livmusic interactive

Today was not a good day for playing the trumpet. Among other things, I barely had any time to play. By the time I was able to sit down and practice, it was 9:30pm and I felt like I was playing on borrowed lips. At this point, it was very tempting to just put the horn down, pour a glass of wine, sit down with a good book, and wait for a better day tomorrow. I decided against that though. Instead, I made myself play through some of the issues I was fighting, even though the day was all but over and I had no hope of making much progress on the music I have been working on.

I chose instead to dig out a favorite etude book that almost no one uses. The book is 25 Etudes de Virtuosité by H. Chavanne. This book is a favorite of my teacher, Ray Crisara, and it is a favorite of his students as well. Tonight I used it to salve my face back into some kind of shape. Don’t get me wrong, the shape didn’t come tonight. But if I am lucky, it will come tomorrow, and that is exactly what I was practicing for.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at 12:16 am and is filed under Practice Skills. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.