When it comes perfecting your trumpet playing skills, you have to be diligent as it is impossible to be a legend overnight. People spend months mastering the instrument before feeling confident enough in their abilities. Remember that you don’t have to be the greatest trumpet player, and like any other skill, you have to start somewhere. To help you fine tune your skills, here are a few tips that you can use to at least take your trumpet playing skills to the next level.
Get back To Fundamentals
Spend some of your time fine tuning your breathing, sound production, and attack. Imagine being 10 percent more relaxed when playing or being 10 percent more efficient (producing more sound for less)—doesn’t it feel good? You can only achieve these by playing the fundamentals.
Give You Horn a Good Bath
Take 20-30 minutes of your presumably busy week to clean your trumpet and its mouthpiece. If you cannot manage this, you can take it to a nearby trumpets repair shop to have it thoroughly acid washed and ultra-sounded.
Remember that when too much gunk is inside your horn, you will be spending at least some part of your practice time adjusting to it. You can easily get rid of such variable by flashing your horn every week. Alternatively, you can keep a lot of stuff from building up in your trumpet by cleaning it with a lead pipe swab every day or after practice session.
Take a Lesson
Even trumpet gurus still take lessons at least every month. They call other professionals or colleagues to share a few tips on playing trumpet efficiently. Taking lessons is good for you too: you will expand your knowledge, improve your playing skills, and expand your bag of trumpet tricks.
Play With Others
Practice with others. This may involve playing in duets or going through your daily routines together. There myriad benefits to this. To begin with, you will have more fun than just sitting alone in your trumpets practice room. Secondly, you will get an opportunity to share your experiences and learn from the other parties or teach them as well. Additionally, you will have better practice pace because you will have a better chance of taking breathers to laugh, listen, and talk to each other.
Bottom Line
Whether you want to perfect playing the trumpet alone or with your friends, being diligent is the name of the game.
