McNeil's class dealt with problems specific to trumpets in teaching jazz. The first area he talked about was endurance in playing extended solos. McNeil and Laurie Frink have developed some modified Carmine Caruso exercises based on different pentatonic scales. These exercises incorporate Caruso's ideas of long setting and nose breathing (leaving the embouchure set, breathing only through the nose, throughout the course of an exercise). McNeil also advocated using the second study from Clarke's Technical Studies and displacing every third note down or up an octave to get used to playing at the extremes of technical ability.
One observation McNeil has made with students is that they frequently don't use enough air as they progress in their solos. Part of the problem, he feels, is that students are provided so much theoretical information to use in solos that they feel they have to play constantly to get all their ideas out in one solo. He suggests encouraging students to stop once in a while during their solos, even putting the trumpet down momentarily. This allows the audience to digest what is being played, and allows the performer a chance to take a full breath and get the trumpet off the chops.
The other area McNeil spent a great deal of time discussing was articulation. He says he has observed over the past several years that students have moved from tonguing everything to slurring everything. He believes what is missing is any definition in the soloist's musical line. Several exercises were demonstrated which could be included in daily practice to help the soloist become more aware of accenting and articulating different patterns within their solos. He demonstrated by taking an eighth-note scale pattern and slurring into the downbeats, then progressed to playing patterns with random placement of accents (for example, slurring two groups of three notes and one group of two notes, or alternating groups of three and two). The student can be creative and expand on this idea, developing different accented patterns to play. McNeil also mentioned using alternate fingerings frequently at the top of the staff. He feels this makes many patterns easier to play technically, but also helps in creating better clarity in trumpet solos.
McNeil ended his class by encouraging soloists to try to develop their own voice. He feels that students today have so much skill and knowledge but often lack ability to "sing" through the horn. McNeil has his university students always sing a chorus and then play a chorus. This has helped students relate singing and playing, with the result that the performer has more emotional connection to what they are playing and develops a stronger individual style.
