When it comes to establishing a daily routine and warm up, trumpet players are all over the map.  In spite of this fact, the Stamp Warm-Up routine has found its way into almost every player’s routine at some point.  Usually, it seems that people have just been introduced to one fragment of the routine, or one exercise.  The purpose of this article, though, is to introduce you to the entire warm up routine as I use it, and as I use it with my students.  When done properly, the Stamp routine can help a student work through inefficiencies in his technique, and allow him to play in a way that he could previously only imagine.  It is important to remember that I am not trying to pose as a “Stamp Expert” who knows every in and out of how James Stamp would have instructed a student to play.  Rather, I am presenting to you my ideas of how to use this routine in order to see real and tangible improvements in your playing.  The method has worked for me, and it has worked for my students.  It is because of these experiences that I have decided it is important to write this article.

The first and most elemental step is simple: buy the book!  It is published by BIM and is titled James Stamp, Warm-Ups + Studies.  Don’t make a copy of your buddy’s or your teacher’s book.  Get your own.  Why?  Because we need companies that print books like this to make money, so that they can continue printing them in the future.  In addition, when you own your own book you can make all of your own markings in it, and the commitment you show in purchasing the book will be more likely to be continued into actual use of the book.

The very first page in the book (page 2) shows some breathing exercises.  Do them.  The language in the book is clear, and all of them will improve your breath control, and, consequently, your playing.  I find that I tend to pick just one group and do it each day; the entire group of four tends to take too long for my taste, so I simply rotate through a new one each day.  You should decide for yourself what works for you.

On page 3 are the Preliminary warm-ups, and it is here that more clarification than the book offers is needed.  I do these exercises on either my Bb trumpet or my C trumpet.  If I am doing them on Bb, then all of the buzzing exercises (lips alone, and mouthpiece) are done in the key of Bb and starting on a Bb concert.  If I am going to use C trumpet, then they are all done in C and starting on C.  If you are new to these exercises, then begin by using your Bb trumpet exclusively.

Lips alone:

Sit down at a piano with a metronome set to quarter note = 60.   Play a Bb below middle C on the piano (low C on a Bb trumpet), count 1, 2, 3, breathe, then blow on beat 1 as you bring the embouchure together in a “poo” shape.  Don’t confuse this with the act of forcing the lips together and starting the sound with a percussive “p”.  Instead, bring the lips toward a “poo” shape as if embracing the air stream.  You don’t want to force the vibration to begin, but eventually you should be able to start the vibration exactly on 1.  On your first attempt you may not be able to make any sound, or it may be a tight anemic-sounding buzz.  The sound you want is a full sounding, resonant, focused buzz.  There should be just enough tension in the lips for the sound to be produced, no more.  As I said, you might not be able to make a sound the first time you try.  In fact, it may take several days before you can make a sound with the lips alone, but not usually.  Conversely, it may come very easily, and you may rocket through this exercise in no time.

Once you are capable of producing the first note, count yourself off and sustain the Bb for 6 counts.  Rest 6 counts while you play a B natural on the piano and then buzz the B natural for 6 counts.  Continue in this manner until you get to F on the piano (middle G on a Bb trumpet).  Again, this may happen the first time you do it, or it may take weeks.  If you are not able to reach the F, do not continue with the rest of the warm-up.  Simply begin your day with this exercise, and then continue with your normal routine.  Once you are able to reach the F, then you can move on to what should be titled #1, the first notated exercise in the book on page 3.

Exercise #1 should be performed at the piano with a metronome set to quarter = 60.  Play a Bb major triad, then count yourself off and buzz the exercise.  During the rest, play a B major triad on the piano and continue in this manner as high as you can go.  You should still begin the sound with the “poo” attack to better focus the embouchure.  Read the text in the book prior to beginning the exercise.  There are some good clues there.  When doing this exercise, I tend to turn the last quarter into a half note.  The fermata over the bar line should be a fixed length and at least 2 beats long.  Continue as high as you can go.  It is important to mention that Stamp says you should continue to at least a middle C (concert Bb by my rules).  However, since you just now got to where you can buzz an F lips alone, it is unlikely that you will be able to go any higher than that, and in fact you might not make it to that F in the context of the exercise.  Don’t worry about it!  This is an oversight in the book.  Obviously you could not be expected to suddenly be able to buzz up to a fourth higher than you were previously capable of going.  Again, it may take a few weeks or more to be able to reach that minimum level of Bb concert.  Once you are capable of that, make a point of going at least that far.

The second exercise on page 3 should really be labeled #2, and it is performed both lips alone and on the mouthpiece.  This exercise should be done in the manner described above with one notable exception.  This exercise is diatonic, meaning that all of the notes are taken from the C major scale (Bb concert).  Thus I play a Bb major chord on the piano for the first bar, then a c minor chord for the second bar, then a d minor chord for the third bar, etc.  The pitches you buzz should all be members of the Bb (on the piano) major scale.  The fermata on the 5th eighth note should be held at least 2 beats.  Continue this exercise as high as you can go, but remember, if you are just starting out you may only be able to reach a concert F.  Thus, you may only be able to buzz the first bar of the exercise.  This will improve with time.

We will continue discussing the next part of the Stamp warm-up in the next installment of Stamping It Out in the November 1 issue of LivMusic News.  In the meantime, focus on getting as comfortable as possible with buzzing on the lips alone.   Be very patient with this process; it can be quite foreign when you are just starting out.  Until we cover the rest of the Stamp warm-up, you should just add the lip buzzing to the beginning of the day, then go about the rest of your normal daily routine.  Good luck!

{ fin }

The Cabrillo Festival (which is discussed in more detail in the post, New Trends for New Music) starts in one week, which means I am in the throes of final preparation right now. This year, as every year, I am wondering how I am going to get everything learned in time, especially with a difficult concerto added to the mix. Playing new music is always demanding; composers don’t always have what I would call a perfect grasp on how to write effectively for the trumpet. A couple of composers this year suffer from one of my personal pet peeves — I call it the D Trumpet Disorder. This condition leads to parts like this:

A classic example of DTD

I can see it now, the composer sitting guiltily at his desk, wanting to stretch the range of the trumpet to include that high E, held by the knowledge that it really is not a reasonable thing to write. “I know,” he thinks excitedly, “I’ll write it for D trumpet! It will still have a big sound, but it will be easy to play!” With the guilt now gone, the composer hurriedly transposes the part into D, and voila! problem solved. Right? Not so fast…

The D trumpet is not a panacea for all that ails our beast of an instrument. That high concert E is still a concert E, no matter if it is played on a Bb, C, D, or Eb trumpet. In fact, for me personally, I’d rather play the high E on my C trumpet than on a D. Hakan Hardenberger mentioned something similar when he told me that he plays the Maxwell Davies Sonata on C trumpet (rather than on D trumpet as indicated in the part). He said that he just doesn’t see any reason to use D. I tend to agree, though the piece is not exactly easy no matter what you play it on. On D trumpets I have tried, the upper register gets a bit tight and tends to be even harder to play above concert D than my C trumpet. I do find that playing on one of the small instruments (G or piccolo) does make it noticeably easier, but it is still certainly no walk in the park. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my D trumpet, and I find many great uses for it, especially in the orchestra; I just don’t tend to use it for extreme high register parts.

You may be curious as to what exactly has driven me to write this article. After all, it’s really not that big of a deal. If the composer has written for D trumpet, then you can still transpose it to piccolo, which is what I almost always do without a fuss. This time, though, the part continues past what is indicated in the image above. It goes a few lines, and then changes key — to Db major — and then it continues for a full page after that. Now, this transposition wouldn’t be too bad, except for the fact that the part is loaded with accidentals. So now, I am doing mental acrobatics while playing outrageously high trumpet parts at the end of an intense festival, at the end of a long concert — a concert which, it just so happens, occurs twice on the last day day. Now that makes me cranky.

You see, if the composer had simply left the part in C, then I could choose for myself what kind of wuss-out tool would be best for the job, and then I could quietly go to said tool when the going gets rough, glady accepting the compliments afterward for nailing the screaming high trumpet part. Of course, the composer too, would then have to suffer the indignity of anyone who is familiar with the normal range for the trumpet looking at the score and saying, “What the hell was this idiot thinking here?” Most composers don’t really like to take the chance of such a thing, so the D Trumpet Disorder bails them out. Meanwhile, I am left to pick way through the minefield. Sometimes life just isn’t fair.

{ fin }

You are 25 (or 35) or 27 (or 33).  You dream of a career as an orchestral musician.  You have gone to all the right schools, studied with all the right people; they have told you how great you are, how much they believe in you.  You have gone to festivals and basked in the glow of making music your livelihood.  You are young, happy, and confident; you are budding success just waiting for the Spring.  Then, you go to an audition…  You attend an audition for second trumpet in the Southwestern New Mexico Symphony Orchestra of the Acoma Nation.  The position pays $6,000 per year, and, if you are lucky enough to win the job, you will settle down in a place 263 miles from the nearest Starbuck’s.  You show up at the audition with 5 trumpets, stand in a room with 62 other people with 5 trumpets, collect a number, play the exposition of the Haydn, then three excerpts (all of which sound strained and forced, nothing like you really sound), then you are “Thank You’d”, made to wait in a strangely small room with bad acoustic tile, sit for an hour facing the floor, then someone who doesn’t know how to pronounce Mozart comes and tells you that you have been cut.  Yes, this little plum of a job is just a bit out of reach for someone of your abilities.

Then, you redefine yourself…

You are 25 (or 35) or 27 (or 33).  You are out of work.  You have no employable skills.  You play the trumpet better than 15 out of 62 people who are willing to work for $6,000 per year.  Most of your friends are out of work or… they are wildly successful and texting you daily about how much money you can make when you actually are talented.  Then they complain that they have to go to rehearsal and that the conductor really sucks.  You are having a butter sandwich for dinner, again.  You contemplate mailing a butter sandwich to your successful friends.  You are faced with a wall of anxiety, a wall of fear.  You try practicing, but you can’t shake the way you sounded at the last audition, or you wonder why you are wasting your time practicing, wondering if it will ever pay off.  With nowhere else to turn, you go to the internet.  Somehow you find yourself perusing the writings of some strange trumpet player and teacher who apparently saw the Chicago Symphony once, or something.  Now you are reading this.  This could well be your lowest point.  Now Entering: Rock Bottom.  Population: 1.

Fortunately for you, this article isn’t over, so there is at least the possibility of things improving from here.  But what could I possibly write that could help you find your way out of this miserable corner you have painted yourself into?  Keep reading; you never know what lies around the next corner, or as one of my favorite writers puts it, “the devil isn’t lurking behind every door.”

First of all, ask yourself if I have, to some degree of accuracy, captured the way you are feeling right now, the way your life is right now.  If you are one of those people trying to win that elusive first orchestra job, the answer is probably yes.  And the reason I have accurately described it is simply that I have been down that path before, as have many other successful trumpet players before me and after me, and as will others after you.  Your situation is not unique.  Rock Bottom does not actually have a population of 1, but of thousands, and it is growing all the time.  You may wonder why that makes things any better?  Well, for one thing, there is company in numbers, but more importantly, there is a pathway that leads from where you are to where you want to go, and that pathway contains the footprints of people who have gone on to do extraordinary things.  All you have to do is follow the tracks.  Careful, though — the path is slippery, and, if you slide too far off, it will be practically impossible to find your way back.  Unless, of course, you slide all the way back to Rock Bottom; then you can simply head off down the path again.  Painful, yes, but it should serve as some recourse, some sort of comfort.

Now that we have established that you are not alone in this adventure, and that many people have gone this way before, we simply need to concentrate on how you can follow the tracks in front of you.  In order to do that, you will need a few tools.  Not trumpet tools or musical tools, but mental tools — tools you will need in order to achieve the level of refinement in musicality and technique needed to be successful.  Without these tools, your mental abilities will suffer, and you will start sliding backwards before your first step has brushed that icy path.  The tools that are the most critical in this pursuit are perhaps the most often overlooked: objectivity, creativity, and determination.  They are not all you will need, but without them you are lost.

Objectivity

Objectivity is the ability to see yourself and your product as they actually are; to know what needs work and what doesn’t, not relative to other people, but relative to the standard that you must meet in order to achieve your goals.  If you need to improve your articulation, then lay out a plan and execute it.  Assess the results.  Need to improve your musicality, your sound?  There are ways to improve them.  Go about it and gauge your results. Whatever you are working on, your ability to accurately assess your progress will be key to your success.  Assess your abilities honestly; make a plan to improve.  Take another audition; assess your progress.  Repeat.  The first step to improvement is being able to see and hear yourself objectively.  Ever been advised to record yourself leading up to an audition?  I thought so.  Recording is squarely in the domain of objectivity.  It is essential.

Remember that audition for the Southwestern New Mexico Symphony Orchestra of the Acoma Nation?  Remember that you were one of the worst there?  Right.  Now forget about it.  You can’t forget the experience and you can’t forget the feelings, but that critical point where you assessed yourself relative to the other people at the audition?  Forget it.  It’s irrelevant.  There is only room for one on this pathway, and if you bring others along they will make you slide.  You cannot waste time comparing yourself to others who are trying to achieve the same goals.  The only thing of value that you received from that awful audition experience is knowledge about how you can do better next time.  Your sound was forced, and you didn’t play like yourself.  That is something you can work on.  Your entire focus needs to be on your playing and your audition package, not on how well you are doing relative to others.  If you work on it long enough and hard enough, it will improve.  It’s that simple.  Think about what you can do to better prepare yourself for the next audition.  What can you do to be able to actually play the way you do at home?  There are answers.  There are solutions.  You are not the result of your last audition.  You are not the result of your next audition.  You are a work in progress.  The devil isn’t lurking behind every door.

Creativity

The first thing many people would think when seeing the word “creativity” is of artistic or musical creativity, but, while that remains an important part of any artistic pursuit, that is not the kind of creativity that I see as an essential tool of achievement.  No, the kind of creativity I am talking about is the kind needed for creative problem solving.  Through objectivity you learn to see your product as it actually is.  Through creativity you will learn to find solutions to your challenges — solutions that are not obvious on the surface.  Is there something that you can’t quite resolve, some weakness that you can’t quite remedy?  This is where your creativity comes into play.  Think about that weakness.  What makes it tick?  Look at it from another perspective.  Look for parallels to other strengths and weaknesses.  Turn it over and over looking for any place you can get a better grip, a little more leverage.

Having a hard time playing cold at an audition?  Try practicing cold at home.  Try making your home environment more adverse for performing than the audition environment.

Having trouble with upper register playing?  Try a new approach, a new method.  Maybe it is the way you are practicing it, or your equipment.  Look for creative ways to solve your problems.  This may be just the thing you need to complete your audition package — the final piece in a complex puzzle.  Discuss your problems with your friends.  Think about them when you drive.  The solutions are there; they are just waiting to be discovered.  Creativity is the key to that discovery.

Determination

This could also be called focus, sacrifice, or discipline; all different words that, for our purposes, mean much the same thing.  And that is… Get off your butt.  Get to work.  Stop making excuses.  Stop allowing distractions.  You are in control of your product, of your life.  Achievement takes work, so get to work!  Think you are working hard?  Work harder.  Think you are doing everything you can?  Think again.  This is perhaps the most essential of all tools of achievement.  Without determination, none of the rest of your skills will matter.  Are you a fantastically talented trumpet player?  Great.  But you won’t be going anywhere without the determination needed to address your inevitable weaknesses.  Many very talented people have come up well short of their goals because of a lack of determination.  No one is talented enough to survive without a hefty dose of it.  You will have to make many a sacrifice, whether personal or professional, in order to achieve your goals.  I have sacrificed family holidays for audition preparation.  I have turned down lucrative tours in order to be able to attend or be adequately prepared for one audition or another.  You can’t wait for everything to fall into place, like the perfect Tetris piece for your life emerging on the horizon.  Sometimes things don’t fall into place so neatly.  But you should be right there, pushing and pulling for all you’re worth.  Sometimes round pegs do go into square holes; the hole just has to be big enough.  Determination, focus, and sacrifice will make that happen.  Think I am making too big a deal over this attribute?  Some people might, but these are the rocks against which dreams are dashed, crashing and splintering on the jagged edges of reality.  You do not want to be left picking up the shards of your dreams, wishing that you had worked harder, that you had given it your all.  Those would be dark days indeed.

It easy to think, after the emphasis I have placed on determination, that somehow it is the most important of all of these tools of achievement, but that is not the case.  There are many tools and attributes that are needed for any of us to achieve our goals, and they tend to work together, like the flow of water in an Escher painting: one leading to another, to another, then somehow – astonishingly – back to the first one again.  Each attribute is essential and cannot be compromised in any way, lest you stumble where others prevail and find yourself wending the well worn track back to Rock Bottom. 

It is true, however, that these attributes are not an end, but only a means.  The end goal remains unchanged.  You must present a package that is technically proficient and musically inspiring.  You must excite your listeners and make them interested in working with you based on the sounds that you make.  And you must prove your ability to do that on an empty stage, in an empty hall, with nothing but extremely critical ears to serve as witness and judge, and nothing but your well trained abilities and expressions to represent you; nothing more; nothing less.  The goal is quite simple, really.  It is just difficult to achieve. View yourself accurately and fairly.  Think critically and creatively.  Put your head down, block out distractions and temptations, and drive yourself relentlessly forward.  Objectivity.  Creativity.  Determination.  Use them well and you will find that even the wildest of aspirations can fall within your grasp.  Rock Bottom has just lost one more resident.

A discussion forum for the feature article, Going Home

A discussion forum for the feature article, A Matter of Perspective