Why you need faster fingers

In my years teaching the trumpet I’ve had many students who pick up the instrument with many beliefs, one of them being that it will be easier than instruments with 17 or more keys. We only have 3 valves, what could possibly go wrong?!

Well, we get only 3 valves to play at least 31 notes. This means that we must not only learn how to change notes that use the same fingering combination, but also to be as fluid as possible when switching valves. This skill is separate from others, because it depends solely on your finger speed and strength. It has nothing to do with air, tone or tonguing. You can have a beautiful tone, but slow fingering will quickly stop you in your tracks.

Trumpet players need quick fingers to advance. Period. The demand for it begins rather early with the first set of sixteenth notes and never stops. Progress is highly dependent on this technique.

Learn how to improve your dexterity on the trumpet with the following tips, which I encourage you to implement slowly into your daily practice.

LIFT!

Too often beginner and intermediate trumpet players have lazy fingers, which results in valves not making it all the way up. When this happens, the transition between notes becomes smudgy and undesirable.

You can train yourself to not do this by purposely lifting your fingers higher than necessary. This acts as a double whammy exercise, because the extra muscle effort needed to do this strengthens your fingers, which in turn makes them faster.

Train the 3rd finger

That ring finger sure loves dragging itself and causing trouble!

This is due to the interconnection between the branches of radial and ulnar nerves hampering the complete independent movement of the ring finger. So, since anatomy is working against us, we must work that finger a bit harder than the others.

I recommend to focus on dexterity exercises that use the 123, 13 and 23 combinations. Going from 13 to 2 is especially difficult and therefore more important to spend time on. You can easily come up with exercises on your own. For example:

1) Set the metronome to 60.

2) Play D (13) to F# (2) in quarter notes for 1 measure.

3) Repeat the notes in eight notes for 1 measure.

4) Repeat again in sixteenth notes.

Chromatic exercises

These types of exercises, such as those found in Clarke Technical Studies 1, are incredibly helpful for improving your dexterity. However, they can be intimidating and simply too advanced for some. Instead, you can focus on two other exercises to work your way up to Clarke.

Use major scales in incremental speeds. First in quarters notes, then in eight notes etc. The goal is to achieve cleanliness and fluid fingers.

You can also use chromatic scales in the same manner. The key is to keep track of your tempo and go up when you are ready. Without tracking speed, you cannot see the progress or tempos in which you should spend more time.

SLAM

If you want to take your lifts to the next level, you can not only lift high, but also slam down! You may be thinking I’ve gone off the rails, but this technique really works and is taught in the well-known Claude Gordon Systematic Approach to Trumpet Playing.

The idea is, again, that the added muscle use strengthens the fingers. And trust me, you want those fingers strong and quick!

The right hand grip is everything

The way you hold the trumpet with your right hand will make or break your ability to move your fingers freely, especially in the first 3 years of playing.

Make sure you do not:

1) Hook the pink into the hook.

2) Hook the thumb behind the first valve and under the lead pipe.

3) Press the valves with the middle of the fingers.

4) Keep your palm close to the valve casing.

Make sure you DO:

1) Free the pinky and allow it to float.

2) Rest the thumb under the lead pipe and between the 1st and 2nd valve OR under the lead pipe and in front of the 1st valve.

3) Press the valves with the balls of your fingers.

4) Leave space between your palm and the valve casing, as if holding a baseball.

Last thoughts

Good things come to trumpet players who work on dexterity! So get to work and avoid overwhelm by applying these tips incrementally into your daily practice routine. You absolutely shouldn’t throw them all in at once.

When in doubt, consult a professional instructor. I cover this and many more topics extensively in my trumpet lessons online course right here at THQ.

Please leave questions and comments below.

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Common practice mistakes

If I had a penny for every time a new student has said the words “I want to play longer but I get tired really fast,” I’d have my own island in the South Pacific by now. It’s a question I also receive through email from social media followers and my students from the THQ Trumpet Lessons Online program. It’s no secret…fast fatigue is a big problem and learning how to build endurance when playing the trumpet is a must-know.

It’s so frustrating to have the will to play and no face left to do it. However, over time and with correct practice you can develop the ability to play for one, two and even three hours a day, or more!

Building endurance for advanced and professional trumpet players is a dedicated topic and deserves its own blog post. Plus, they usually play so much that endurance building is sort of “built” into the equation. However, for beginner and intermediate players the equation is a little more complicated. Without the demand of performance it’s easy to skip 3 days of practice and cause set backs.

So sure, professionals play a lot through demand, but playing a lot doesn’t equate to growth. What they would all certainly agree on is that a consistent warmup and fundamentals routine is key to chop maintenance, and it starts in the beginning stages. So, let’s start there.

You’re not doing a proper trumpet warm-up

An overwhelming majority of new students, I’d say 90% or so, tell me their warm-up consists of a C Major scale and an excerpt from an old band piece. 

I hate to break to you, but even before the day begins you’re already digging yourself a hole you will later have to climb out of. Lack of a daily warmup is the number one culprit for all kinds of issues in trumpet playing, from fatigue to tone and tonguing clarity. How you begin your day sets the tone for that day.

For a beginner, the warm-up should include long tones and light flexibility in their available range. It should also have as many major scales as possible and a warm-down to bring blood flow back into the lips and promote healing. A warm-down is usually comprised of very slow and low notes. It should feel very relaxing. I welcome you to join my newsletter to download my free and simple trumpet warm-up guide for beginners.

When I see new students who do warm-up daily but continue to experience fast-setting fatigue, its usually because they rush through the warm-up. The warm-up MUST BE SLOW! Slow enough for you to truly focus on tone and feel the feedback of the instrument. For some metronome marking suggestions check out “How To Use A Metronome.”

You will always end up tired if you push way past your endurance threshold

This is a big one and I cannot stress this enough. As a beginner and intermediate player, you should NEVER play to exhaustion. Instead, learn to set the horn down and walk away while you still feel fresh. This way, your facial muscles will heal faster and you can come back again later to play more.

I remember a student, a particularly well-toned and muscular man, said “but I thought no pain no gain applied to trumpet too.” No. It does not. You should never feel pain or extreme fatigue after a session. Ever. If you are, there is a myriad of things that could be going wrong, but most likely you are overexerting yourself past your current limits.

Learn to listen to your facial muscles and rest before you feel the need to.

Playing loudly isn’t good for you or the neighbors

This is a more difficult problem to overcome for some. If you can play softer, then do so. Playing loudly all the time will change your tone and lip response, as well as cause quick fatigue and block your development. Sometimes, it’s difficult for beginners to play softly though. So what can you do then?

If you have a difficult time playing softly, I highly recommend you consult an instructor. It’s difficult to diagnose these types of problems on your own, but I understand that sometimes there is no room in the budget for lessons. So here are some reasons why you may not be able to play softly:

1. The aperture is a little too big. You can remedy this by trying to make it smaller, but beware that over doing it will make it too small and render a very tight tone. Always make very small changes at a time.
2. Your lips are often dry, chapped, swollen or sore. Any alteration to the lip surface will cause changes to the aperture and tone. Take care of your lips with a daily routine of lip balm. If your lips are very swollen and sore I recommend an anti-inflammatory and interchanging warm/cold compresses for 15 minutes, two to three times a day. Never apply heat or cold directly on your lips or skin, and follow the manufacturer’s directions for dosage of anti-inflammatory medications.
3. You’re using too much pressure. Excessive pressure will spread the lips and keep the aperture from being flexible. Release some pressure and experiment with the results.

Patience you must have, my young padawan

I know it’s frustrating but remember that patience and consistent practice does pay off. If you apply my suggestions above you should see improvements in as little as two days and within four weeks.

I cannot stress this enough: “It’s all about quantity, not quality” said no trumpet player ever. Focus on the quality of your playing sessions and don’t time them. Time will fly when you do it right.

 

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What’s that ticking noise?

This might be the question your non-musical friends and family members ask when they hear the incessant clicking from your practice space. Knowing how to use a metronome is important, simple and very useful.

This device, nowadays purchasable as a phone app, is a musician’s most trusted tool for inner rhythm development, technique practice and more. It provides us with a consistent and never wrong (unlike foot tapping) “click” which represents the beat in any tempo or rhythm you may need.

It helps us physically hear something we would otherwise only feel; the beat.

How does it work?

The metronome works by providing a beat anywhere from 30bpm to about 252bpm, where the lower the number the slower the click. BPM stands for “beats per minute” and it has to do with time signatures.

For example in 4/4 time, there are 4 beats per measure and each beat is a quarter note. If you need to brush up on basic music theory check out this awesome little website. So, if I was playing Mary Had a Little Lamb in 4/4 time I could set my metronome at a comfortable 86bpm and play a quarter note on each click. If I wanted to play it faster, I would turn it up to say 120bpm and follow the same method.

The metronome’s job is to keep you steady in whatever you play to avoid speeding up or dragging the tempo.

But I don’t know what tempo to pick!

While some sheet music clearly states a metronome marking at the top, most fundamental exercises simply say “Slowly” or “Steady.” This is to promote self-reflection and mindful practice as opposed to playing through fundamentals for the sake of getting them out of the way. If you see the word “slowly,” play the exercise as slowly as you need to to focus your tone, notice the flow and feel the feedback from the instrument.

However, sometimes it’s good to play fundamentals with a metronome, especially if you are having a hard time playing slowly, steadily and if you feel like your inner rhythm is out of wack. Here are some go-to tempo markings, but keep in mind they’re just suggestions.

Long tones: 60bpm

Flexibilities: 60-86bpm

Tonguing/Articulation: 60-94bpm

Can I use it to play something other than fundamentals?

Yes, and please do. Use your metronome to practice anything and everything! It’s great for mastering pesky passages with quick moving notes and complicated fingering patterns. My favorite practice technique is “chaining”.

Have you ever played a piece of music that has this one part with a bunch of notes going really fast and you just can’t get it right? Yeah me too, and I’m going to tell you how I fixed it. Chaining comes from the idea of an actual metal chain, which is made of single links put together. Once the links are welded in place it is impossible to pull the chain apart. In practice, we can do the same thing. Take the measure that is causing you trouble, turn on your metronome to something slow like 60, and play the first two notes. Play those two notes three times. If, and only if, you got it right all three times, add another note. See how it works? Once you complete the measure or section you can speed it up slowly.

Another way to chain is to do the same thing but with the metronome at full tempo, an approach I recommend for intermediate and advanced players.

Get more tips on this page: “Practice Techniques”

Get started

There is a lot more you can do with metronome apps nowadays, but that is a topic for another time. I will leave you with some suggestions on my favorite metronomes.

First, the simple, free and easily accessible Google metronome. Just do a google search for “metronome” and boom…it’s right there!

The second is the awesome app “Tonal Energy”, available on android and apple devices. It is a metronome, tuner, recorder, tone generator and coffee maker. The last one is a lie…but it’s basically that great.

And finally, I would love to recommend a metronome that never failed to be loud enough, the Korg KDM-2, but it’s hard to come by these days. Instead, look for any hefty Korg metronome with a visible speaker and you should have enough volume to annoy the neighbors.

For more recommendations check out this dedicated page: “Tuners and Metronomes.”

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Get better at sight-reading with these tips

Last week we talked about why sight-reading is an important skill to have. This week I will let you in on the simplest, yet most effective techniques to up your sight-reading game.

Sight-read a little daily

Although sight-reading should be fairly easy at the beginner/intermediate levels, the majority of young players have a hard time due to lack of exposure. If your private teacher hasn’t been doing this with you ask them to incorporate it in your lessons.

Remember, if you don’t do it, you will not get good at it. 

To start reading every day you can use my 10 simple melodies, use your music books or a friends, dig through your band’s library and ask you teacher to borrow books. 

Stuff is out there, so go get it!

Rhythm is king

When practicing sight-reading focus on the rhythm first, notes later. This will seem weird at first but in the long run this is how you become a proficient reader. You know the notes, it’s the rhythms that get you. So, if you focus on the rhythms 100% of the time they will eventually become second nature, just like notes.

When you focus on rhythms you might find yourself missing more notes. That’s okay! Miss notes for now and focus on keeping the rhythm intact. If you practice this daily you can see results in as little as one sitting. You read that right. I have seen it time and again with my students. They struggle to sight-read, but once they shift their focus to rhythmic accuracy everything falls into place. 

Use a metronome

Although you won’t normally have access to a metronome in a sight-reading situation such as an audition, it is good to use for practicing.

The metronome acts as a constant reminder to keep your rhythm steady. Turn it on to an easy going tempo like 86bpm and make sure you wait for…

The 4-click count off

I can’t tell you how often I see students turn on a metronome to sight-read, only to completely ignore it from the get go. If this is you, get in the habit of listening to the click for a full 8 beats, then do a 4-click count off in your mind before you begin, as if someone was counting you off.

All together it should look like this:

*click* *click* *click* *click*

*click* *click* *click* *click* (put your trumpet up)

One, two, three, four (breath on 4)

Play on the downbeat of 1

Waiting in this manner lets the tempo “sink in” and sets you up for success.

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That wraps it up for the best sight-reading tips. If you missed last week’s post on why sight-reading is a great skill to have check it out to complete this post’s teachings. Get to work and let me know if these tips helped you!

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Bad habits are hard to break, but it’s not impossible!

Here is a scary statistic: 99% of new students that come to me not only have no idea how to practice, but they’re actually making themselves worse on a daily basis by doing the things listed below.

That’s a fairly accurate percentage, seeing as maybe one student every couple of years actually knows how to approach the trumpet. Beginners simply don’t know how to avoid bad habits. Why? Because they don’t know what the incorrect habits are. Like the game “telephone”, incorrect trumpet playing habits spread and get worse from person to person until it finally lands on you…and you end up ¨smiling to play higher.¨

Sometimes you’ve been doing something for so long and you’ve dug a hole so big, that you have to work 20 times harder to get out and never fall back in. But like an old teacher once told me, do something everyday for 3 weeks and you will be on the right track. Here we go:

 

Your first note of the day is always a C below the staff

This is one of those things I burn into the skulls of my students. You are making your life so much harder by letting your first note be that low.

Let me put it this way: pick the easiest way to climb to the top of a mountain. 1) You start at the very bottom and hike OR 2) You get dropped off in the middle and hike.

The answer is obviously #2!

Trumpet playing works in a similar way. Starting below the staff everyday prepares your mind and chops to be “low,” and the journey to the top will seem much higher.

Instead, start in the middle, on middle C, and you will soon find yourself realizing that C above the staff is not so far after all. If you’re still working your way to middle C, try starting on a G on the second line of the staff. Just stay away from low C as your first note of the day.

 

You don’t warm-up before playing other things

If I had a penny for every time I say this every week…

Not warming up before playing anything else is the best way to destroy your chops. This is like not stretching before doing hard exercise, and then pulling a muscle. What you have to realize is that the embouchure is made up of tiny muscles that need exercise to become stronger. When you don’t warm-up, you shock these muscles and don’t give them time to “wake up.”

This is bad…very very bad. I have seen so many players ruin themselves by picking up the horn first thing in the morning, blowing a few high Cs and playing some marching band music. If you truly want to get better, begin your day with some long tones/Cichowicz studies and slurring drills. Try to fit at least in 10-15 minutes of warming up. It’s a wonderful thing and your future self with thank you.

 

When practicing a solo, you always start at the beginning

This may seem like a good idea but in reality, it’s a great way to waste time. If you already know the beginning, skip it! Start in the middle or the end and work on the stuff you don’t know. It may be frustrating to not sound as good for a bit, but by the time that solo & ensemble/honor band try out/church gig rolls around you will start strong and end with confidence!

 

You never practice performing

This is a big one. If you practice your solos but never play a run-through like it’s the real thing, you’re not practicing performing.

Performance is a learned skill and you have to practice it too. If you don’t, you will find yourself performing your solo and stopping when you make a mistake because this is what you do when you practice. Or suddenly realizing mid-performance that you’ve actually never run the piece top to bottom. That is not a good feeling!

A really great way to practice performing is to prop your phone on your night stand, press record video and go! Don’t stop no matter how many mistakes happen. After watching the video you will be able to hear the trouble spot you may have already forgotten about. Now you can work that spot and record again.

So record yourself, perform for your family and you will soon feel more comfortable come performance time. Also, I wrote a post on how to transform your mistakes during performance, check it out if that’s sounds up your alley.

 

One good habit at a time

If you’re finding yourself guilty of a few bad habits, its alright. Tackle one at a time and above all, try to get guidance from a qualified teacher. Going solo on learning the trumpet can be a real roadblock, as can studying from an unqualified instructor. A student of mine tells me his former teacher told him to puff his cheeks…because that’s what Dizzy Gillespie did. Oh boy.

Although the internet is a great place to learn, it’s also chalkfull of ill advice by players who are also just learning. Stay on the right path and follow the THQ facebook, instagram, or twitter and ask questions there. I’m also on youtube with some videos.

Of course, the absolute best way to learn is with a teacher. However, if traditional weekly trumpet lessons are not possible, check out the online lessons offered here. They’re extremely effective and I’m always one message away for guidance.

I truly hope this helps you and your students.

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