Blog

Here’s a quick guide for anyone looking to upgrade their trumpet and/or mouthpiece beyond the beginner-level equipment students start with in the 6th grade.

First, please communicate with your lesson teacher and band director before purchasing anything. It’s important to make sure the student is ready for the new equipment and will benefit from the change.

MOUTHPIECE

Most schools in my area start students on a Bach 5C mouthpiece, which is a great size for most 6th grade students. As students grow, a slightly bigger mouthpiece will become a better fit (similar to the process of increasing shoe sizes as you grow). I recommend a Bach 3C mouthpiece, which is the most common mouthpiece played at the high school level. This mouthpiece will help students develop a more full and mature tone over time. Most students will be ready for this switch between 7th and 9th grade.

Notes: It’s best to purchase a regular 3C mouthpiece, so avoid alterations like megatone, etc. And please avoid cheaper off-brands on sites like Amazon.

TRUMPET

There are 2 brands of trumpets I recommend for upgrading. These are both professional-level instruments, so there will not be a need to upgrade beyond this in the future. I’ve personally owned both of these trumpets and have used both professionally in a wide variety of musical styles. I recommend students try both and go with their preference.

Yamaha Xeno (model number YTR-8337S)

Bach Stradivarius 37 (model number 108S37)

These are excellent instruments and should last a lifetime if properly cared for. They also retain their value quite well if you need to sell it down the road.

These trumpets can be purchased new or used. A used trumpet that was well-maintained will play beautifully and often won’t sound any worse than a new instrument. New trumpets can be purchased at any local music stores or online music retailers. For used instruments, I HIGHLY recommend Centex Brass. Good deals can also be found on sites like Facebook Marketplace, but please send such listings to your lesson teacher or band director before purchasing.

Thank you for your interest in upgrading to a new instrument, and reach out if you have further questions!

We’re going to have a bit of fun this week and listen to recordings of 8 famous trumpet players! There are SO MANY great trumpet players out there, but these 8 will give us a good start. We will hear 2 per day and vote on our favorite. Here are all the links to the recordings:

DAY 1

Alison Balsom vs. Maurice Andre

DAY 2

Caleb Hudson vs. Allen Vizzutti

DAY 3

Wynton Marsalis vs. Clark Terry

DAY 4

Wayne Bergeron vs. Maynard Ferguson

GENERAL NOTES FOR ALL ETUDES

• Healthy, high-quality trumpet playing is more important than these etudes. Warm up properly. Take care of your chops. Craft your sound. Be diligent with fundamentals. Being an outstanding trumpet player and musician is more important than playing the etudes over and over.
• Address any issues or weaknesses in your playing outside of practicing these etudes. Ask for help and find exercises to address your weaknesses.
• RECORD yourself as often as possible. Don’t wait to get “good” at the etudes to start recording yourself. Start now. You will gain a healthier perspective on your playing and notice things you otherwise might have missed.
• START WITH MUSIC. Listen to recordings and begin crafting your musical interpretation of the piece at the beginning of the process. What emotions are being expressed? Is there a story being told? Make up your own title or backstory to establish as much musical context as possible.
• ALWAYS SOUND GOOD. It doesn’t matter if you’re sightreading or if you’ve been working on the etude for months. Always produce a wonderful sound. Play slowly enough to produce a great sound. Speed is easy once habits of tone are established.
• DIRECT THE LISTENER’S ATTENTION TO THE MUSIC. If you play like a robot, the listener will judge you like a robot and focus on mistakes, technical deficiencies, etc. If you deliver an emotional and musical experience, the listener will be absorbed in the music, and small mistakes will become irrelevant.

ETUDE #1

• Arpeggios are collections of intervals. Make sure you are hearing each one.
• Always go slow enough to produce a great tone.
• Practice short sections slurred. Also try on the mouthpiece or singing to train your ears.

ETUDE #2

• This is the most music musically interesting etude. DO NOT leave any emotion or expressiveness on the table.
• FULLY understand the rhythms and be able to play everything in time. Once you can do that, give yourself the freedom to add rubato.
• VIBRATO: Make sure the core of the tone is established, and then add tasteful vibrato around the core of the sound.
• The chromatic scale in the cadenza is a musical event, not just a technical one.

ETUDE #3

• SUBDIVIDE. Dotted eighth and sixteenth notes are not triplets.
• Play this etude with a sense of sustain to establish your best tone. If you choose a shorter style after a good tone is established, that’s up to you!
• It’s a march, so groove is everything. Practice with a metronome or drum app regularly.
• Practice short sections slurred to make sure you are efficiently centering all intervals.
• This piece is repetitive, so use dynamics to your advantage.

I’ve been teaching lessons on Zoom for 5 or 6 months at this point, and I have grown to LOVE the platform and its effectiveness for teaching music lessons.

If we take a few minutes to learn how to sound and look your best on Zoom, you and your teacher will have a wonderful lesson experience. Remember: when you improve your sound on Zoom, your teacher will be hearing a more musically nuanced product and he/she will be able to give you more musically nuanced feedback.

• Understand that your computer/device is now an important part of your instrument. Your sound is being transferred from your instrument through your computer to your teacher. Understanding how the mic on your computer processes your tone is just as important as understanding how to make a good tone on your instrument. Any musician who has worked in a recording studio (or recorded from a home studio) will tell you that understanding the microphone is just as important as playing well.

• Allow your teacher to SEE you playing your instrument. Don’t sit in front of an open window (backlighting = bad — you will look like a shadow). Angle the camera slightly above you so your teacher can see hand position, posture, etc. Make sure the bell of your instrument isn’t blocking the camera (I’m looking at you, trumpet players).

• Understand how the ANGLE and DISTANCE from microphone affect the sound. Every instrument will be different. ANGLE refers to where you point your bell in relation to the mic. For example, directional instruments like trumpets and trombones probably should not point directly at their microphone. DISTANCE refers to how far your bell (or sound source) should be from the mic. Louder instruments might need to be farther from the mic than softer instruments.

• Use ORIGINAL SOUND on Zoom. To activate this setting on a computer: 1. Click the little arrow next the mute button 2. Click “Audio Settings” 3. Click “Advanced” in the lower right corner 4. Make sure box labeled “show in-meeting option to enable original sound” is checked 5. Go back to original Zoom meeting window and click box in upper left until it says “Turn OFF original sound” (this means original sound is ON, which we want)

• RECORD yourself on Zoom to understand what your teacher hears. Zoom has a record function! Open Zoom. Click “New Meeting” to host a meeting by yourself. Start video and audio so you can find the best lighting/camera angle. Press RECORD. Play the exact same thing with several different angles and mic distances. Also, talk on the recording to verify that your teacher can hear you speaking clearly. Listen to the recording to determine the best angle and distance for your instrument.

I promise, any effort you make to understand your Zoom audio will allow your teacher to be more nuanced/helpful/detailed with his/her comments. Have fun with your online lessons!

Here are a few notes from the April 24th masterclass with Dr. Joe Cooper, trumpet professor at Oklahoma State University. These are some of the specific suggestions he gave the student performers. I wrote them in a more general way for us all to apply to our own playing.

• Always work smarter, not harder
• Eliminate tension/inefficiency in right hand position – fingers should curve comfortably and naturally
• Use tongue level (raise tongue toward roof of mouth) and air attacks to address ranges that begin to feel uncomfortable or inefficient
• Tongue lighter on spots that have a lot of articulation
• Phrase more horizontally, less vertically
• Think more musically during technical passages
• Isolate and break down the most challenging spots into small units to practice separately
• Exaggerate different character changes in any piece of music
• Know what the piece is about (to you) and express those musical ideas
• Create as much tension (musical, not physical) and release in your performances

A huge THANK YOU to Dr Cooper for his time, expertise, and inspiration. Thank you to all 4 student performers for their excellent recordings, and thank you to all other students who listened and attended the class!

This page will be a list of resources to help us learn about the history of instruments in the brass family as well as insight into how these instruments are made.

Check out this really cool instrument guide on the Yamaha website. It includes a LOT of cool information about all instruments: how they are made, their history, proper care, etc.

The videos below give behind-the-scenes tours of instrument factories to show how trumpets, trombones, and tubas are made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kfdxvNXIyk

Today’s blog post is going to help us understand how to figure out minor scales. There are a few different ways to think about this process, and this post will focus on one method: figuring out minor scales by starting with its parallel major scale. Scales are parallel if they have the same root note (the first note of the scale). For example, C Major and C Minor are parallel because they both start and end on C. This method should be easy if you already know some (or all!) of your major scales.

There are three types of minor scales:

1. Natural Minor
2. Harmonic Minor
3. Melodic Minor

The example below starts with the key of C. It’s an easy key to manipulate since there are no sharps or flats in C Major.

The first step is converting major to natural minor. We do this by lowering the 3rd, 6th, and 7th notes of the scale by one half step. When lowering by a half step, naturals become flats (and sharps become naturals). Play C Major and C Natural Minor on your instrument, and you’ll immediately be able to hear the difference in musical flavor between major and minor.

The second step is converting major to harmonic minor. For this scale, only lower the 3rd and 6th notes. The 7th is not lowered.

The third step is converting major to melodic minor. This type of minor scale uses different pitches when ascending and descending. Only lower the 3rd note when ascending (6th and 7th notes stay the same as major). When descending, lower the 3rd, 6th, and 7th notes.

The example below shows this process in two different keys: C and A.

I suggest starting with one or two easy keys to get used to the process of lowering notes and become familiar with the sound of each type of minor scale. After that, challenge yourself to learn as many of the 12 keys as possible!

Many thanks to the Anderson High School band directors for inviting me to teach 2 weeks of daily masterclasses to their trumpet section (10 total!). And a HUGE thank you to the students for their attention, questions, and enthusiasm!

We covered a massive amount of material, which is summarized below with a link to all handouts passed out during the 2 weeks.

ANDERSON HS HANDOUTS 2019

Warmups (beautiful and relaxed sound)

• Leadpipe exercises
• Buzzing play-a-long videos
• Cichowicz
• Tone development exercises: dynamic long tones, bending, pedals

Technique

• Clarke #2
• Arban interval exercise
• Attack/Entrance exercise with metronome
• Lip Slurs/Flexibility Loops
• Single/Double/Triple tongue exercises
• Cross training: be creative to expand results of any exercise

Etudes

• Progression of 4 etudes from middle school to high school level (Hero’s Return, Coronation, 101, Olympus)
• 2019 All-State etudes
• 2019 All-State Jazz etudes and improv

Maintenance

• Oil before valves are stuck
• Clean mouthpiece weekly (2 seconds)
• Clean leadpipe monthly (10 seconds)
• Disassemble and clean entire trumpet twice annually

Equipment

• Mouthpiece parts/function
• Upgrading trumpet
• Consult lesson teacher/band director before buying new equipment
• Trumpet mute demos: straight, cup, harmon, plunger, solotone
• Trumpet demos: Bb, C, piccolo, flugelhorn

Mental

• Setting goals: long-term and short-term
• Successful section-building
• Inspiration from videos and live performances

Etude Practice Tips

• Play musically! Add lyrics or a storyline to inspire creativity
• Consult recordings of etudes and pieces that are similar
• Record yourself frequently
• Develop range and techniques outside of etude
• Find other pieces that address similar concepts to keep practicing fresh (ex: Pictures at an Exhibition)
• Tone first!
• Fully address weaknesses in your playing