a series of pitches (high or low sounds) called the harmonic series, sometimes known as partials. That’s why nearly every brass instrument has a way of changing it’s length, whether valves or slides or both! This means the player can choose from lots of different harmonic series as his or her instrument gets longer. One of the main reasons the pBugle is so easy to begin playing on is that there are no valves so there is only one harmonic series to explore. The notes the pBugle can play in it’s harmonic series form a pattern that means the difference in pitch between notes (called the intervals) gets smaller the higher you play. In fact, if you play high enough the notes follow the same pattern as a musical scale so it is possible to play traditional tunes without using valves. This takes a lot of skill to play so high with such accuracy, but in the Baroque period, trumpet players used to play on very long instruments that made these high notes lower and a little easier to hit. When you listen to the music of Bach and Handle you will hear this type of trumpet playing. Sometimes modern trumpet players use replicas of these old fashioned instruments without valves which we call “Natural Trumpets”.

Harmonic series Natural trumpet

Reading Traditional Music Notation: pitch Music notation for bugle is quite simple to use because of the restricted number of notes we can play and the wide pitch spacing between most of them. In this book we will concentrate on three notes on the bugle. We are going to call these “high, medium and low”. These notes look like this in traditional notation, as the pitch gets higher the notes appear higher on the stave or staff. Like climbing a ladder!

Low Medium High Medium Low & ˙ ˙ ˙ C˙ G C G Cw

18 Learn to play the pBugle Let’s play high,medium and low

Blowing

The type of air we blow really makes a difference to the pitch or how high or low a note is.

Slow, wide air helps make lower notes. Think about making a window steamed up in the Winter. Some brass teachers call this “hot” air because it’s the kind of breath that we’d use to warm up our hands in the cold!

Fast, thin air will make really bright, clear, high notes. Think about the kind of breath you would use to put out a candle or blow an insect off your hand.

Another great tip if you are tying to play some higher notes is: “try the higher note first!”.

I hear lots of players always try the low note first because this is the “safe” or “easy’ one, then they try to add the higher pitch.

If you think about how full your lungs are when you have just taken in a great breath you will see that it is much easier to blow out fast air first and slow air second.

So if you’re trying for a high one and it won’t come out try:

1, 2, 3, breathe, High, Medium, Low

(Also,you can think loud for high and quiet for low...this sometimes helps!)

Lips Aperture and blowing...

1. The size of the hole in your lips that the Imagine that blowing slowly through a big, fat straw air is escaping through..we call this the for milk shake is a low note, a take-away soft drink or “aperture”. Low notes use a big aperture soda is a medium note and the and high notes a small one, this helps the tiny juice straw with fast air is a vibration to be faster or slower...higher or high note! lower and the air to move at the correct speed. 2. How tense or firm your lips are, the firmer your lips the higher the pitch of your buzz.

As your lips get more Low tense the aperture automatically gets smaller and it’s Medium easier to blow fast air! High

Learn to play the pBugle 19 Let’s play some music

Here there are two new versions of our tunes “Dancy” and “Funky”: this time they are “Listen and Copy” video games where you hear the pBugle playing a note and then it’s your turn to play. Try to copy that note exactly, both it’s length and pitch. Try to copy Anthony’s sound and notice his posture and breathing.

In the box at the bottom of the page is a link to some great practice videos on high, medium and low using “listen, sing, buzz, play”. These videos are really good for practice sessions to build up your bugling skills and technique.

Dancy Funky

Backing track

Listen and copy Listen and copy

What next?

Why not try our “Six Easy pBugle Tunes”. These little pieces will give you chance to build your skills and learn more about music. You can play them on your own or with friends. Anthony is there on video to show you how the tunes go.

Listen, Sing, Buzz, Play When you are playing the pBugle the closer you can get your buzz to the pBugle note the better the sound will be. A great way to develop this skill is to listen to the note, sing the note, buzz the note on your mouthpiece then play the note on the pBugle.

If you see these icons think: “Listen, sing, buzz, play”. “For some reason people who steal copyright from authors and publishers do not feel the same sense of guilt which troubles some shoplifters.”

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The easiest way to start your trumpet journey