Tuning Slide 5.31- The "Greats" of Making Music

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

There are three characteristics of a great trumpet player:
1. Every time you play you have a great- not a good- sound.
2. You have great- not good- rhythm.
3. You have great- not good- ears to hear the sound.
— Bob Baca, Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop

n my music study a few months ago I came across an Internet post: 5 Music Theory Concepts Every Musician Should Know. The post had the following five concepts:

1 - Form
You can’t talk about the arrangement of a song without a solid understanding of form and the vocabulary to complement this understanding. I… You won’t get far as a working musician without a solid grip of form and its accompanying terminology.

2 - Functional Harmony
Knowledge of functional harmony will absolutely be the one thing that helps you learn material the fastest. Being aware of chord tendencies will help you predict what the next chord in a song will be, and will help you hone in on mistakes when one player isn’t in sync with everyone else.

3 - Consistent Rhythm
There is nothing more annoying than being saddled with a musician who is always pushing or pulling at the tempo. … It’s all well and good to be able to play in 7/8, but if you don’t have a solid internal clock while you’re doing it, nobody will care.

4 - Ear Training
Being able to hear a musical line, internalize what you think the notes are, then repeat it on your instrument is key to being a successful musician.

5 - Reading and Literacy
Can you be a musician without learning to read music? Sure, it’s possible. Will you be an even better musician if you do learn how to read music? Yes, it’s absolute.

I was reminded at that moment of the Three Greats from the above Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop quote: Sound, rhythm, ear.

◆ Sound
Music is organized sound.
— Edgard Varese

Sound is at the heart of music. Sound is things like tone, harmony, mood, loudness. I have worked hard over the past few years at getting a better sound. For me that meant not being “flat” or “dull” in my music. It included playing with “energy” so the music feels “alive.”

◆ Rhythm
Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.
— Igor Stravinsky

Now we are talking about the “beat” and the “tempo.” We have “melody” added along with the feel of the “movement” of the music, the “groove” and the “swing.” One quote I found said that music is arithmetic- we “count.”

◆ Ear/Listening
It's easy to get next to music theory, especially between your peers and music classes and so forth. You just pay attention. I had a good ear, so I realized that printed music was just about reminding you what to play.
— Quincy Jones

When we have worked on our musical “ear”, we can begin to know what it is that the music is doing without sole reliance on printed music. Listening I think makes “sight-reading” easier since we can look at a piece of previously unseen music and know what it might sound like. But it is also the ability to play with others, “blending” the different parts into a complete whole.

◆ All Together
All well and good. Now I had three things that had their own individual areas. But music is not found in three independent boxes; music is the combining of all these and more into the complete music. To be a “great” musician, Mr. Baca was telling us, you have to have all three of those and they need to work together. They are in a relationship. You can’t be “great” with any of them alone.

So I put together this visual for myself and played around with it for a while. Instead of putting each of the three separately, I put them in a “relationship.” As I did some brainstorming (or “mind-mapping” as it is called) is put those other boxes in-between the three different “greats” to show what they had in common- the box between “sound” and “rhythm”; the box between “rhythm” and “ear” and the box between “ear” and “sound.” They all merge into what we call “music.”

I do not pretend that this is either exhaustive or even scientific. It is my idea of what I have been working within these three areas over the years. Again, it is to show that what we call music is a lot of different things that come together. What I plan to do, then, is to take a week on each of the three relationships. First I will explore the things that make up the duo of Sound and rhythm, then sound and ear, and then ear and rhythm. Finally, I will bring them all together into music. Again, not exhaustive, but rather a starting point for myself and hopefully for you to do some thinking, planning, practicing, and discovering what music is for you. The goal is to be a better musician and, I think, to be reminded that it is a very poor experience of reality to put everything into separate boxes and keep them from interacting.

I am sure I will miss some things in this series. It is what I have discovered. Each of us will look at music from a different perspective and see different relationships. That is more than just okay- that is what making music together is all about. Think about it in the next week and I will take on sound and rhythm next week.

Tuning Slide 5.13- The Tools of Mindfulness

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

“What day is it?” asked Pooh.
“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
“My favorite day,” said Pooh.
— A. A. Milne

Last week a friend and I were emailing back and forth about “playing the lead pipe” of the trumpet. He was trying some different practice techniques and was sharing what he found with me.

He had just experienced the fundamental foundation of the teaching of Bill Adam- playing the lead pipe to get started each day. (No, I admit, I don’t do that on a regular basis.) Its purpose is to get the player to listen. The goal is not to play the lead pipe in tune. Each lead pipe plays a slightly different note based on length, etc. The goal is to hear the rich, full sound of the proper airflow into the mouthpiece and lead pipe. There is no tuner use with this- we tune the instrument with the tuning slide which compensates for the different tunings of different lead pipes, horns, etc. Play the lead pipe, I was told, and listen for the sound to center and become more full. Some claim to even hear a sound like an old phone ringing when you reach that point. The rest of the goal is to remember that we play every note on the horn that same way. The lead pipe sound and airflow are the foundation. From his experience, my friend had just reinforced for me the insights that Mr. Adam and his students have built over all these years.

[Side note: here is another take on this:]

As I was responding to my friend I realized that some of the reasons this works as it does are because it tunes the ear to listen as well as the lips to form the right shape, the breath to flow smoothly, the arms to hold the trumpet in the right position, and the brain to get in sync with what we’re doing.

In short, it develops mindfulness. And as one moves deeper into what one is paying attention to through mindfulness, it rewires the brain to play the music. It is both muscle memory and aural, hearing memory being developed. I have talked many times over the years about mindfulness. It is a basic, and for me, essential daily skill. Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the most famous modern proponents of mindfulness, defines it as “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally…”

When I talk about being more consistent with the mindfulness portion of my routine, I mean I need to slow down and pay deeper attention to what I’m doing. I need to continue the ongoing re-wiring of my brain that improves my musicianship. I am talking about the times I do long tones and flow studies and building awareness through lead pipe playing.

There are mental tools that can be used to strengthen our mindfulness. Wikibooks has a series of articles about what are called “Core Mindfulness Skills.” In that, they present three WHAT tools and three HOW tools.

The WHAT tools
◦ Observe: is simply experiencing, with awareness, your feelings, your thoughts, and sensations directly without the use of words. (Link)
◦ Describe is putting words on experience and experience into words. (Link)
◦ Participate is the skill of throwing yourself into your objectives whole-heartedly without self-consciousness. (Link)

For example, when playing long tones or flow studies, I start by just observing, listening to what I am playing. I (try to) make no judgment, just listen and pay attention to what it sounds like and what it feels like. As I listen, I try to describe what I am hearing or feeling. I will then be participating in the experience. The sounds are with me and come through me. It is at these points that I begin to notice differences as I play. It is at this point that I begin to use the HOW tools.

The HOW tools
◦ Take a nonjudgmental stance. See, but don’t evaluate. Just the facts. Focus on the “what,” not the “good” or “bad,” the “terrible” or “wonderful,” the “should” or “should not.” (Link)
◦ One-mindfully is sustained attention on the present moment which develops concentration. (Link)
◦ Effectively- Focus on what works. Do what needs to be done in each situation. (Link)

This is where you begin to develop the insight into playing and are allowing the sounds to adapt and deepen. Notice I am not saying that the sounds “get better” or that the sound is “bad.” This is not to be a judgment on our part as we listen. It is about the sound and what the sound is like. We do this with a focus that is important. We need that focus or we lose the sound. We notice that and maintain the concentration in the present moment. In this time we then learn what works and what doesn’t. We discover what and when the sound falls into place, becomes richer, closer to what we are listening for and how it just sounds centered.

This can work in other ways when playing in a group of some kind. We are often told to listen to the group. Next time begin by listening, non-judgmentally and with a focus on the person next to you and try to play with them. One of the directors at the Birch Creek camp this past summer suggested we do that. I was amazed at what it did to my awareness of the music- and then my own playing. It is the same thing- mindfulness, in the present moment.

The result, among other things, will be what those working in this call Wise Mind.

◦ Wise Mind is the integration of emotion and reason, where the two overlap.
◦ Wise Mind is a state of mind in which you experience yourself as being calm, centered, and in control of your emotions.
◦ In Wise Mind, you act in accordance with your beliefs, principles, and values which deepen feelings of coherence and integrity.

Again, this is to be non-judgmental. It is based on more than dichotomies of good/bad. It is based on what is working to make music. It is based on the merging of reason and feeling, thinking and emotion and allowing our music to flow from that intersection.

Tuning Slide

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Life is about rhythm. We vibrate, our hearts are pumping blood, we are a rhythm machine, that's what we are.
— Mickey Hart

Mickey Hart, one of the percussionists with the Grateful Dead has written much about rhythm and its location at the very center of our lives. It is not a pun to say it is the heart of who we are. To be in touch with the rhythm of our lives is one of those tasks that we can never end. The give and take, the pulses of daily living, the ups and downs of emotions can all fit into a rhythm. Many experiments have shown that different sources of rhythm will fall into sync with each other. Rhythm is one of the basics of music itself, and is therefore, I think, music is one of the best ways to learn about the importance of keeping the beat.

For the past month I have been pulling together the ideas of music and life, how they interact and what one can teach us about the other. Last week I raised the importance of jazz in this process. All musical styles can and will change our lives if we are open to them. Each of us just responds in different ways to different styles. For me- and for many- jazz is one of the most effective teachers of life and rhythm, timing and pace.

Through improvisation, jazz teaches you about yourself. And through swing, it teaches you that other people are individuals too. It teaches you how to coordinate with them.
— Wynton Marsalis

Back at the end year one of the Tuning Slide I had a post that dug into the writing of Wynton Marsalis in his book, Moving to Higher Ground. The focus of that was the idea of “swing,” one of the historically important- and still living- genres of jazz. Jazz musicians will use the generic word “swing” to describe what happens when a piece falls into its intended groove and moves beyond a simple sum of its parts. When a song “swings”, when a musician is “swinging,” they are in the best of all possible musical worlds. You are not just you, but you are, as Wynton described it above, coordinating with the others. It is that coordination that makes it work! This is not just in jazz, by the way. Bach may have produced some of the best music to "swing" to in all of history!

Here is some more of what Marsalis says in the book:

Jazz is the art of timing. It teaches you when. When to start, when to wait, when to step it up, and when to take your time- indispensable tools for making someone else happy….

Actual time is a constant. Your time is a perception. Swing time is a collective action. Everyone in jazz is trying to create a more flexible alternative to actual time. [Emphasis added in both quotes]

Swing can be to a great extent what you accent and how you do it. Different tempos, different tonguing, different rhythms go together to make the music work. It means listening to each other and learning to flow together.

But something always seems to get in the way. In the brass quintet I play in we, like every musical group, can have great difficulty playing in a consistent tempo. There are all kinds of obstacles. Listening to a recording of a rehearsal I found that different ones of us can cause a tempo change within a beat or two if we

◦ Come to a change in dynamics from louder to softer.
◦ Come to a change in instrumentation adding a new tonal sound or removing one.
◦ Make a mistake and let our mind wander into self criticism
◦ Play something better than usual and let our mind wander into how good it sounds

Music teaches us how to deal with change, anticipating it and knowing how to move through it without losing who we are and what we are doing. Something we can always depend on is change, so if we learn the skill of flowing with and through change, no matter what the source, we can discover more direction in our lives.

Rhythm is sound in motion. It is related to the pulse, the heartbeat, the way we breathe. It rises and falls. It takes us into ourselves; it takes us out of ourselves.
— Edward Hirsch

Wynton Marsalis applies all this to our daily lives. Swing helps us in:

1. Adjusting to changes without losing your equilibrium;
2. Mastering moments of crisis with clear thinking;
3. Living in the moment and accepting reality instead of trying to force everyone to do things your way;
4. Concentrating on a collective goal even when your conception of the collective doesn’t dominate.

In the end, Wynton Marsalis says, swing demands three things:

1. Extreme coordination- it is a dance with others inventing steps as they go;
2. Intelligent decision making- what’s good for group.
3. Good intentions- trust you and others want great music.

The most prized possession in this music is your own unique sound. Through sound, jazz leads you to the core of yourself and says “Express that.” Through jazz, we learn that people are never all one way. Each musician has strengths and weaknesses. That is where we each find first our voice and then our song. When we do that we fall into rhythm with our lives and the world, giving back to others the gifts of our own lives.

So then next week we move to finding our “voice” so we can then learn to live our “song.” This may be the greatest gift music has to offer us.

Until then, keep the beat, watch the rhythm, and keep swinging.

Note: All Wynton Marsalis quotes are from the book:
• Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life by Wynton Marsalis and Geoffrey Ward. 2008, Random House.

Tuning Slide 4.33- Keep the Rhythm

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

To live is to be musical, starting with the blood dancing in your veins. Everything living has a rhythm. Do you feel your music?
― Michael Jackson

As I write this I am sitting on a balcony overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. There is a hazy cloudiness, but still some diluted sunlight. The wind is coming at about 10 mph from the southwest. The palm branches sway with the winds rising and falling. I see reflected off my computer screen a kite behind me catching the wind. I hear the call of gulls and children laughing and playing. Later there will be the possibilities of thunderstorms and tomorrow is forecast to be at least 20 degrees colder, so I want to enjoy what I have at the moment.

But more importantly is the constant sound from the waves. The consistent rhythm of the tide and currents is what touches me and depths I have no way of touching in a conscious way. Some will say it’s because of the none months before we are born, hearing the watery amniotic fluid in it’s rhythm. Others will point to the heartbeat and the rhythm of the blood in our brains. Others still will point to the vibrating rhythms of the universe. It doesn’t matter how or why, it is simply to say that we live in a world of rhythm, pulses, movement of sound waves, most of which we cannot even hear.

We all have rhythm! Mickey Hart, percussionist with the Grateful Dead explained it as the movement from chaos to order:

In the beginning, there was noise. Noise begat rhythm, and rhythm begat everything else.

I did a quick Google search on songs with the word rhythm in the title. While there were many versions of some of the classics, here are six:

✓ Fascinating Rhythm
✓ Rhythm of the Falling Rain
✓ Girls Got Rhythm
✓ All God’s Children Got Rhythm
✓ Rhythm Nation
and of course,
✓ I Got Rhythm.

A few years ago I did a post on the idea of rhythm in expanding on rhythm as one of the three things every trumpet player (and musician) needs to have:

There are three characteristics of a great trumpet player:
1. Every time you play you have a great- not a good- sound.
2. You have great- not good- rhythm.
3. You have great- not good- ears to hear the sound. (Link)

In essence you have to have a sound that’s worth playing and listening to, a rhythm that turns the sound from noisy chaos into music, and the ability to hear it all.

This came up in my thinking the other day as I was “drumming” along with a song on the radio. I was attempting a steady beat that wasn’t just single drum beats. I was trying to fit into the style and rhythm of the song. What I discovered again, other than why I am a trumpet player and not a percussionist, is how difficult it really is to keep the beat steady AND interesting. Sooner or later I always miss a beat, come in late, or just generally mess up the whole thing.

Which brought me to the next thought about playing in a jazz big band. The “rhythm section” isn’t just the drummer. It is also the piano, bass, and guitar. Sure, they all get solos from time to time and some of them even get a melody, but they are, together, the rhythm of the band. They keep us moving at the steady and appropriate beat. Rhythm is far more than just keeping good time. It is the entire flow of the music. When we work together at the rhythm, when we get in synch or flow, music truly happens and we, I firmly believe, are in touch with the music of the cosmos.

Our biological rhythms are the symphony of the cosmos, music embedded deep within us to which we dance, even when we can't name the tune.
― Deepak Chopra

For me it is easier to keep rhythm on the trumpet than on the steering wheel of my car or the table I am typing at. It is my way of expressing rhythm. It is part of my “biological rhythm.” This is one of the important things I have discovered (and rediscovered many times) over the years. The music I make has rhythm- and I have to learn to feel, hear, and reproduce it through the horn. Which in both the short- and long-term takes me back to basics- yep, Arban, Clarke, Schlossberg, etc. As I work through those routines I begin to feel rhythm. I begin to know what it feels like to be in the right rhythm for the song. Self 2 just goes there and I work with it. Fortunately it doesn’t matter whether we are jazz, classical, or polka musicians. In those basics we learn what rhythm is. And we discover how it touches us.

Build the ear for rhythm by working the rhythm of the basics, then moving on. Feel the movement of the song. Watch for the unexpected that means the rhythm is changing. It is more than keeping the right tempo. Metronomes don’t provide rhythm, for example. They only give us a guideline for what speed something is to move. That may be helpful sometimes in practice, but it will never help us develop a sense of rhythm. Time in music is a structure on which the rhythm is built. You start with the sound and make sure you have the best sound you can have.

Then you let it flow. The world will change!

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
― Rabindranath Tagore

Tuning Slide 4.30- Precision or ?

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

A strange art – music – the most poetic and precise of all the arts, vague as a dream and precise as algebra.
— Guy de Maupassant

I have a good friend trumpet player who has one of the most precise styles I have heard. His precision at hitting the notes with a clean attack, solid tone, and good sound is excellent. His playing has challenged me in recent months to work on my precision as part of developing my own sound. I am not a precise player. I use the reason, uh excuse(?) that it’s close enough for jazz. I say I like to play and the sound is what counts and, well, you can guess about the rest. Precision is lost.

Fortunately my friend, in his precision, is not just playing mechanically. That is the real issue with some players who insist on being precise. It is too perfect and sounds too automatic. That can happen in studio recordings. There was one brass group quite a number of years ago that had a superb sound on their recordings. It played well, sounded right on with each note, and never slipped in any way shape or form. I actually found their recordings boring. There was no life.

I was then given the opportunity to see them in person. It was like I was watching a completely different group. Some of it was the difference in acoustics, of course. An auditorium has a much different ambience than a recording in a studio being played in my living room. But it was also that, in person, the musicians were able to put themselves into the music. They were just as precise and just as accomplished in person as they were on their recordings; now they were also there in their personalities and interactions with each other and the audience.

A number of years after I saw them they switched either record labels or producers (or both, I am not sure any more.) Their newer recordings had a different sound. They were now alive, their precision still there, but it wasn’t dull, automatic, mechanical.

There are all kind of ways that we can end up playing mechanically, even when playing well. (Not including that awful software that does “auto-tuning.”) Precision isn’t the same as perfect. Precision is, in my definition for this post’s sake, being able to consistently hit the notes on the right spot with clarity and tone. Yes, precision is a mechanical action. It is also a learned action- muscle memory; a learned action- aural memory; a learned action- developing Self 2 intuition.

I have never had that kind of precision. Many players do not have that kind of “preciseness.” Listen to Miles Davis on “So What”; Chet Baker on “Summertime”; Dizzy or Freddie in their best “bop” style. They are not precise. They will slip and slide into, around, and through notes. Sometimes it’s on purpose, other times it’s not and they have to adjust. I would guess that they can play with that precision, but have learned to adapt it to their style. But I would also guess that they had to learn that precision if they were going to change it.

There go all my excuses out the window! The more I write this blog, over 4 1/2 years now, the more I find myself challenging my own formerly best thinking- or, more precisely, my own former excuses. So, while listening to a recording of our quintet and my friend’s precision, I decided that I better work on my precision. As I do so I remember that I want to keep the sound solid and musical. I also want to have my personality and life in it. I do not want to be mechanical, but fluid. That’s a lot to do, but I have a few things on my side by this time.

• First, I have an idea of what precision sounds like. I can hear it.
• Second, I have skills (and a routine) that can be built upon to further the process.
• Third, I have the time this winter to work on it.

So I came up with a plan.

Since the sound is always number one I started with long tones. I always start my playing day with long tones, expanding up and down the scale from G at the bottom of the staff. But now I am paying closer attention to the fullness of the sound and having it maintain the center of the tone. I have done this for a long time, but I am paying attention from a different angle now.

On the days when this precision work is my focus I move on after only five minutes of single note long tones. I then go to my Getchell First Book. At a very slow speed (45 bpm) I play #1, rest, and then #2. The goal is to move from one note to the next with, yes, precision- hitting solid and clean, healthy tones. Resting I go back and play them again up a step from the key of C Major to D Major. Same speed, same focus. Finally I go back and take the same two exercises down a step from C Major to Bb Major. Finally, depending on endurance, I rest and then go back and play the first exercise slightly faster and up an octave, still listening for the precision. I end by playing both pieces at speed.

This takes between 20 and 25 minutes. The process moves from single notes and tones to settle into the sound, then moving notes at a slow speed to catch the changes, scale and chord movements, and the way the sound has to settle in. Then I hear the notes in different scales and how the relationships stay the same in the midst of the differences. Finally I want to hear the upper register tones and then end with the etudes as written at speed.

I have been doing this particular set three times per week. On other days I substitute some of the Arban’s early exercises slurred and tongued in place of the Getchell. Same theory, same precision direction.

I have been amazed at what has been happening.

• First, the sound is smoother and has a precision until I start to tire the embouchure which means I didn’t rest enough between exercises.
• Second, I notice that Self 2 is doing his job keeping me on target and turning the intellectual ideas I have described above into intuition.
• Third, because of that I am more relaxed in my style while still maintaining the precision I am looking to build.

Accuracy, clarity, on target. Add “life” to it and it becomes music. Which is why we do it in the first place.

4.17- Tuning Slide: Mistakes or Not

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.
— George Bernard Shaw

Scanning some notes and articles on the Internet I came across an article that referenced some research. It was in Wired magazine and burst the bubble that we “learn from our mistakes.” There are many motivational quotes that would have us believe just the opposite. Or so I thought. I went looking and found that this idea about mistakes being learning is a short-cut in thinking. What many of the quotes really say is that mistakes are to be expected as we are learning. If we haven’t made any mistakes, we haven’t done anything. Einstein, Teddy Roosevelt, and Meister Eckhart, among others, lead us to understand that.

In essence though what mistakes teach us is what NOT to do. If we continue to do the same things and keep getting the same mistakes, we are not learning and growing in our musicianship. If we don’t do anything to correct the mistake, all we are doing is reinforcing the mistake. One I had to learn the hard way was missing accidentals or even key changes. I was adamant that as a good musician I should be able to learn what key I am playing in and not miss that F# or Eb. Yet time after time I would miss it. Or I would hit the F# when it wasn’t. What I wasn’t doing was marking the note I was regularly missing. You know, circle it or some other notation.

I was being stubborn- and perhaps not wanting my colleague on the left or right to know I had to (God forbid) mark a note that I should be playing correctly. (Even though they clearly heard every wrong note I played!) Instead of improving as a musician, I was stubbornly getting stuck where I was. Once I was willing to use a pencil correctly, things began to change. I also developed a series of notations that I use to remind myself of certain things that I have tended to get wrong or struggle with. I see that notation and I know what I need to do.

To say that mistakes are our friends and tell us what not to do can be a dangerous path- mistakes are not good things when we could have done something differently. Mistakes are not what we want to have happen in a performance. We will make mistakes, of course; notes will slip, something will be out of time or out of tune. Those mistakes will not improve our playing. The mistakes we learn from are the ones that we make in our practice rooms, or lessons- where they can be caught and corrected.

But there are other mistakes that we regularly fall into. These are more insidious that the missed accidental. They can go to the heart of who we are as performers. So here is a far from complete list of:

Mistakes musicians make that we can change:
Poor sound- We can’t truly hear ourselves when we are playing unless we are on stage and a monitor is giving us an idea. There are a number of reasons for this- we are on the wrong side of the horn, we get some of the sound through our facial bones and not from the air, we hear part of the sound in our imagination which “auto-tunes” the sound we are getting from the horn. In order to deal with these we can practice in places where there is a strong echo and we can record ourselves. The mistake we make is not finding out how we truly sound.

Lack of rhythm- timing and tempo are essential to good music. Some of it can be corrected by working with a metronome, but that will never give us rhythm. A metronome has no feeling, no rhythm. It is only tempo. Feeling the music is important, no essential. We will talk more about this next week when I talk a little about “flow.” Our big mistake in this area is to ignore how the music makes us feel and then translating that into the performing of the music.

Believing we can’t do it- actually, this is worse than a mistake. This is a killer of quality and creativity, a sure-fire way to fall into a hole we dig for ourselves. I know I may never be as good as Doc or Maynard, but that doesn’t mean I can’t continue to be better than I was last month. In order to get there, I must be pushing the limits in healthy, organized ways.

Not planning- if we don’t know where we want to go, we won’t get anywhere. That doesn’t mean we have to map out our whole musical journey. It does mean we have to have an idea where we need to go and where we want to go. This is where the errors we make or the recording we hear can guide us. When I discovered how poor my tone was, I knew what I had to work on. When I found my endurance decreasing, I went looking for ways to improve what I was doing.

Getting stuck on hardware- heavy caps and the latest version mouthpiece won’t correct what is wrong with our sound. For most of us we are no where near the best sound the instrument we own can make. A new instrument may be a good thing- and the right thing- for some of us. But it will still take practice, practice, and even more practice to continue to evolve as a musician.

Fearing mistakes so much that we don’t try- the ultimate mistake! Just do it. Move forward. Challenge yourself. Take lessons and get feedback. Record yourself and listen critically. Be ready to grow!

Don’t plan for mistakes; don’t build them into your practice. But listen for them; prepare for them; and when they happen discover what they can teach you about a better, more effective, more musical way.

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something.
— Neil Gaiman

Tuning Slide 4.6- Learning from LIstening

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

If there is a behavior you are trying to change, be it large or small, listen to what you are saying to yourself as you work on it. You could be the only person/voice standing in your own way.
— Samantha Smithstein Psy.D.

Last week I talked about the importance of recording oneself for learning and improvement as a musician. I didn’t talk about two things, what I discovered and am doing about it and what does this all have to to do with every day living.

Let’s start with the trumpet stuff. I am not an expert, but have managed to pick up a great deal of insight from the great faculty at the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop. I hear their voices and suggestions whenever I seek to play better. It is always, they will say, about the sound! What do you hear? Are you listening? It’s also about the breath. How are you breathing? Is it relaxed?

Listen to yourself. Listen, listen, listen.

Well, when I listened to myself on the recording I liked what I heard in general, but was really aware of what needed work. Let’s be honest. We can be our own worst critics, hearing everything that’s wrong even when it’s only a brief slip here or there. I was needing to be my own best critic- that means I needed to be a constructive critic of my playing. I needed to listen musically as if it were someone else.

I know how to do that. I have listened to live music and heard things that I knew were needing improvement. Ever since my first experience of hearing my tired, blah sound those six or so years ago, I have been more aware of it when I hear it. It is because I know what it sounds like- and that it can be dealt with- that allowed me to take the leap of faith unto the recording a few weeks ago. I knew I could trust both my Self 1 and its “great” analytical powers and my Self 2 and its love of music to lead me in the right direction when I wanted to change and grow.

What I learned in more depth than I ever realized it was that I tend to be a sloppy player. I had at times a very sloppy sound. Not always. I noticed that the songs I knew best in the set were usually much, much better than some of the newer or more complicated pieces. There were several songs that we have been playing as a group for most of the ten years I have been with the group. Those I heard my sound clearly and with a musicality that I could appreciate. (Pat on the back, Barry. See, you can do it!)

What does a sloppy sound mean? That was my question to myself as I listened more closely. It was not enough just to say that it was sloppy. That was an immediate reaction which could be discouraging. Go deeper, I told myself. What is sloppy? I was aware of four things, listed from the most basic and obvious to those I have learned from my mentors:

1. Not hitting notes cleanly. That meant I would either slip to a higher note or stick on a lower note. It also meant that old bugaboo of mine- the dull, non-energetic tone. I also learned this past few months that this is also a sign that I am not centering the air and holding its strength as it plays through the music. This happened way too often, even on the songs I knew well. That meant another problem that I talk about later.

2. Articulation issues. Part of that was the air from above. But it was also inefficient use of valve changes and careless movement of my fingers from note to note. I was not being as precise in my fingering as I could- and the result was that at times it sounded like I was simply playing a series of notes and not a melody line. Again, the older songs, even those that were more complicated, didn’t have this as much as the newer ones.

3. Distraction. Since it is me listening to me playing, I know the musician quite intimately. One thing I know is that I can be on the edge of ADD way too often. (Squirrel!) My mind can easily move off its own center line. I know from hard experience in my practice room that when that happens I can easily get lost even when playing a simple C major scale. I could hear that in my playing. Some of those flubs were just silly moments when my mind went somewhere other than the music or its sound.

4. Finally, playing at the music, instead of through it. This is a deeper discussion of what I mentioned in the first one above. Let it flow, move the air in a steady stream and keep the tongue from getting in the way.

What then is there for me to do? Thanks to my teachers and mentors I have set up a few things to handle these.

First, I am paying attention to the basics of the long tones. (Oh, not them again!) I have been doing them every day for a year and a half, but there is always something new they have to teach me. I am discovering that they are my best friends. (If you don’t like playing long tones, you don’t really like playing trumpet I have been told.) I do a set of them in whisper (very, very soft) tones. I am listening, carefully, trying to keep the sound centered and what it feels like.

Second, I am doing it slowly. Most mistakes come from trying too fast. Slow on the long tones, slow on the exercises from the beginning of the Arban’s book, slow from Getchell- so I can listen while still moving the valves deliberately.

And third, go for a lesson! Which is scheduled for later this week and then I am planning one a month through December when it can be arranged.

For life, then, in this whole discussion about recording oneself and listening:

• Focus. Unless we learn ways to maintain focus in life, we will get sloppy. We will miss important things that are around us and in front of us. And the best teacher of focus can be-
• Mindfulness. The non-judgmental action of bringing one’s attention to the present moment without putting values on them is an invaluable skill. This gets us in touch with our feelings and reactions. We miss so much of our daily lives by losing focus and mindfulness. We ignore important things and settle for the trivial because we don’t see what’s around us. But for it to work we have to have-
• Teachability- honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness. There will be countless times each day when the opportunity to learn something new will be in front of us. Watch for the teachers, listen for the mentors. Then move forward.

Tuning Slide 4.5- The Power of Recording

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak;
courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
— Winston Churchill

In spite of the fact that I am often an early adopter in finding and using new technology (a geek, in other words), I have not been great at utilizing recording myself to improve my sound and musicianship. Yes, I have always agreed that it is a good idea, but, well, you know, sometimes I don’t do what I know is a good idea. I think, perhaps, that I was actually afraid to truly listen to a recording of myself for fear of what I might hear.

Sure, I have heard recordings of myself playing as part of a band, which may be where the fear actually came from in the first place. It was a number of years ago that I first did a recording of our big band and a number where I had the solo. I was excited about what it sounded like. I thought I did well. I downloaded the video onto the computer and hit play.

Ouch! There was no tone; the sound had no energy and barely felt like it was moving; it felt flat- in all dimensions of the meaning of that word. I was embarrassed for myself and felt like I should apologize to the audience and my colleagues in the band for what I sounded like.

This was before my first experience at Shell Lake Arts Center and that initial session with Bob Baca. At that time he introduced me to a number of the ideas of Bill Adam to be used in practice. I learned about blowing the sound through the notes and not at them; I learned about centering the sound; I learned about ways to actually be successful at practice. I put them into effect and, but a few months later I heard another recording of myself in the quintet and I had a whole new sound. I played it for Mr. Baca and he smiled!

I have recorded our quintet a number of times but never to focus on myself alone. I was listening for the sound of the group, how we fit together, how our balance and tone and dynamics complemented each other. I wasn’t upset about what I could hear in myself. But it wasn’t my goal.

Yet every year at trumpet camp I heard people say we should record ourselves. I thought about it and did a couple things using recordings of myself to play duet parts with myself. But, again, I wasn’t listening to me, just the notes.

I believe I was unconsciously afraid to hear what I might truly sound like. While the quote from Winston Churchill above wasn’t about listening to ourselves playing music, it still applies. If I am willing to be honest with myself and listen critically, it will take courage. Until I realized I needed to do that, I hesitated. Well at this year’s Shell Lake trumpet workshop, one of the leaders (Thanks, Quentin!) talked about how he recorded himself every night when he was on a year-long national musical tour. Then he would listen and make notes, critically, in order to improve. I realized what that could do and set my mind to do it.

Fortunately the big band had two gigs right after camp. I hadn’t asked Quentin how he did it, but I figured out a method. I set my iPhone on a stand right next to my music stand. In essence I was playing into the mike on the phone while still getting the overall sound of the band. The first gig’s recording was disappointing for a number of reasons beyond my control. So I erased it and set it up at the next gig. This one worked. There I was, clear as day; there was the band behind me doing its thing. Now I had to listen critically.

I have been told that the best way to give critical feedback is to give the good first as the foundation on which to build. I did that. I didn’t cringe at my sound like I did in that earlier recording five or six years ago. I liked the general tenor of my sound. I felt I was following well and that there was real energy in what I was playing. Improvement! Hearing those things first helped strengthen me for now listening for what wasn’t as positive or as musical as it could. Knowing that listening could give me clues to what I needed to work on next, I listened again.

That, too, worked. I could hear the things I was clearly deficient at. I could also hear things about my playing that surprised me. It is important when preparing to listen to yourself play from a recording that you realize that while playing you never hear yourself the way others do. We are normally hearing ourselves from behind the horn. Believe it or not that can often be louder than it truly is. One reason is that we are often hearing the sound slightly reflected off our music stand. More to the point, we are “hearing” sounds that no one else can hear- the vibrations of the horn against our lips and hear, flowing through the bones and skin of our head and face and into the inner ear without going through the air. It is the same way listening to a recording of our voice. It never sounds to us like us. So don’t be surprised at the sound you hear. It will probably have less bass and different overtones than you are used to hearing in yourself! You will also not hear yourself in balance with the rest of the band. The mike is at your stand and your sound will be predominant. If you want to hear how you blend with the rest of the band you need to put the mike out front of the whole group. But that’s not the purpose of this recording. I wanted to hear my sound.

You will hear a lot of other things. You will hear strong or weak articulations. You will hear changes in tone and color that you didn’t know were there. You will discover that things were not as alive (or more alive) than you wanted. You will hear every mistake, wrong note, slipped note, flub and frustrating fingering. You will hear how your sound generally blends with the sound of the group. Is your tone brighter or darker? Is your articulation the same as the rest of the section? Am I playing with the same musicality as my fellow musicians?

I realized that it was the real reason I was doing this. My goal was not to pat myself on the back and pin a first place medal on my shirt. I wanted- I needed- to hear this since I don’t normally hear that when I am behind the horn.

So have courage. We have a tool that musicians did not have until recently- a relatively simple and available method for recording ourselves. The simple voice memo on iPhone is all you need. The greatest part of the tool is the willingness to be honest with myself about what I sound like. I am working on it already. It seems to be working- but I won’t know for sure until I have the courage to do another recording.

(P.S. Next week I will relate this to life and even talk about what I hear about my playing and what I am doing about it.)

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.

Tuning Slide 3.42: Listening for Your Sound

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Musicians do not get on stage without hearing the song singing inside of them.
― Michael Bassey Johnson

Professor Harold Hill was supposedly a con man. For those who may never have seen the musical The Music Man, Hill would come into town, get people to buy musical instruments and then skip town leaving the wannabe students without a director and their parents without the money. He pushed what he calls the Think System. Just think about what you want to play. Keep thinking and it will get better. Finally, after thinking long and hard enough you will be able to play. And Hill would have skipped town.

In River City Hill met his love, Marian the Librarian and is forced to face the townspeople. In the end the kids DID learn to play and they go marching through the streets of town playing a rousing "76 Trombones". The think system worked- and no one was as surprised as Harold Hill- although he never admitted that.

Many of us know already that the Think System does work, although we do need instructors to lead us in the right direction. One of the most important pieces of it is learning how to listen. Listening to music in general, to other musicians, and then our instrument and to our own sound. These then lead us to listen to the song that is already singing within us.

Some of us start by knowing there is this song in there. Others discover the existence of the song after years of work and practice. All of us who care to be musicians will eventually hear our song- a style, a genre, a sound that fits us. Do you remember the early days of hearing other musicians who played the same instrument? Take a moment and remember that moment when you said, “I want to do that, too!” The world was new and exciting- even infinite. You could have turned to three or four other people standing with you and said, “Can you hear that? Isn’t it incredible?” and they would have looked at you sideways and nodded politely. But you heard it. It was someone else’s music and song, but it touched you and brought your song into consciousness.

It's that first and early listening that gets us to where we are today at whatever level we are currently playing. Setting aside the instruction for the moment, that sound never left you. Fifty-some years later I get the same feeling as when I first heard the opening notes of Al Hirt’s "Java" or Herb Alpert’s "The Lonely Bull". It was and is the sound of the trumpet. It was and is my sound. It has never left me. If I had stopped my playing those songs would today be just nice nostalgia. Instead as I have continued to play and change, they are still living sounds. In me. Through my horn.

I have listened to all kinds of music over the years, all of which shaped and informed my sound. I could never get the guitar to do the same, although I have loved trying- the songs of guitar- bluegrass, folk, rock- have impacted my trumpet sound. But over the years two things happened with my trumpet. As I listened to other trumpet players, Doc and Maynard, Clifford and Lee, Chet and Miles, I discovered that there are many different sounds to the trumpet. Bud Herseth and the Chicago Symphony Brass section and the Canadian Brass opened whole other sounds and styles. The rich and wondrous range to trumpet music was nothing short of a gift from God.

I learned how to make different sounds on the trumpet. I began to realize that I have to pay attention to those sounds- their similarities and differences. Listen and imitate. Experiment. Not just with the specific notes, but with the sound and rhythm, the tonguing and fingering, the phrasing. These soon became intuitive to some extent. Not that I was practicing enough for many years to improve as much as I would have like to, but it was building. I was learning the languages of the trumpet. Even just thinking of the sound as coming from a different style or source would change the music I was making.

That was the part of listening to the horn. My particular horn, an almost 50 year old Bach Strad, that I have been playing now for almost 35 years, is one I know. In the past three years of intense practice and learning I have found that I have barely scratched the surface of what we can do together. A couple years ago when I first found a new mouthpiece and compared it to the one I had been playing I discovered that the new one caught my sound in new ways. It was more me, more alive in the ways I felt the music. That was me, working with my own horn, and bringing them together in my sound.

If you have listened long enough and developed enough awareness of your song, your sound, and the potential the music universe of your instrument becomes endless. In the book Making Music for the Joy of It, the author, Stephanie Judy, spends some time talking about listening and sums it all up this way:

Listen without judgement, not what is wrong but what is…. Every note of every instrument is available in a fantastic range of volumes, attacks, duration, and tone qualities. It is both frustrating and liberating. (P. 116)

In essence what you are doing she says is finding more ways to play it, not taking control. If you are judging your playing (Self One at work) you easily end up with feeling that is was “no good.” All that does is shut the door. The path toward your sound, and the path your sound can take, is closed.

There is a sound inside each of us that we want to make. It may not yet be a song, but it has everything you need to make it your song. It may not be a particular song that is already written, although those can lead us. It will most likely be a sound and style that moves you. As it does so, it will also move your playing into new areas. Just do it. Just play it. Listen.

Then listen some more.

Tuning Slide: 3.37- Summarizing and Moving On

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

In the past three months (December through February) I reviewed a good number of the summary statements we put together at the closing session of last summer’s Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop. Directly or indirectly here they are, alphabetically arranged, to jog your memory.

• Always have a relaxed breath. Warm, moist air
• Always play with your best sound
• Animals can’t change emotion- we can.
• Be comfortable being uncomfortable [Expect the unexpected]
• Be yourself at your full potential- Example of the rose, Inner Game of Tennis, p. 37
• Best way to go 1000 miles is to take first step
• Can’t do it alone
• Circle of influence is important
• Have to schedule the not urgent/important or it gets lost
• Hear it, study it, make it become natural
• If you panic you will die
• Just have fun! It will happen faster.
• Keep a journal/log
• Listen to your body.
• Negativity is exhausting. You will be negative about others if you are negative about your self.
• Never give up
• Never put out someone else’s light to make your light shine brighter
• Obstacles appear if we take our minds away from the goal.
• Only see our path of dots going backward
• Power of ask
• Setting goals (short, intermediate, long term) for practicing etc.
• Shoot high- don’t sell yourself short
• Taking the theoretical and making it real.
• The way we do anything is the way we do everything
• Therefore make good dots
• There’s always time to practice
• Trumpet’s a skill, but it impacts everything.
• When given opportunity to share- do it.
• Worst sin is feeling sorry for yourself- because it’s all about me
• Your best trumpet playing hasn’t happened yet
• Your best trumpet playing is only a thought away

An impressive list of ideas and thoughts that can keep us all busy for years. Take a look at it again and see where you might need some prodding- then do it.

Oh- this year’s Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop is less than five months away! I’m already registered and excited.

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This month’s series I am calling

Myths, Misconceptions and Holy Truths.

It is easy to live under many misconceptions and myths. They are often based on seeming common sense or just plain old personality quirks. Over the past three years of digging into trumpet playing in many ways that are completely new to me, I have faced a few of these. Each Wednesday this month I will start with a myth or misconception I or others around me have had, talk about it, work with it, then summarize it in what I am calling a “Holy Truth.” You’ll get the picture.

My mind is made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts.
-Various sources

A few trumpet players were having a discussion. As is often the case it turned to mouthpieces, perhaps the single most common area of discussion among us. We all have had experiences and all have our opinions. Opinions are, of course based on our subjective look at what has happened to us.

The question became, “What mouthpiece do you use?” The usual answers were there: Bach 3C, Bach Megatone, Schilke 14A4a. Discussions then wandered around to “cheater” mouthpieces, that is those that give an advantage for use when high register lead playing is a necessity. Again, we shared experiences.

“I just never felt comfortable with….”
“I liked it but my lip seemed to collapse with…”
“I got better range and endurance for the first time with…”
“Did you know that so-and-so has only ever used…”

Just for the fun of it I looked up Schilke’s list of standard trumpet/cornet mouthpieces. There are 53(!) and 11 heavyweight mouthpieces! That’s just one manufacturer!

Mind boggling and probably confusing as hell to anyone trying to figure it out. But we all have our opinions and they are, of course, right. Until we change our mind because we think there must be something better out there.

Looking for the better mouthpiece may be the #1 task.

But what really got me thinking was a very simple question. One of the trumpet players wondered if getting a mouthpiece that improves your upper register would hurt your mid-register playing, up to the G at the top of the staff, for example.

Well, I guess it could if you used one of the really upper-register-type mouthpieces for all your playing, but on a more general level, I am not sure why it should. Here’s why…If we are truly working on our overall sound and musicality, the equipment we use will not be the most important thing. It will be the practice and the sound.

Which brings me around to the misconception or myth this week:

the exaggerated importance we put into equipment as the magic bullet that will turn any one of us into the next Doc or Maynard.

In our pursuit of being a better musician, however each of us defines it, we may at any given time think that a different horn, a different mouthpiece, a different lead pipe could push us that one bit closer to Doc or Miles. Yes, a better horn or mouthpiece can make a difference in our playing. An old clunker horn that has too much (or too little) back pressure or valves that are poorly made will not sound as good as a good horn. Yes, a different mouthpiece may work better for you. I am even told that a model of a horn by the same manufacturer can even be different depending on the year it was built.

It can also degrade our playing if we think that all we have to do is get a new (fill in the blank) and all will be great.

The Holy Truth for the week then is simple:

• Equipment is not the answer.

Okay, let’s amend that, equipment alone is not the answer because it can make a difference. But at the heart of it is the sound we make and the practice we put into it.

The question about a mouthpiece that improves upper register hurting middle register is a good example. A year ago I bought a new mouthpiece that has definitely increased my range and endurance. I am, as I said in last week’s post, hitting upper register notes I would never have thought possible with greater endurance. It also has a brighter and better projected sound. My wife, a non-musician, noticed that right away. I like it. AND, it has not caused any problem with my middle range because I made sure it didn’t.

• I did not concentrate on the upper register. I continued to do my routine of expanding long tones starting at G on the staff. I kept going higher while maintaining the lower end. I made sure that I did not sacrifice that middle range.
• I also concentrated on the sound I was producing in that range. I was letting the mouthpiece and the horn work together. When I am playing they have to be a single unit. Together they produce the sound.
• Finally, I also worked on pedal tones. Guess what- I am also playing pedal tones better than I ever have. I realized that unless I was truly using a “cheater” mouthpiece to get to the upper range, the whole sound has to be there. Pedal tones are one of the “secrets” of high register playing because they help with the flexibility of the embouchure. Makes sense.

I will admit that I continue to look at mouthpieces as ways of improving my sound. After all, I am a trumpet geek. But it is going to have to be significant for me to spend the money on it, after all, again, the Holy Truth is

Equipment is not the answer.

The Tuning Slide: 3.36- Ask! Just Ask!

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see?
The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story.
It is a balancing act and it is a dream.
-Neil Gaiman

All of us who know Bob Baca from UW-Eau Claire and the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop know that he likes to tell stories. Actually he is as much a storyteller as he is a master trumpet player and teacher! We listen because we know the story will be interesting and have an application for us. Personally, I am a big believer in stories. I write fiction stories because they can illustrate truth in ways that real events may find difficult. Those in 12-Step recovery programs tell stories about what people “used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.” The goal is to illustrate what works- and what doesn’t. The result will be a new understanding.

I had another one of my events in the past month that needs to be told. It is a story of learning what I thought I already knew and a reminder that we never know as much as we think we know. It will also illustrate eight more of the summary thoughts from last summer. As usual, these summary thoughts will be indicated by a check mark.

The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think,
but to give you questions to think upon.
--Brandon Sanderson, fantasy and science fiction writer

I have been on a great roll with my trumpet playing. A few ups and downs with the usual plateaus and then moving forward again. Toward the end of January I following my routine and Arban’s lessons. I was at a slight plateau but I was not worried. Plateaus happen. I noted in my journal that it was beginning to improve with some solid sound in the high C - E range. I was playing them with a solid sound and confidence. For me, that is a huge step forward. A week later I noticed pain on the inside of my upper lip, almost like a pressure sore where my lip and teeth came together. That was a first to that extent. I remembered what I had been told at Shell Lake:

✓ Listen to your body

• It was telling me it hurt.
• It was telling me it didn’t have the range or endurance.
• I didn’t want to miss any days of doing my routine. I have not missed a day since the end of March last year. Yes, that was ego at work, of course. I want to go a whole year of not missing a day. I also had a concert coming up and didn’t want to lose anything of my endurance, even though that was happening any way.
• I had bragged a few weeks ago to one of my trumpet friends how I was regularly playing notes in the upper register - now I was struggling and finding even my upper mid-range register was beginning to sound mushy. It was the worst setback in my playing since I started this part of my journey almost three years ago.

An important reminder from the words of Bob Baca:

✓ If you panic you will die.

Yes, Self 1 was in panic mode. That meant, for me in this case, that I wanted answers and wanted them fast! I couldn’t afford to lose my ability. I was doing so well in so many ways and now here I was, almost floundering, seemingly overnight. I was “dying”.

I wondered whether it is possible for Self 2 also to slide toward panic? Self 2 is supposed to naturally do what is the best. All is generally cool with Self 2. But, what happens when there is something out of even Self 2’s control? Whatever the physical reason(s) behind my inner lip problem/blister/sore, it was hindering what I was doing. I was hurting. I didn’t want to make it worse and have to stop.

So I did the normal plateau things of not pushing beyond pain limits; I went to slow easy pieces in the lower and mid-register; I worked on pedal tones. Nothing was working.

Oh- even my wife had noticed something was wrong. “Your playing sounds tired, exhausted. Take it easy,” she said. “Nah, I’m fine,” I said at the time. Typical.

✓ Circle of influence is important
✓ Power of ask

More words of wisdom from the board at Shell Lake.

Ask.

So I turned to the community. I went to the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop Facebook page and posted a question, explaining what had been happening:

ME: OK, gang of trumpet gurus: I have developed a pressure sore (not a cold sore) inside my upper lip where it hits against the tooth. I have been practicing daily for almost 11 months. I had gotten to a good level of endurance and range! That is now going backward. Knowing opinions about taking a day off, etc. what might I do until sore eases so I don't make it so bad I can't play? Any thoughts?

Quentin replied first with a good practical question, but right behind him was the one who knew more about my embouchure than anyone else at camp. Bill Bergren. He worked with me on it last year-

BILL B: This can be caused by a crooked tooth, braces, or bad playing habits. Are you still playing with open lips? [He was remembering our private lesson last summer.]

ME: Thanks! More info: Bill- if you mean breathing, I have been working on it. …. Blah, blah, blah… more blah, blah, blah… Any other ideas or questions? [When you don’t get an answer, just talk more, add more information, fog it up with words. I can be good at that!]

BILL B: I reiterate; This can be caused by a crooked tooth, braces, or bad playing habits.

ME: I would agree since it …. Blah, blah, blah… It happened so suddenly, though. Oh well. I keep on playing. Thanks, Bill. [Ramble on my wayward son.]

I thought we were done. But I hadn’t heard Bill and he knew it. Bill, not one for extra words (or putting up with fools like me being dense) had one more, simple six-word reply.

BILL B: You are over analyzing. The sound..................

Mumble, grumble, huff and puff.

He was right. I was doing what I hate when other trumpet players do it- analyze the life out of everything. Ramble on and on about what’s happening looking for a quick solution. By focusing on the pain and lip and the sudden lack of range/endurance I was ignoring what Self 2 can do best- play with the right- and best- sound. Back to the board at Shell Lake:

✓ Always play with your best sound
✓ Just have fun! It will happen faster.

Self 2 knows how to make sound- good sound. It needs to convince Self 1 that it can still happen. “Be easy, man,” it was telling me through Bill’s words. “Don’t get so hung up on all that crap. Make the best sound. Always.”

I went back to the long tones and Getchell with slow and easy playing. I let the sound go from the horn. I stopped nerding-out and obsessing about what I was experiencing. "It’s a plateau, dummy. You pushed too far, you didn’t pay attention. Relax! Have fun. Make music!”

✓ Your best trumpet playing is only a thought away [therefore]
✓ Your best trumpet playing hasn’t happened yet

It’s been over a week now. I have regained the mid-range sound- simply by playing it the way I was before. I have regained the fun of playing. I am watching that I am not pushing the limits- I am paying attention to the body and what Self 2 is saying. The body does not like it when I push to playing tired. It unlearns what it has learned. It wants to feel good playing, not exhausted.

I've played two concerts in the past 6 days. The second was last night. I played well, with range and endurance! It was fun and I liked what I was doing.

Sometimes we have to listen to those around us.

As always and every time, thanks, Bill!

If you're going to have a story, 

have a big story, or none at all.
--Joseph Campbell, mythologist, writer and lecturer

You Can't Even Trust What You Hear!

No- I'm not talking about politicians today. I'm talking about the actual process of hearing what you're listening to. I realized again this week how difficult it is to say what is really being heard.

I have had hearing aids for nearly eight years. (Years of loud music will do that to you!) They didn't have as many bells and whistles as are available today. So a few weeks ago I went for a hearing test and ended up with a new pair. So the other afternoon I was listening to some music on my computer through my headphones. I started playing around with the sound on the hearing aids.

To quote a phrase- OMG! What a difference! Not to mention that it didn't take a great deal of playing with the relatively simple treble and bass adjustments on the Smartphone App to realize I have absolutely no idea what is the real sound of the music.

Well, that's not quite true. I know all those sounds are obviously there or I wouldn't be able to hear them when I played with the controls. But what freaked me out is that I have been doing videos for years of live performances in bands I play in. In so doing I have often used sound equalization in Final Cut Pro to balance sound, drop background, allow some parts to be clearer, etc. The mind-boggling fact is that what I balanced it for was MY hearing. The result of my balancing may sound muddy to someone and a squeaky treble to someone else.

Crazy.

The hearing aid guy told me there are ways to make sure that things sound right (like, maybe, stop fooling with them? Nah. Won't happen.) But for now I will go back to playing with my new toys uh, hearing aids. I will let you know what I end up finding out.

The Tuning Slide: 2.6- All About the Sound

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Last week I talked about the basic (and oversimplified) physics and acoustics of trumpet playing. Being centered in sound was at the heart of it and the way practicing long tones can help us visualize and enhance the resonance of the sound we produce. That can then lead us to finding ways to center our own lives through focus, visualization, and breathing. The result is the congruence of who we are and how we play.

This week I want to look a little more at this fine instrument many of us have fallen in love (and hate?) with.

First, here’s how it’s made from the How Products Are Made website:

Brass instruments are almost universally made from brass, but a solid gold or silver trumpet might be created for special occasions. The most common type of brass used is yellow brass, which is 70 percent copper and 30 percent zinc. Other types include gold brass (80 percent copper and 20 percent zinc), and silver brass (made from copper, zinc, and nickel). The relatively small amount of zinc present in the alloy is necessary to make brass that is workable when cold. Some small manufacturers will use such special brasses as Ambronze (85 percent copper, 2 percent tin, and 13 percent zinc) for making certain parts of the trumpet (such as the bell) because such alloys produce a sonorous, ringing sound when struck. Some manufacturers will silver- or goldplate the basic brass instrument.

Very little of the trumpet is not made of brass. Any screws are usually steel; the water key is usually lined with cork; the rubbing surfaces in the valves and slides might be electroplated with chromium or a stainless nickel alloy such as monel; the valves may be lined with felt; and the valve keys may be decorated with mother-of-pearl.

[Not a surprise that they look for alloys that produce a “sonorous, ringing sound.” That’s part of the overall acoustics we talked about last week. The trumpet is about $5.00 or so in metal. Probably less on the junk market where you may get as much as $1.30/pound. Weighing in at an average 2.5 pounds of metal, you might get $3 - $3.50 for the metal as junk. The thousands of dollars a Strad costs is in the design that helps make the sound.]

The most important feature of a trumpet is sound quality. Besides meeting exacting tolerances of approximately 1 x 105 meters, every trumpet that is manufactured is tested by professional musicians who check the tone and pitch of the instrument while listening to see if it is in tune within its desired dynamic range. The musicians test-play in different acoustical set-ups, ranging from small studios to large concert halls, depending on the eventual use of the trumpet. Large trumpet manufacturers hire professional musicians as full-time testers, while small manufacturers rely on themselves or the customer to test their product. --Link

Now comes what may be the most important paragraph from the website:

At least half the work involved in creating and maintaining a clear-sounding trumpet is done by the customer. [Emphasis added.] The delicate instruments require special handling, and, because of their inherent asymmetry, they are prone to imbalance. Therefore, great care must be taken so as not to carelessly damage the instrument. To prevent dents, trumpets are kept in cases, where they are held in place by trumpet-shaped cavities that are lined with velvet. The trumpet needs to be lubricated once a day or whenever it is played. The lubricant is usually a petroleum derivative similar to kerosene for inside the valves, mineral oil for the key mechanism, and axle grease for the slides. The grime in the mouthpiece and main pipe should be cleaned every month, and every three months the entire trumpet should soak in soapy water for 15 minutes. It should then be scrubbed throughout with special small brushes, rinsed, and dried. --Link

Perhaps I am overdoing it with this whole thing, but the one thread working through these quotes as well as what we talked about last week:

The Sound.
It’s all about the sound! Sound is everything- tone, upper register, melody, etc.

Everything is done in order to produce the best sound possible. From the chemistry of mixing metals to the long tones we practice, the end product is the best sound possible from the instrument you own. Period. With that in mind let me quote Mr. Bob Baca from the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop.

These are the three characteristics of a great trumpet player:
1. Every time you play you have a great- not a good- sound.
2. You have great- not good- rhythm.
3. You have great- not good- ears to hear the sound.

Let’s expand some more about developing a great sound. Remember that after the right mix of metals, tubing, etc. it is:
• being centered,
• finding the resonance,
• utilizing long tones in our basic practice.

Going beyond those basics, them, here are some thoughts from Brass Musician magazine’s web site.

We must have a very definite concept of a beautiful tone in order to produce a great sound. Conception of tone is a mental memory, aural visualization, imagination or recollection of what a beautiful tone sounds like. We cannot imagine or remember what we have not heard and memorized so we must frequently listen to fine players live and on recordings. Daily listening to recordings of fine players will develop our concept of tone. … Playing along with recordings… helps imprint the aural role model and imitation in our minds.

Olympic champion Michael Phelps and Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski were interviewed on TV last week. Both of them spoke of the value of “visualization.” Phelps said he works through the possibilities in a race beforehand- including potential problems. That way, he said, he will be ready for anything. Coach K. said he prepares visualizations for his players to use on iPads. They can see what a “champion” looks like- how champions carry themselves- including how they walk and talk. That’s what the above paragraph is talking about. You can’t hit the notes if you don’t know what they sound like. What better way to learn than to hear them, get them aurally imprinted, visualize the sound, and then “rehearse” it in your mind. I have heard a number of musicians say they hear the note or sound in that small fraction of a second before they play it.

For years I had the problem of not being able to come in on the right note after a rest, or at the beginning of a piece. Sometimes the note would slide off downward or I would overshoot it higher. It was particularly difficult if it was happening during or after an unusual chord structure where my note didn’t seem to be right. I asked one of my colleagues how she did it- and why I was having difficulty. She simply told me that I have to hear the note before I play it. No, I do not have anything like perfect or near-perfect pitch. If you asked me to sing that note in tune I probably couldn’t. What I could do was take a second and silently “sing” my way to the note using the open tones- middle C, G, and the C on the staff. That helped with the B or D on the staff. If I was going for the E or F at the top of the staff, I just silently sang the open notes to the E. It worked. I am still not in the habit of doing that as regularly as I could, but I don’t miss the notes as often as I used to.

Such visualization helps with a player like me who rends to be somewhat lazy in hitting notes. It focuses, centers my sound and keeps me in the music. That also means I am less tense when I come to the notes. I find myself able to hit the note with a stronger sound, probably more in tune and less pressured. Which brings me to the next paragraph from Brass Musician:

A steady relaxed airstream is critical to a full, beautiful tone. … When we ascend into the upper register we should blow faster and avoid tightening the abdominal muscles, which restricts the throat and causes a strained, brighter, sharper sound. There are many ways to improve breathing, blowing and tone. I recommend visiting windsongpress.com, reading books and articles about or by Arnold Jacobs…

◆ Steady
◆ Relaxed
◆ Don’t tighten the abs
◆ Keep the throat open

Seems simple enough.

Check your shoulder position? Have you pulled your shoulders up toward your ears? You are probably tense. Drop them. Let them droop.

Are you holding the trumpet with a left-hand death grip? Relax. That tension is going all the way up your arm and even into your jaw. Loosen it.

It is amazing how much physical work is involved in playing a trumpet. For me it even goes to my posture either sitting or standing. I know, sadly, that if I took the iconic “Miles Davis Stance” I would not be relaxed. MY sound, at least at this point, would be constricted. That may be part of what Miles wanted. For me, it hurts my style. I have to sit up, give my abs the room to relax. Leaning forward tightens them, reduces my airflow and abdominal support for my sound.

That is where those infernal long tones help. Playing them in a relaxed but appropriate position helps our bodies to learn how to do it and enhance our muscle memory.

Arnold Jacobs is mentioned above. He was principal tubist for the Chicago Symphony and many consider Jacobs one of the great music instructors of the second half of the 20th Century. He has become well known as an expert on breathing and wind instruments.

(Here is a collection of quotes and explanations of some of what he taught.)

One of the quotes and explanations from the site.(Bold in original):

"Conceive, don´t perceive"

Controling our thoughts is one of the most important parts of musical performance. When we are playing, it is very common to ask ourselves questions like "does this sound good?" "am I breathing right?", "am I using my fingers correctly", "do I feel okay?", etc.

Arnold Jacobs thinks we shouldn´t ask ourselves these kind of questions during the performance because we´re sending information from our muscles to our brain when we should be doing exactly the opposite; creating music in our mind and making our muscles to produce it.

As Jacobs says, "be a great artist in your imagination", since analysis does not help performance. If we want to progress and improve we should present what we want listeners to perceive.

Jacobs points out that musicians should show their feeling and tell stories with their sound. If we want a specific colour in our sound, we have to create it in our mind and then our body will produce it by making the necessary adjustments. The idea is to tell a story though musical orders.

All this talk about breathing- remember that it is always in support of the sound, the great sound that we should always be seeking for. Breathing is the best way to start in any attempt to improve our playing. But it is also the starting point for stress reduction, personal centering, meditative focus, and many other introductions to better health.

Keep breathing- and learning to breathe better.