How to Screech on a Trumpet

Screeching on a trumpet is an advanced skill useful for jazz playing (essential if you're lead trumpet in a big band) and for any player warming up. What you need to know before you start learning how to screech is how to produce good, supported high notes that don't strain your embouchure. Once you can play high notes on the trumpet, you're ready to screech.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Roll your lips in as tight as possible. Tighten the hardest at the outside of your lips, towards the corners of the mouth, rather than in the center of the lips where your sound is produced.

2. Produce the tightest buzz you can before adding the trumpet. Then add the trumpet to your lips to produce the high notes.

3. Use your diaphragm to put as much air as possible through the horn. Screech notes are produced by playing the highest notes you can as loud as possible, so continue to pump air through the horn to get higher and louder.

4. Lip slur up to the highest notes you can produce. Remember to keep the notes in key if you're performing jazz music, but if you're just warming up, treat this like a very intense version of a regular lip slur.

5. Use lip vibrato on the screech notes when you're performing to create a jazzier and more professional sound. Practice sustaining screech notes as long as you can, as in jazz music they are used on the final note of a big finish.

Tips & Warnings

• Pay attention to where you start to feel the burn of practicing screech notes. Ideally, you should feel fatigue in your cheeks and abdomen first. If you feel pain in the center of your lips, your embouchure needs to be altered.