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In the last article I wrote, School’s Out: What Now?, I mentioned that summertime would be a great time to focus on fundamentals. Specifically, I mentioned that it would be good to focus on what I call foundation and skill set exercises. If you don’t know what I mean when I use these terms, you will find it beneficial to read Fundamentally Speaking.
A good basic foundation routine will include some type of centering exercises and some solid strength work. Here is what I did today:
James Stamp – Warm Ups + Studies:
- First Exercise – Lips Alone
- Buzz a Bb on mouthpiece to adjust to the tension needed when buzzing a mouthpiece
- Second Exercise – Mouthpiece
- #3 – Mouthpiece
- #3 – Bb Trumpet
- #4b – Bb trumpet (softly)
Power Scale (2 reps) – more on this another time. You could also do 2-4 times through the Caruso 6 notes exercise.
After that I rest for at least 45 minutes before continuing with the skill set. Today it was actually a couple of hours. Also, my skill set today was slightly abbreviated and I plan on adding some initial attacks and multiple tonguing later in the day. Here is what I did:
Herbert L. Clarke – Technical Studies: Study #2 + Etude
Bai Lin – Lip Flexibilities: #’s 1, 7, 11, 13, 17, and 19.
Chris Gekker – Articulation Studies: #1 (using various styles of articulation)
All of this can be done in 45 min – 1 hour not including the rest period. If you are in good shape then you can also combine these two sessions quite easily. At the end of the day, I will come back to the last part of my foundation routine: strength building. My favorite exercise to use is the One Long G exercise.
Hopefully this will provide some good detail oriented clarification for you. I hope you find success with it. Now it is time for me to go do some practicing of my own. Enjoy!
Craig,
I did the same routine today, and it worked well. Would you think that 30″ of Chris Gekker’s piccolo trumpet exercises would be a good substitute for some of the endurance and range exercises thatyou alluded to?
One of my summer goals is to become much better on picc.
Thanks!
Roy Griffin
Craig,
I’m a master’s student at UNC-Greensboro, and I’ve been playing legit and jazz styles for as long as I’ve played the trumpet. I spent this past summer playing lead on a cruise ship, and the gig went well. I’ve had a range up to a high g with very strong endurance for quite a while, but for the past month or so, my endurance and my range have suffered immensely. I haven’t done anything differently in my playing recently other than the fact that I’ve been playing more every day than I had before beginning my master’s degree. I’ve done the long g excercise on and off for a couple of years (I just began doing it daily last week), and I’m hoping this will help. However, my embouchure continues to be sore after I play every day… something I’ve never experienced before. I’m incredibly frustrated, because I’m just not playing at the level I know I can (and previously have). Do you have any advice? Also, is there any particular way to know how/if you’re playing with the proper amount of pressure (or lack thereof)? Any advice you could offer would be greatly appreciated. I just found this website today… it’s fantastic, and I’ll be using it as a resource from now on… thanks!!
-Chris