More info and registration form HERE!!!
Join me in June and July 2021 for 7 interactive online workouts to stay in shape, strengthen your fundamentals, and organize your practice goals!
More info and registration form HERE!!!
Join me in June and July 2021 for 7 interactive online workouts to stay in shape, strengthen your fundamentals, and organize your practice goals!
GENERAL NOTES FOR ALL ETUDES
ETUDE #1
ETUDE #2
ETUDE #3
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Warmups (beautiful and relaxed sound)
Technique
Etudes
Maintenance
Equipment
Mental
Etude Practice Tips
Just finished a fantastic week of trumpet masterclasses at the Longhorn Music Camp at the University of Texas at Austin! All handouts, exercises, and other pieces I gave the students are included in the packet below. Feel free to download and share with your students.
Topics covered included:
Warmups, tone development, technique, trumpet goal-setting, demonstrations of several different trumpets and mutes (always a highlight for the kids!), demonstrations of different styles/genres, a brief intro to jazz improvisation, fun pieces to practice over the summer (included in packet), and lots of listening examples of famous trumpet players
Hook em!
New video featuring a great technique exercise for beginners using the first 5 notes of 6 different major scales. Range and tempo are perfect for beginners who are ready to start moving the fingers and tongue in eighth note patterns.
Follow on-screen instructions for each key: 1. Identify difficult fingerings 2. Finger along with recording 3. Play!
Sheet music for this exercise also included here: Trumpet Technique #1 beginner
One of this year’s All-State etudes in Texas was composed by Oskar Bohme, a great trumpet player and composer during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Knowing a little about his life and listening to his other trumpet compositions can give us insight to better perform this etude.
Bohme was born and educated in Germany, though most of his professional career was in Russia. He composes in the Romantic style, which is rare for trumpet music (most of our repertoire is from either before or after the Romantic Era in the timeline of music history).
His best-known compositions are his Brass Sextet and Trumpet Concerto (video below). This music expresses a wide range of musical emotion: from sad and angst-filled minor-key melodies to beautifully gentle major-key melodies. I’d encourage us all to approach the All-State etude with similar emotional range.