Where is YOUR bar? Not the closest watering hole as they say in Texas. Where have you set the bar for your playing? People wonder if it is fair that I say they needed to have things ready on 1 days notice. That depends. Do you want to be the player every one counts on to be perfect, or do you always want to sit in the audience and watch the player that everyone counts on? My level of meanness is based on the level of a students knowledge and skill. I treat a comeback player who stopped in High School a lot different than someone who is auditioning for Grad school and I treat them different than a good full time pro player. The better you get the higher the bar and that is how we constantly improve. But the bar isn’t what we can work up. It is […]
Continue readingCategory Archives: Practice routines
Practice routines
Making a practice routine
People ask me all the time about a practice routine. The fact is that every player is at a different point and that changes weekly. The best person to give you a routine is YOU. Look through every one of the method books that you can get your hands on and write down the types of technique that are involved. Keep track of how many times each technique is shown in all the books. (That gives an idea of how important that the authors thinks it is.) Now play some of each technique. (ie double tonguing) and rate how well you do that. Play and rate each type of technique. Now on your chart you have each technique and a rating of your skill. The 1st thing is to attack the low scores. You want things to be even. ie you feel slurs are the weak link so then you […]
Continue readingFree Public Domain Trumpet Methods
Expanded Arban The Arban book has been the mainstay of Trumpet practice for well over 100 years. However; no revisions have ever been made to the exercises in it. The range in the Arban book was stuck at the top of the staff; with a few limited High Cs included. For example there were 16 exercises for the C scale. Only 1 of the 16 had a high C in it. The majority of exercises were written for what is now a middle school range. This is a problem because to expand you range, you have to practice to the top note of your range every day. If you only play 3-10 high Cs a day then High D will NEVER become a good note. I took exercises from the major sections of the book and some songs and raised them step by step up to Double High C. I also included […]
Continue readingMy lesson with Pops – Kurt Schulenburg
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 07:43:27 -0500 From: “Kurt Schulenburg” Subject: My Lesson with Pops Hey all! Well, I’d love to post the story of the ultimate trumpet lesson here on the list, complete with all sordid details, but the trip has left my brain more than a little dead.(Too many hours in Memorial Day traffic…) With that in mind, I’m going to give an overview–chock full of opinions and impressions–and one that is certainly all my spin on a reality designed to help ME with MY particular problems. Once my head clears a bit, I’ll be posting a more detailed story on my Web Page–no need to clutter the list with all of my subjective points of view. So, if you’re curious, check it out more towards Friday or Saturday… I should start with the “why” of this idea–“Why did I travel hundreds of miles to take a six […]
Continue readingHow do you practice the Arban, Clarke & Schlossberg?
The Complete Arban is broken into sections: First studies from pages 11-22 (Play 1 page daily for a week) Syncopation 23-36 (Play 1 page daily for a week) Slurs 39-56 (Play 1 page daily for a week) Scale studies 59-87 (Play 2 pages daily for a week) Turns,trills,shakes….. 91-122 (Play 2 pages daily for a week) Intervals,Triplets & sixteenth notes 125-141 (Play 1 page daily for a week) Chords 142-152 (Play 1 page daily for a week) Triple Tonguing 155-174 (Play 1 page daily for a week) Double & Applied Tonguing 175-190 (Play 1 page daily for a week) After some of the smaller sections of the Arban are complete and you are used to this you can start working on : One of the 14 Characteristic Studies Pages 285-299 and/or One of the 12 Fantaisies & variations pages 301-347. Clarke Technical Studies is broken into 10 lessons: You […]
Continue reading