The Secret to Successful Trumpet Practice

pay attention focus on what you're doing look at the notes play [Music] better how can you try to be relaxed it's almost like an oxymoron because the act of trying is by definition creates tension a lot of the things that I suggest for example being hyper aware of posture and again that's different than a prescribed posture I'm I'm not saying that one should sit up straight although there's a lot of reasons that that would be better but to be aware of posture and and specifically to make a habit of reminding yourself to tap into the sensation of posture is a really good habit to develop to allow for ease to enter your practice so let's say you were working on fundamentals and just doing scales first of course it's important to know exactly what you want to sound like so let's say G major you want to have a perfectly resonant note instantaneously the release of the tongue creates the sound immediately with a nice polished Decay on every note so that's the definition of the sound but in terms of how you actually do that I think it's important for your actual conscious awareness to be tuned into the posture sensation [Music] and that's actually quite different than feeling like you're actually actively playing and actively trying to play with ease we've all been in that situation where we were visibly upset and someone barked at us to calm down or relax and obviously it's not something that you normally in the those situations can do but by developing the habit of checking in with your posture and almost doing a bit of a body scan you can notice the subtlest tension before it creeps up into your playing to the point where it's audible or actually holding you [Music] back now of course this is easier to do at first with simple stuff long tones would be a great place to start [Music] just enjoying the Resonance of the notes that are coming out of your trumpet comparing the sound that's hitting your eardrums with the sound in your imagination but in terms of your active participation you're really just noticing things [Music] and there's a lot of reasons this is really cool one the ease becomes kind of automatic it's not something you're telling yourself to do it's just something you can feel right off the bat the other thing is there's less in the way between your imagination and the execution which again on trumpet and I would argue in most physical activities are totally automatic and are only a result of our habit so this is a way of being hyper aware of what those habits are really listening very carefully to the details and not in a judgmental way not a listening and and and feeling ashamed or proud about how well or not well it's going but just simply noticing and interestingly it winds up sounding better [Music] developing this habit of tapping into the sensation of posture and listening very deeply to the room and the sound coming out of your trumpet is super helpful when it comes to Stage Fright by the way often the sensation of being scared on stage can feel a lot like your entire being is suddenly trapped in your head and you're looking with laser beam eyes hyperfocus and in fact we're often told to focus from Grown UPS pay attention focus look at the notes play better when really I think that the better place consciously to go about playing trumpet is actually to tap into a broader sensation of awareness so visually instead of laser beam at the music or at a point in space you can notice your peripheral vision for example as a tool it's a bit of a trick but just even now as I'm talking see if you can notice the generally oval shaped periphery that surrounds your your general field of vision and looking why that weight opens opens up your senses and at the same time notice what it feels like to just simply sit there and then when you go to pick up your trumpet right now just play any note maybe a g on B flat trumpet and let the measure of the success of this note be whether you're able to stay tuned into those raw sensory data points points versus whether the note was good or not if the note was great and it didn't feel effortless and you actually felt like you had to think something specific to play it that's not Mastery and that effortlessness doesn't come automatically it's something that absolutely needs to be [Music] rehearsed now a less mature player might have trouble practicing this slowly it often feels like we don't have time to sit in a practice room and only work on a single note getting it to speak with ease but anyone that has experienced being on stage in a setting where the quality standard is very high the thing that is stressful about trumpet is simply producing a sound where it's free and effortless and exactly how as you intended it to be now some of you that are familiar with meditation might recognize that a lot of what I'm saying here sounds synonymous with that and it sort of is meditation is simply paying attention and in fact there's no other way to get better at a trumpet or any skill other than to pay attention you need a system to be able to give you instantaneous feedback that is useful one analogy I like to use with this is throwing maybe a dart at a dartboard or throwing a crumpled up piece of paper in a recycling bin what's nice about a simple system like this is that when you throw it in the the feedback is instantaneous you could see where the thing went it either went in or not it went right or left or far or short or any combination of that and so without any conscious intervention as long as you're noticing these details you'll gradually get better to the point where you're getting it in pretty much every time importantly that is the case even if you're not genetically or some other way predisposed to be good at this type of an activity I would even say that somebody that's set up to be poor at this type type of an activity would eventually get to the point where they're getting it in every single time now this is actually quite fascinating because as trumpet players we tend to take credit for our victories how we figured out how to double tongue or we figured out how to lip Trill or any of these things when it's not really the case the learning process is literally automatic it's actually quite inevitable if the system is set up to be that simple you get instant feedback that shows you exactly what is different between your intention and the outcome now of course having a clear intention is super important and I'm sure you've heard this before if you don't know how you want it to sound there's no way of knowing whether you actually accomplished that intention or not so the intention needs to be clear and then the feedback needs to be instantaneous and useful now the reason I like to emphasize body awareness or posture awareness or even this periphery Vision but especially listening closely is because it distracts the chatting mind which likes to think it plays trumpet but really doesn't and it gives it something else to chew on while that learning process just unfolds quite [Music] naturally so you can experiment with this in your daily routine but you could also experiment with it every time you start the opening to a piece maybe an excerpt like pictures at an exhibition instead of overthinking what it should be like to play it or how it should sound have the mental image in your mind but just tap into the sensation of sitting which includes the [Music] pulse even if it doesn't go well if you're really just prioritizing that ease and the paying attention aspect what can be discovered from this type of practice is the Sensation that you're actually just uh a conscious observer in the trumpet playing activity which can be quite mindboggling actually now a lot of people think that it takes mastering the instrument before this happens but I would say that that's not the case it's easier to notice that when you've mastered the instrument but every part of trumpet playing even a brand new skill is one that happens automatically we M make the mistake of thinking that because it's a new skill we have to think about it to do it making the assumption that thinking about it actually helps when of course it doesn't that inner voice that talks about playing the trumpet literally cannot play never will and never has play the trumpet so just be a be relaxed and notice the sensations of sitting with good posture and a balanced posture and listen for a resonant sound the [Music]

Channel: tonebase Trumpet

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Id: YXEmBPXl-hI

Length: 10min 39sec (639 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 10 2024