Customer Reviews

Carmine Caruso - Musical Calisthenics for Brass

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The methods that Caruso used in this book are absolute genius. However, if you do things incorrectly you can mess up your lips in a hurry. I highly advice anybody interested in using this exercise routine to find a teacher who learned from Caruso himself or go over to http://carminecaruso.net/ and read up on Caruso and his methods. Learn to do these correctly and there is honestly no limit to the amount of improvement you can achieve.

The exercises in the book appear to be deceptively simple and at first blush do not seem like they would accomplish much. However, this is a method that will naturally develope your embouchure so you will be ready for any demands placed upon you. Your range will increase, your endurance will increase, your lung power will increase. Playing will become instictive. Rather than thinking about what to do with your embouchure to play high, low, loud or soft, it will just happen and you will be able to concentrate on the music instead.
The idea is to make trumpet playing an automatic response rather than some thing you have to continually think about.

Through this method, the embouchure muscles, lips, and wind apparatus are developed to work in concert as second nature...as they should be. I highly recommend using this book with the excellent instruction available on-line in the Carmine Caruso forum on the Trumpet Herald web site. http://www.trumpetherald.com/forum/ Page down and click on the Carmine Caruso link and you'll be able to view the topics and posts available. Buy the book and go to the website. You'll be glad you did!

I gave this book three stars because I was trying to offer a more neutral rating. The fact is, there are many variables that can make this method work great, or not work at all---so it wouldn't be fair to rate it either great or not great. Having said that, a little background information.

I personally studied with Caruso in 1972, then again in 1983. Much of Caruso's genius lay in his incredible teaching ability, perhaps more so than his actual studies. For example, when I first started his studies, my chops actually worsened for the next three months. Range had actually dropped, tone became raucous and I even had some educators make snide comments about my awful sound (I was in high school at the time). But Caruso guided me along, reminding me in his typical Zen-like way, that I wasn't to focus on "making music" with his studies, nor was I to be discouraged by my seeming reversal of progress. Instead, he emphasized that we were merely "conditioning a group of muscles" and that when those muscles came "into balance", I would start improving. "Dont think, DO" was always his most famous mantra and in fact, much of Caruso's psychology very closely resembled "The Inner Game" concept (simply put your muscles into motion and then let your body do the rest of the work; ignore the inner-critic and the temptation to think through your exercises, whether it is about golf, tennis or playing the trumpet). After about month four, I really started seeing progress, and by the following year, I had been playing lead trumpet.

Now can this book work for a person who has never been exposed to what Caruso actually taught? That is a difficult question to answer. I would say that if you really wanted to give Calisthenics a try, prep yourself by reading something like the Inner Game of Music. It's EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to not treat these studies like music. They're physical studies that are counterintuitive to traditional brass teaching, and they can sometimes make your playing sound bad before it gets better. But I still fear there might be some pitfalls one could easily fall into. For example, if your chops are not responding the way you think they should doing Calisthenics, you might very understandably give up and never really give the method a chance to work. That's understandable given the somewhat radical ideas that Caruso advanced (like playing long tones as high as you can till only air comes out of the horn). On the other hand, if you treat his method as a purel physical, isometric series of studies with no musical expectations whatsoever and give the method a fair shot---at least 4-6 months---you might be really surprised at the results. Better yet, it might be wiser to try and study with someone who actually studied with Caruso because much of his positive results were reinforced by his actual teaching genius.

(If you google "Carmine Caruso" look for Charly Raymond's website. There, he has some audio files of Caruso during actual lessons. You can get some flavor of his approach and the type of psychology he was all about).

Finally, listen to your body. If your chops seem overworked and stiff doing these studies, try not doing them for a few days, instead doing some scales, light playing if possible. But again, it gets tricky as Caruso used to warn students "not to baby themselves".

Incidentally, some really good trumpet players studied and swore by Caruso, including Lou Soloff, Randy Brecker, Jon Faddis, Marvin Stamm and many others. So he was definitely the real deal.

Outstanding! Real meat for your chops. Caruso's name will always be legend in the musician's world

All the methods are uselles unless you have a teacher.
My first impression about the method is that is more of the same...Arban, etc, etc
Ligatos, stacatos, ascending ,descending, from piano to forte to piano... is always the same.
A little disapointed, I,ve the book in my closet.
Maybe some day i,ll find someone to help me with it.

Did not find this book helpful for me. Author is a woodwind (sax) player who has taught many brass players.