Preparing for Chair Placement in Your Band This Fall- Part #4

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By continuing in this series I hope to give you alternate views of how to prepare for an audition, whether for a chair placement or an All State tryout. You will find attached several pages of exercises which will give you alternate ways of practicing from which most players adhere. Each exercise is approached with a more concentrated view to fully understand and perform the audition material. The Allegro exercise is practiced at different tempi, keys as well as alternate articulation which help decrease the monotony usually associated with this type of exercise. The Moderato exercise begins with the last…

Preparing for Chair Placement in Your Band This Fall- Part #3

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Now Let’s Get Specific. Here is an example of an audition sheet for a trumpet chair in an actual High School band- Band Auditions These examples are typical of most audition material in that they begin simply and continue to get more difficult. Each of the four sections was selected for a specific reason and I will address these issues individually. Example #1- Allegro To most, this is just another simple scale but to your director it has several deeper characteristics that you should be aware of. 1. The scale is the A minor scale and to be even more…

Preparing for Chair Placement in Your Band This Fall- Part #2

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By continuing in this series I hope to give you alternate views of how to prepare for an audition, whether for a chair placement or an All State tryout. Rule #3. Stop practicing your audition material and start learning it! • To most students, practicing means running through it once a day. Wrong! Practicing consistently the same way every day creates boredom. Boredom generates lack of concentration. Lack of concentration wastes valuable practice time and helps to ingrain mistakes and create phobias when learning the music. To get the most out of your practice time, get in the habit of…

Preparing for Chair Placement in Your Band This Fall

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We have all been through the agonizing, embarrassing and in some rare instances, exhilarating experience of auditions. The days and weeks of preparation for those few moments auditioning seem insufficient once you have played your heart out in front of a judge, band director or conductor. Thoughts run through your mind such as, I wonder if they caught that missed note in the second measure or, I hope they noticed the subtle dynamic change I made at the end of the second number. The hours upon hours of practice in preparation for an audition are much like going through a…

5 Areas Where Most Trumpet Players Go Wrong.

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Obviously the first mistake trumpet players make is that they chose the trumpet! But setting that aside, most trumpet players can identify 5 areas in their playing that usually give them problems, and they are- Chops Air Tone Tonguing Fingering In the next series of posts I will focus on each of these five areas and point out five reasons in each as well as five solutions to these stumbling blocks. Check back for even I can’t wait to hear what I have to say.

How Can I Learn to Play My Scales?

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This question was just sent to our site recently and has been an issue through the ages for most musicians. The easiest answer and unfortunately the most often suggested remedy is…. “Practice playing them”! When we began studying our instrument, one of the features of most method book was the slow and gradual introduction of increasingly more difficult scales. This has been the practice for decades and most players adhered to this routine. Many years ago I started our youngest son on trumpet and began to introduce the different keys in a less orthodox way. His first key was C…

Patriotic Transposition Study

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Transposition sometimes is required for trumpet players. It most often occurs while playing in an orchestral setting but can surface in other venues such as reading out of a Fake Book, transposing from a hymnal or working with bad singers. To a younger player this can be a shock and for that reason I have included this study which uses a melody everyone should be familiar with and in a range most players will feel comfortable. Remember to use your eyes first and if your melody goes astray, your ears will guide you. Eyes first! Ears second! Patriotic Transposition Study

What is a Flugel Horn and Do I need to own one?

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The flugelhorn, also spelled fluegelhorn, flugel horn or flugelhorn has a long history in European countries but is relatively new to ours. Its popularity in the states probably dates back to the fifties through the use of such well known names in jazz as Shorty Rogers, Kenny Baker, Clark Terry, Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Nat Adderley and Art Farmer. The purpose of the flugel was to give the player an alternative to the edgy, powerful trumpet sound. During the Bebop period (1945-1960) the trumpet was king, but when cool jazz started to gain a following in…

Which Comes First, Technique or Musicality?

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This question is much like the chicken or the egg issue. Which should be taught first? One camp believes that without technique, nothing can be played and the other camp asks the question “what good is technique if it isn’t musical”. Both have their cases and in this post I will try to bring the two sides to a happy mid point. Most of my early teaching was geared to the technical approach but as I increase candles on my birthday cake I must admit, all technique can have its disadvantages. One student who stands out as the most gifted…