The Shadow

Welcome to this week’s “Weekly Tips!”

If you’re looking to improve your range or build an improvisational skill, we encourage you to take a look at Chops Rehab and Beginning Jazz Improv courses…

Here are your weekly tips!

Tip #1 - One of the more frustrating things for us as trumpet players is the inconsistency we can experience with our chops… affecting range, endurance, flexibility, and tone quality.  If you have experienced a strenuous practice day, rehearsal, or performance, there is a good chance that your chops will NOT respond as well.  The best thing to do for this is to back off.  Don’t take the day off necessarily, but do more low register playing with greater intervals of time off in between each playing session.  I find that by extending my warm up (which consists of pedal tones first thing) I can recover relatively quickly from the self inflicted abuse I tend to impose upon myself!  Often we won’t feel the fatigue like you do in other muscles after a heavy work out.

Tip #2 –  Keep it simple!

When you are experiencing difficulty in any aspect of your playing, break it down to its simplest form of understanding… for instance, in the range department – upper register notes are fast air creating faster vibrations.  If things are “airing out” then the vibrations are stopping… perhaps lips are being blown apart.  If things are “stuffing out” then look at the possibility of “pinching” too much.  With respect to improvisation – by slowing down your practice, you can start to master ANY line in EVERY key!  Allow yourself time to absorb the line into your very soul.  Like Randy Brecker says, there are only 12 notes to choose from!

All too often we like to over complicate things.  Whether it be to make what we are doing sound more complex, or because we feel that it is overly complex… it’s best to just take your time.

“You gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face. You must do that which we think we cannot.”

Eleanor Roosevelt
1884-1962, Social Activist and First Lady of the United States

Have a GREAT week!

Sincerely,

Keith Fiala

1935 – 2010

The Shadow

Welcome to Weekly Tips!

If you haven’t signed up for Chops Rehab or for the Beginning Jazz Improv course yet, now is a great time!  Don’t miss out on these simple ways of meeting your goals today!

Here are your weekly tips!

Tip #1 - While working your upper register playing, one of the biggest mistakes most people make is that they don’t correct the tension problem that inherently develops in the aperture.  Understanding the difference between “aperture” and “embouchure” is vital.  We as brass players must know the role that each plays…

Most players start to tense (out of habit – not necessity) their aperture and this is what starts to cause weakening notes, double buzz, and eventually complete air-outs.  Your lips MUST be able to vibrate in order to achieve this.

Tip #2 - Improvisation anyone?  I was basically “stamped” in high school “the lead guy.”  Range has been my job, my goal, and my nemesis for well over 20 years!  I made a commitment to myself and my music this past New Years (kind of my resolution) to start working on my improvisation as it has intimidated me to no end!  I was fortunate enough to be the videographer for Sparky’s Beginning Jazz Improv video, and it inspired me to finally get off my butt and get going.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is this – it doesn’t have to be right, it doesn’t have to sound good – you just HAVE to get it going! I find that I’m listening to jazz, bebop, and swing with a different ear now.  I’m finding myself wanting to rewind to hear that lick once again cause I think I can copy it.  I practice my improv near daily now (considering I came from never just 2 months ago, that’s pretty good) and I have been complemented now by my fellow players on some solo’s because I’m starting to speak the language more intelligently.  I fully encourage you to dive in with both feet!!!  Stay focussed, and develop a routine of working out improv stuff… play – have fun – and it will become infectious!

I want to thank everyone for their understanding for last week’s absence in the Weekly Tips… as well as everyone’s supportive and kind emails about my Pop’s passing!

“The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat.”

Napoleon Hill
1883-1970, Author of Think and Grow Rich

Have a GREAT week!

Sincerely,

Keith Fiala

As an adult in my 40s I am playing professionally and teaching younger students as well. I am one that realizes what went wrong with my early days and try to avoid those same problems with my students. But one of the aspects of improvement escaped me (at least consciously) for a very long time… practicing – how to expedite learning and what makes us a better learner.

The times that I have practiced and felt mentally worn out afterward seemed to inspire the most growth and change in my playing. The biggest problem is, those times weren’t as frequent as when I’ve physically worn myself out from just mindless blowing and senseless playing.

To fully take advantage of your practice time as a student, you have to allow your mind to become fully immersed in your practice session. Allow yourself to block out all other distractions… hunger, anger, tiredness, emotions, other activities, etc. and just completely get lost in your studies… if only for a few minutes. You’ll find that this will enhance your learning skills and help your playing grow to a new level. The more you practice in this manner, the more you’ll create that habit… and the stronger you become!

Stay tuned for future ideas…

Many teachers have the basic skills needed to teach others, but do they have the actual ability to be dynamic in their teaching? Great teachers inspire their students to go beyond the basic lessons… dig deeper into the information that is being relayed. Great teachers genuinely care about their students growth…

Dr. David Krueger MD writes “Tell a man that he is brave and you help him become so.” As a teacher, you have to believe what you are saying, for fiend praise and inauthentic interest are forgeries immediately discernible to a child’s expert eye. In other words, if a student “senses” that the teacher is not interested in them or their journey to learn, they will know it instinctually.

Fast forward to adulthood: the same still holds true. Believe in someone and then he or she will show you why you do. Neuroscience has demonstrated that authentic belief in someone activates their brains to create a state of mind that transcends usual thinking and performance.

If more teachers would grasp this concept, as well as parents and the students themselves, more relevant information would be passed on as well as a support system that will last that student a lifetime! Many trumpet students tend to run out of steam with their journey because of a lack of interest… from the teacher!

If you are looking for a good learning resource either for yourself or an inspiring trumpet student, I encourage you to look at our courses (Chops Rehab & Jazz Improvisation) currently available on this site.

The Shadow

Welcome to the Weekly Tips!

If you’re looking for an online video course that will help you improve your trumpet playing, check out Trumpet Resources!  We offer coaching for improving range, tone, endurance, and control as well as a beginning jazz improv course taught by Sparky Thomason.

Here are your weekly Tips!

Weekly Tip #1 – Sometimes the exercises that were written long ago are more useful than trying to re-write something that will build range, endurance, etc.  Lately, I have flipped back to my Arban’s book with new vigor!  Page 126 of the Arban’s is an intervalic study designed to help loosen up the chops and make it easier to leap from middle / upper register notes to lower notes.   I’ve attached a copy of the page HERE for those of you who may not have an Arban’s book… but I highly recommend you stop on by the Book Store here to pick one up if you don’t have it in your collection of method books!

How To Practice This Exercise! – I do this two ways… AS written and with repeats – one right after another.  I don’t allow for any breaks in between each exercise as I want to keep the horn to my face for as long as possible… until I can’t really play much more or I’m missing the upper register notes consistently.  You REALLY want to avoid moving your EMBOUCHURE when performing this.  Allowing your aperture to flex inside the mouthpiece will assist you… but if you get too much movement in your supporting embouchure muscles, there’s a greater chance that it will cause you to want to pinch the aperture.

The second way to practice this exercise is 8VA!  Up an octave.  As you practice these up, be sure that you’re not allowing your aperture to pinch for the upper notes.  This will cause strained sound, double buzzing, and loss of notes.  Just keep the aperture relaxed, hold the embouchure in place and use your abs to push the air.  The more you practice this, the more stable you should become on the upper register notes!  In the coming weeks, I will record a video of me torturing myself with these very exercises!

We enjoyed a chance to attend this years 2010 TMEA conference in San Antonio… enjoy by watching the video we’ve put together.

“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”

Thomas H. Huxley
1825-1895, Biologist

Have a GREAT week!

Sincerely,

Keith

In traditional science, truth is arrived at by proffering a hypothesis, then accumulating data to prove or disprove it. The data force the conclusion. Reverse truths work the opposite — the hypothesis or belief creates the data. Our assumptions select what we perceive of the world and determine what meaning we attach to our perceptions. Believing is necessary in order to see.

Astute parents have known this principle for generations. The most vital reverse truth is our belief in our children. They look to us as a mirror of who they are, and they become what they see. If we trust and respect them, they become trustworthy and respect themselves.

Some parents have this reverse truth backwards, thinking that they will trust a child only after he or she has proven to be trustworthy. There are forward truths, but this isn’t one of them. Our belief in our children is taken in by them and metabolized into their own belief in themselves. We convey to them in an unspoken message: “I’ll believe in you until both of us can.” When that affirmation isn’t there, they may spend their lives looking for outside approval to fill what’s missing inside.

Carlyle was right. “Tell a man he is brave and you help him to become so.” As a parent, the trick is that you have to believe what you say, for feigned praise and inauthentic interest are forgeries immediately discernible to a child’s expert eye.

Fast forward to adulthood: This reverse truth still holds. Believe in someone and then he or she will show you why you do. Neuroscience has demonstrated that authentic belief in someone activates their brains to create a state of mind that transcends usual thinking and performance. I saw this repeatedly in therapy and analytic patients, as I see in now in coaching clients.

Here are some of the corollaries of this reverse truth:

How much you believe in yourself will determine how much others believe in you.

What you believe will show.

How you are, and how you behave with someone else, shows most in how it affects others responding to you.

What you believe will become true, because you will live it.

You are always creating outside to match inside.

Your experiences are always consistent with your beliefs.

It is vitally important to know your beliefs and assumptions quite well since you are always living them out. Once in awareness, you can change the ones that don’t work, stick with and enhance the ones that do, and generate new beliefs designed for growth.

Ulysses S. Grant said all this much more succinctly: “I succeeded because you believed in me.”

The Shadow

Welcome to the Weekly Tips!

If you’re looking for an online video course that will help you improve your trumpet playing, check out Trumpet Resources!  We offer coaching for improving range, tone, endurance, and control as well as a beginning jazz improv course taught by Sparky Thomason.

Here are your weekly Tips!

Tip #1 - My wife introduced me to an article that for me, really hit home.  I will provide the actual article in a link, so that you can read it if you would like (I would highly recommend it).  In short, it talks about a support system as a young child and how the lack of one can affect us into adulthood.  Identifying this is a major step for many and I find it relevant because we play one of the harder instruments in the musical world.  We initially start behind the “8 ball” because we have to figure out the “how to” just to make sound.  This tends to be a stumbling block for many aspiring trumpet players and ultimately leads into more problems down the road.

Having a supportive teacher and parents are vital.  ALL musicians hit walls with their playing at one time or another, and that’s when we can really use a support system to keep us inspired and uplifted.  As adult players sometimes it’s even more crucial to have that support because we can easily give it a half hearted go with lots of viable excuses as to why it wasn’t successful.

You can find the article HERE.

Tip #2 - This tip comes from Ken Switzer.

Venture into playing venues and situations that are not “nerve wrecking.”  Play material that you are sure you can do – even if a bit nervous — that builds confidence!  Listen and learn from people you like!

BONUS TIP! - This tip comes from Jan Tosti!

A major mistake I have made throughout my 30 years of trumpet playing, is total or almost total lack of warm up, due to being too busy getting on to some “real practicing” Through my recent learning experience, focusing on as many parameters as possible, I have learned this important lesson. I think that a long low impact warm up is the most important single object that will improve my playing on both the short and the long run.

I will post Jan’s example practice record once I get his approval…

Thank you to my contributing writers this week… it’s great to get perspectives from you… please keep those tips coming!  If you’ve stumbled upon something that is working for you and you’d like to share it, please send it our way to bugsytrumpet@gmail.com.

“Those with goals tend to succeed because they are focused and know where they are going, while those without goals do not.”

Ted Karam
Author

Have a GREAT week!

Sincerley,

Keith

My practice routines went from working on basic skills for performance, and more advanced skills such as improvisation, double tonguing, and technical skills, to working just the upper register to gain strength!  I became obsessed over this aspect of playing because Maynard Ferguson was a hero of mine.  And trying to sound like Maynard was a goal of mine.  He created excitement, energy, and a cult following with his faithfuls!

Once I entered college as a music major, it wasn’t more than my first lesson that it was extremely obvious that I lacked many of the skills that others had gained while I worked on these upper register notes.  I would ask every player I could find that had great range about how they did it, what mouthpiece they used, and what horn they played.

After my first year of college, I was extremely frustrated, had been cut from the scholarship program because of legislation, and I was defeated… so I quit!  For 3 years, I never looked at the horn.  During this 3 year period, I was miserable.  Playing was what I loved and what helped me identify myself as an individual.  so I had to go back!!!!

What I made my goal was to gain the knowledge I was seeking about playing trumpet high notes and live out my dream of playing professionally!  Check out Trumpet Resources for answers to your questions concerning High Note playing!

Keith Fiala

The Shadow

Welcome to the Weekly Tips!

If you’re looking for an online video course that will help you improve your trumpet playing, check out Trumpet Resources!  We offer coaching for improving range, tone, endurance, and control as well as a beginning jazz improv course taught by Sparky Thomason.

Here are your weekly Tips!

Tip #1 - Practice in a mirror!  Many times, we don’t “feel” developing problems coming on until we are suffering in the endurance or the range categories!  What we may not feel, we may be able to see in a mirror.  I am a big proponent of NOT allowing the aperture to move a great deal… and once this habit develops, there is a great chance that movement will be visible in the supporting muscles around your mouth as well.  Not only does this cause fatigue, but it can cause dips in tuning when moving through intervalic leaps as well as accuracy problems.

Tip #2 - Listen with an open mind!  Simply put, listen to everyone playing your style of music that you can, no matter the instrument.  When you practice, listen to your sound objectively and find the things that you like about what you’re playing, as well as the things that can be more on point with what you’re trying to sound like.  Composers, improvisationalists, soloists, lead trumpet players, etc. all have a certain style and / or sound.  By taking little bits from different players, we can then start to develop our own identity.  Most importantly – record yourself often!

If you have a tip that has helped you out and would like to share it, please send it to Keith at bugsytrumpet@gmail.com!  Helpful, constructive tips are always welcomed!

“It’s not what you do once in a while; it’s what you do day in and day out that makes the difference.”

Jenny Craig
Diet Specialist

Have a GREAT week!

Sincerely,

Keith