Trumpet Studio

Trumpet Studio is primarily designed to help high school, college students, and Weekend Warriors develop their own practice and development programs to actively play in local ensembles. Having trumpet ensemble arrangements and compositions can help players begin rehearsing together for local performances! Below is my Trumpet Christmas that I will make available to any local group.

Here is my version of Trumpet Christmas for 8 trumpets.

Trumpet Studio will be exploring some important elements to use in our daily practice to prepare us for ensemble rehearsals and public performances in our local communities. When we connect our mind, our body, and soul to a live performance, the audience will respond and the music will make a connection in a powerful way. Please enjoy Trumpet Studio and if you have any suggestions, click Contact Us and drop us a line.

• Practice Sheets
• Embouchure vs. Aperture (coming later this year)
• Brassology
• Trumpet Ensembles
• Studio Blog (coming later this year)

During my career, I have had the privilege of being around many great players, teachers, and mentors, ever since I began studying the trumpet in 1961. Here are just some of the musicians that have enhanced my life in “life-order”.  Marcel Lafosse, Roger Voisin, Mel Broiles, Robert Nagel, Ken Austin, Gene Young, Charles Lirette, Calvin Price, Ray Mase, Charlie Lewis, Nat Paella, Dan Sappochetti, George Coble, Cliff Newton, Charlie Mattiessen, James Thompson,  Bill Pfund, Frank Kaderabek, Leonard Candelaria, Michael Arndt, Eric Berlin, David Hickman, Gary Malvern, Jeff Purdle, Harry Kim, Larry Black, Chris Martin, Woody Dotson,  Jamie Hafner, Pamela Voisin,  Charles Vernon and many other brass players have all contributed to my development and I have taken the best from all of them.  The brass chamber community has also enriched my understanding of the trumpet and over the years artists such as the  Canadian Brass  and the Empire Brass have added much to my musicianship and performance approaches.  The ITG (International Trumpet Guild) is also a fantastic resource to use and I plan to attend the 2020 ITG Conference in Columbus Ohio this summer.

History of Trumpet Studio

As you can see from the great players I have been fortunate to have in my career, I have provided me with certain things that great players have in common and things that they have that are unique. Since each of us are unique, we end up becoming our own teacher and need to apply the things that work for us based on our playing style and our understanding of our software (our mind) and hardware (our body and equipment). Here are some things I have found to be helpful in my playing development.

• Weakest Link
  • We are only as good as our “weakest link” in our playing so get to it and find your “weakest link”.  Then make it a stronger link.  Then do another inventory and find your next “weakest link” and get on that one BIG-TIME!.  Repeat often.   Good luck and let me know how you are doing.
• Know Thyself
  • This is easy to say but hard to do. I’m talking about your mind, your body, and your soul (Zen). Below is an inventory for you to consider. I am not offering any hot trumpet tips because I have not found any and I don’t think they even exist! But asking the right questions can lead to the right answers and the inventory process can help uncover what our next steps can be in our trumpet playing evolution. We ultimately must become our own teachers to achieve the grade we want.  Consider the grade of “B” which stands for “Better”. Better is a sustainable philosophy so go for the “B” (better)!
• In The Mind
  • Trumpet playing begins in the Mind and then expands to the body. It is our “software” and without it, our “hardware” will not get the job done.
• In The Body
  • Trumpet playing continues in the Body…
    • upper lip
    • lower lip
  • air stream
    • upstream
    • downstream
  • tongue
  • neck tilt
  • shoulders 
  • arms
  • hands
  • fingers
  • spine
  • diaphragm
  • abdominals
  • low breath
  • high breath
  • sitting
  • standing
  • legs
  • feet
• All of these elements influence our playing.
  • There is no way we can think about all of that AND play the notes never mind play the music. Unless we practice (and practice employing “practice sets”), good habits are hard to form. But if we are motivated to find our best, these good habits will kick in automatically so we don’t have to think about all of this when we are playing.

Master Artists

These fabulous musicians have all of this happening so we can learn a lot from them if we take the time to do so. In the year 2020, we have You Tube, websites, live performances, CDs, DVDs, MP3s, and the ITG Conferences at our disposal if we chose to utilize them.

Brassology

This is the brass pedagogy that can help the Mind organize itself with knowledge and insight to control the Body. Click here to visit Brassology. I also gave a link to other Trumpet Studios across the USA and click here to visit them.

Studio Practice Sheets

I encourage you to create your own Studio Sheets that pinpoint your “weakest link” and change it to your “stronger link” wilh daily drills… the RIGHT kind of daily drills. I have some above for you to get started. Then look for your new “weakest link” and make some more Studio Sheets. This puts you on the path of building good practice habits. Over the years as I have improved my playing skills, the old Studio Sheets haved morphed into better ones. Most of this material is not original. It has been derived from all the wonderful teachers, performers, and mentors that I have had the privilege and good fortune to know.

Later this year, I will activate the Studio Blog where we can all get to sharing our key learnings with each other.  There are also many other Trumpet On-Line groups that I will list here on this page.

More pictures will be added later this year.

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