Monday, August 06, 2018

Tuning Slide 4.4- It's in the Basics

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music


Success is neither magical nor mysterious.
Success is the natural consequence of consistently
applying the basic fundamentals.
—Jim Rohn

I had already decided on this week’s theme before this year’s Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop. But right from the beginning of the week I realized that this was no coincidence. I return every year to Shell Lake to be reminded and renewed in the basics of being a trumpet player, musician, and human. Success is always in the basics- and working on the basics every day.

My thinking on this started a month or so ago when I had a trumpet lesson with a local musician. I knew that he would help me in a number of areas and I knew it would be about some of the fundamentals. I just didn’t know which ones- and what to do about it. That, of course, is why we need to have a teacher and take lessons. We don’t know what we don’t know, and we can’t be entirely objective about what we are doing. It takes someone outside of my own head to hear what I am doing and what I need to do about it.

It is always about the basics. First and always and forever, it’s about the sound. It is making the best sound, the sound that resonates with myself and others, the sound that “plays well with others,” the sound that I am hearing in my head and wants to come out through the horn. As my mentors at Shell Lake emphasize over and over, the sound is what we focus on. It is learning to listen to the rich harmonics possible in any given note for each note, as they tell me, is the whole universe in and of itself.

Second, and as essential as the first, is the rhythm. How do I work on rhythm? Articulation comes to mind. So does singing the part or exercise. Catching the rhythm is basic to sight reading I am finding out.

Third, and often overlooked by most of us in practice, is patient slowness. We want to play it up to speed as soon as possible. We want to sound like Clifford Brown in one of his incredible be-bop licks or take that whole Clarke etude in one breath like it indicates. But if I haven’t discovered the sound (tone) or rhythm (articulation and phrasing) it will be just a bunch of notes with no life in them. In order to get to that point, I have to take it slow! I can’t help but think of the lyrics of one of the songs in West Side Story when I hear this:
Boy, boy, crazy boy
Stay loose, boy!
Breeze it, buzz it, easy does it
Turn off the juice, boy!

So, in my lesson, what did the teacher do? He took me back to the basics, of course. Since he, like my Shell Lake mentors, was a student of the great trumpet instructor Bill Adam at Indiana University, he had me pull out the tuning slide and just “play the tube.” Breathe and let the air vibrate. Find the center of the tube- and the sound. Listen to it. Improve it. Breathe it. I could feel my sound relax and center. I could feel the tension decrease. It’s the basics, man, just the basics.

Next, still on sound, we started on long tones and long scale tones. Because of what I was hoping for, part of it was to make the sound as soft as possible. Pianissimo. Soft. Quiet. Breathe it soft. Keep the sound centered. Keep the breath moving. (Last week one of my teachers there noticed I needed to do some work on that as well. Another piece of my puzzle added.)

Now it’s the to add some rhythm work- articulation. He had me turn to one of the basic rhythm exercises in the Arban’s book (the ultimate basics of trumpet playing!) and play them keeping the sound and notes connected. After over 56 years of playing trumpet, I had never really ever worked on this before. (Amazing what happens when your last lesson before a few years ago was when Lyndon Johnson was president!) Listen to the sound! Keep the breath moving. Keep the notes connected as I articulate.

Finally, the overall basic for this lesson- take it slow! Don’t rush through it. Do the long tones- slowly. Do the scales and chromatics- slowly. Do the rhythm and articulation exercises- slowly. Find the way to do them slowly but with purpose and energy. Slow can be dull and boring, or it can be filled with potential energy being released.

Two weeks after that lesson I went to the Brass Festival in North Carolina- and I was knocked over by the change in my sound and breath. I do not need to be convinced of the importance of the basics. I see the results in my playing. I hear and feel the results in my playing.

The basics. Now as much as ever. Perhaps even more so now. It is easy to get the feeling that one has learned all the simple stuff. That is for beginners. No. The trumpet, as many trumpet players have said, is a very unforgiving instrument. It will be putty in your hands one day and a piece of ice unwilling to bend the next. It is always in the basics that I learn to keep moving forward. If I do nothing else with my trumpet on any given day, I must always do the basics.

It is just as true in my own daily life. I can get complacent about what I am doing or what is happening around me. I can lose the center of my life, moving into the out-of-tune sections that can lead me to boredom, fear, or just plain laziness. Each day I need to work on my own basics.
  • Sound- the tone of my life. Is my tone happy or sad, accepting or judging, willing to work with or working against others? That is the internal. It is my mood, my feelings, my inner reactions to what is happening around me. Mindfulness to these is basic.
  • Articulation- how I show it. Do I act out my internal struggles or feelings, taking it out on others, blaming others for my stuff, ignore what is my responsibility? This is the external. How I respond to others is important for it can and will impact all my relationships.
  • Patience- Stay loose and keep moving. I have to know I can’t be perfect, so don’t try to rush things in order to get past them and ignore them. Turn down the juice and keep cool.
Every day, in whatever ways I can, it is all about the basics. They are, after all, the only way to get where I want to be.

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