Expectations

At the risk of sounding like I'm writing a self help book, I think it is important to say that you are capable of much more than you think. When I teach lessons I always start off by doing a bit of call and response with my student, starting with playing on the leadpipe and moving through various long tone, arpeggio, tonguing exercises, etc.

Especially with younger students it does not take long before they have no idea what notes they are actually playing, and are just listening and watching me and then copying. I usually extend their range up as high as possible without excessive tension or pressure. I will then ask them to read some music, and I quite frequently get the response "I can't play that high" or something similar, even though we just played considerably higher with no problem (though they don't know that). I tell them to play it anyway, and most of the time they do fail in their attempt to hit that high note that they were convinced couldn't be hit. I then show them that they actually just played higher, and we go through part of the warmup again with them knowing this, but still just focused on the sound. Now when they attempt the impossible piece, they can magically play that high note.

Except of course that it's not magic. As my previous posts have been pointing out, thinking about the possibility of failure invariably leads to the kind of tension that causes problems on trumpet (and virtually anything else you do). This is one of the reasons that good practice is so crucial. Practicing in a focused, consistent manner leads to consistency in playing, which leads to less thoughts of failure, which leads to better playing. Like I said in my last post, Clarke studies are great for this (with a metronome), focusing on sound, precision, and airflow (Simply focusing on sound will take care of precision by itself, but you must listen very closely and have a clear idea of what you want to sound like. You get ragged edges in your playing when you don't have this clear idea).

Artless Art, part III

Make sure you have read Artless Art, parts I and II before continuing.

After reading my previous posts you may be thinking to yourself, "that all sounds great, but how do I actually train my mind to not care?" And the answer (as if it could be anything else) is practice. Yes, you already practice, but what are you training yourself to do with the way that you practice now? Practice that leads us away from our goal is useless. It is difficult for the mind to retrain itself, so we must use the body to train the mind.

I find that the most effective way to achieve this transformation is to treat trumpet playing as a ritual, and this must be done every single time the horn comes up to the lips. During this ritual it is important to not be concerned with playing trumpet, and simply focus on the ritual. We start before the horn comes up (you can actually do this part now). Most people have an unbelievable amount of tension built up in the facial muscles, and we will release that tension.

Start with your lips touching. Now, feel the muscles around your cheek bone just let go, as though they are dropping to the floor, and gradually transfer this feeling down to the bottom of your cheeks. Give it time, and let all of the tension leave. Release the tension in the corners of your lips, and feel that move towards the center of your lips (which are still together). Let the area above the lips let go and drop your lips to the ground.

In this relaxed state, bring the trumpet to the lips without changing the lips. Once the trumpet is on the lips go through the process again. You want to be comfortable with the trumpet just sitting on your lips with no thought of playing. It should feel natural, and you should not be antsy to play. Now that you have the trumpet comfortably on your relaxed lips you start the countoff, for we always breathe in rhythm (preferably with a metronome). 1...2...3...inhale (a huge, deep inhale) which you do not stop, but which is interrupted by the sound that you hear vividly in your head. The external results (the way you sound) may not be pleasant for a while, but it doesn't matter. Just keep practicing and listening harder to get a more detailed sound model in your head.

It is extremely important to not cheat yourself by letting a little tension stay because you feel more secure with it. It may help to do this a few times without going past the point of the inhale, so that you get used to not thinking about playing as you go through the ritual.

Besides this ritual, I find Clarke studies and songs (like those in The Art of Phrasing section of the Arban) to be great for moving past just starting a note to playing whole phrases. Keep your focus on the sound that you have vividly in your head and on keeping your air moving through the trumpet.

Random

I finally got around to watching the movie Madea's Family Reunion, which I was in. I am on-screen as a member of the wedding band, but more exciting for me is that I wrote and played the fanfare announcing the entrance of the bride. I was a little dissapointed in the take that they ended up using because the other trumpet player and I did not start quite together. For reasons that were not clear to me, they had us standing on opposite sides of the room from each other to do the recording as they videotaped people on-screen pretending to play the fanfare, and they chose the take that we flubbed the beginning (it lined up the best with the actors and they were behind schedule). I won't complain too much though. It's pretty cool hearing yourself play in a major movie, and even better that I wrote it. You can hear it here (I only wrote the fanfare, not the cheesy stuff that comes after). If you see the movie I am the guy sitting to the left of Maya Angelou.

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Pines of Rome

John Head was my teacher in college, and here he is playing the Pines of Rome offstage solo with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. That is the way a trumpet should sound. Rich, resonant, and effortless.

Artless Art, part II

(If you have not yet read my post Artless Art, do so before continuing with the current post)

I will work backwards from the passages that I excerpted in my previous post and first look at this:

I had to admit to the master that this interpretation made me more confused than ever. "For ultimately," I said, "I draw the bow and loose the shot in order to hit the target. The drawing is thus a means to an end, and I cannot lose sight of this connection. The child knows nothing of this, but for me the two things cannot be disconnected."

"The right art," cried the Master, "is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen."

I can't do a better job than the Master at describing the concept (I am no master), but I will try to add a little bit and relate it to trumpet. The preceding passage gets to the heart of the title of my post, Artless Art, which certainly sounds nonsensical at first. Zen has been called the "everyday mind," which basically means that tasks are carried out without unnecessary analysis and concern. The body does many complex things when eating or talking, yet we do not concern ourselves with interfering in the process. When we are hungry we eat, when we need to communicate we talk. The body is capable of great things if we don't get in the way, which is where artless art comes in.

When we think of art we rarely think of it is being a normal, everyday occurrence. It is given an importance above the everyday, and therefore we analyze our actions more, and consciously get involved in the process, which only interferes with what the body is capable of doing (if you tense up before you play a note you are getting involved in the process). Artless art occurs therefore when art ceases to be treated differently than the everyday, when you have no more desire to tense up or worry about the results from playing trumpet than sitting down. I wrote more about this previously, before I started learning about Zen.

And now the first part of the excerpt hopefully makes more sense:

"I understand well enough," I said, "that the hand mustn't be opened with a jerk if the shot is not to be spoiled. But however I set about it, it always goes wrong. If I clench my hand as tightly as possible, I can't stop it shaking when I open my fingers. If, on the other hand, I try to keep it relaxed, the bowstring is torn from my grasp before the full stretch is reached-unexpextedly, it is true, but still too early. I am caught between these two kinds of failure and see no way of escape." "You must hold the drawn bowstring," answered the Master, "like a little child holding the proffered finger. It grips it so firmly that one marvels at the strength of the tiny fist. And when it lets the finger go, there is not the slightest jerk. Do you know why? Because a child doesn't think: I will now let go of the finger in order to grasp this other thing. Completely unself-consciously, without purpose, it turns from one to the other, and we would say that it was playing with the things, if it were not equally true that the things are playing with the child."

"Maybe I understand what you are hinting at with this comparison," I remarked. "But am I not in an entirely different situation? When I have drawn the bow, the moment comes when I feel: unless the shot comes at once I shan't be able to endure the tension. And what happens then? Merely that I get out of breath. So I must loose the shot at once whether I want to or not, because I can't wait for it any longer."

"You have described only too well," replied the Master, "where the difficulty lies. Do you want to know why you cannot wait for the shot and why you get out of breath before it has come? The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You do not wait for fullfillment, but brace yourself for failure. So long as that is so, you have no choice but to call forth something yourself that ought to happen independently of you, and so long as you call it forth your hand will not open in the right way-like the hand of a child. Your hand does not burst open like the skin of a ripe fruit."

When you realize that playing trumpet is just an everyday task you can let go like a child. There is no need to hold your air back after an inhale, no need to build up pressure, no need to tense the face. Breathe in and let go. Let the sound take you by suprise as though you are just an observer and vividly imagine the sound that you want the player to sound like.

Again, I would recommend getting a copy of the book yourself.

(update 9/12) Continue to Artless Art, part III.

Woody Play

You listen (from Woody Shaw: Setting Standards).

And to make your day complete, how about some Freddie Hubbard (from Art Blakey: Free For All) and Booker Little (from Booker Little: Out Front)

Something Different

This doesn't have to do with trumpet, but this may be of interest if you are looking for new, exciting methods of music education. I got involved with a program at Georgia State University called Sound Learning. The point of Sound Learning is that musicians have residencies in schools and instead of the standard approach of going in, talking a little bit about the instruments, and playing a lame concert (okay, they're not all lame), the musicians actually collaborate with the teachers to set up a project that is related to the curriculum and gets the students actively involved in making music.

I did residencies in two schools this past year, working with an entire grade level in each school. For the residency with 2nd graders at Fernbank Elementary I was a composer and worked with a woodwind quintet. We explored how composers use music to represent other things (for examples the quintet played my transcriptions of Debussy's The Sea and Saint-Saens's The Elephant). The teachers wanted us to relate to the states of water and the water cycle, so we decided to have the students help me compose a piece with a sections representing the three states of water.

The students were responsible for coming up with the themes and quite a bit of the accompaniment for each state of water, plus the instrumentation of the themes and the form of the piece. I provided transitions, fleshed out the instrumentation, wrote parts for the children to sing, plus translated their notation. Finally, the children performed and recorded the pieces with the wodwind quintet. You can see how all of this worked and listen to all of the pieces here. Here is one class's piece.

The other residency with 3rd graders at Centennial Place Elementary I worked with Adam Neal, and we guided the students to write and record their own songs. Though we guided them, all music was actually written and performed by the students. The students were broken up into groups of about 4-5, and their songs had to be about the body systems. You can read about our process and listen to all of the songs here, but here is one of them to listen to.

Artless Art

The book Zen in the Art of Archery, by Eugen Herrigel, has had a profound effect on my playing. I would highly recommend getting a copy yourself, but I have pulled out one of the passages that I found to be particularly illuminating.

Herrigel, who was a German philosopher, traveled to Japan to gain an understanding of Zen. In the pursuit of this understading he studied archery for six years with a Zen Master. In this passage, Herrigel has been having trouble loosing the shot smoothly (letting go of the arrow).

The Master was evidenty less horrified by my failure than I myself. Did he know from experience that it would come to this? "Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out!" he exclaimed. "The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by suprise. It must be as if the bowstring suddenly cut though the thumb that held it. You mustn't open the right hand on purpose."

After months of fruitless practice, Herrigel has this conversation with the Master:

"I understand well enough," I said, "that the hand mustn't be opened with a jerk if the shot is not to be spoiled. But however I set about it, it always goes wrong. If I clench my hand as tightly as possible, I can't stop it shaking when I open my fingers. If, on the other hand, I try to keep it relaxed, the bowstring is torn from my grasp before the full stretch is reached-unexpextedly, it is true, but still too early. I am caught between these two kinds of failure and see no way of escape." "You must hold the drawn bowstring," answered the Master, "like a little child holding the proffered finger. It grips it so firmly that one marvels at the strength of the tiny fist. And when it lets the finger go, there is not the slightest jerk. Do you know why? Because a child doesn't think: I will now let go of the finger in order to grasp this other thing. Completely unself-consciously, without purpose, it turns from one to the other, and we would say that it was playing with the things, if it were not equally true that the things are playing with the child."

"Maybe I understand what you are hinting at with this comparison," I remarked. "But am I not in an entirely different situation? When I have drawn the bow, the moment comes when I feel: unless the shot comes at once I shan't be able to endure the tension. And what happens then? Merely that I get out of breath. So I must loose the shot at once whether I want to or not, because I can't wait for it any longer."

"You have described only too well," replied the Master, "where the difficulty lies. Do you want to know why you cannot wait for the shot and why you get out of breath before it has come? The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You do not wait for fullfillment, but brace yourself for failure. So long as that is so, you have no choice but to call forth something yourself that ought to happen independently of you, and so long as you call it forth your hand will not open in the right way-like the hand of a child. Your hand does not burst open like the skin of a ripe fruit."

I had to admit to the master that this interpretation made me more confused than ever. "For ultimately," I said, "I draw the bow and loose the shot in order to hit the target. The drawing is thus a means to an end, and I cannot lose sight of this connection. The child knows nothing of this, but for me the two things cannot be disconnected."

"The right art," cried the Master, "is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen."

I will leave you with that for now. I don't want to guide your thinking too much right now by saying how I relate that passage to my playing, but I would love it if you would join more for a discussion in the comments. I plan on coming back to this passage and the rest of the book a few more times, so try and read it yourself (it's cheap and only about 80 pages).

(update 7/18) Continue to Artless Art, part II.

Random Tip

Do not buzz your lips. I know your band director probably tells you to, but it is one of the biggest causes of almost all problems related to trumpet playing. You just blow through relaxed, close lips. They will start to vibrate, but you should not be consciously forcing your lips to vibrate.