So, internet, here's a good one (or, at least, I HOPE it ends up being a good one). This is one of the updates I've been planning since before day one. Now, folks of the internet, I give you... my origin story! This is about me, playing the trumpet, and the trials and tribulations getting to where I am today (and I'm not done yet, but you'll be getting the updates to the story as they happen).
Nothing interesting really happened BEFORE university, but I'll detail that anyways. I first got into music via piano lessons, after a Christmas where I was fooling around with my cousin's newly-acquired electric piano, and my dad noticed how much I like it. I guess, to some degree, it's him that really got me into music, who'da thunk? So I took piano starting at age 7, and three years later, decided to get into the band program at school. My original choices were trombone and tenor sax, but after playing the trumpet when we got to demo all the instruments, I liked the feel of it better than bone. I still to this day feel like I picked up the instrument on a whim, and am sometimes stunned to see how much it took over my life.
So, I didn't do much playing outside of school band though my entire elementary and junior high career. In high school, I dropped concert band entirely, playing only in jazz band and our annual musicals. Choosing to go into music professionally also feels to me like I chose it at a whim, and there were times when I thought "What if I don't like it" and "what if I'm not good enough?"
I started taking lessons in grade ten, with a jazz trumpeter and composer in the area. I got the vibe from him, when I mentioned I was auditioning for university, that he didn't think I was ready, but after much self-doubt, I went ahead with it. And somehow, I got in.
Then, that's when things really started taking off. I remember my first performance class there, the other freshman trumpet player (we're a small school, having more than one entrant in one year for trumpet was pretty rare) played an arrangement of Ravel's Pavane. I realized listening to him... I was not good enough. Not nearly. That's when I made a vow to myself: by the end of my fourth year, I would match him. We would be equals by then. And, of course, music is subjective, and different people place greater value on different aspects. But I would like to think that I met my goal.
My professor, who I constantly tell people I owe every penny of my career to that man, noticed early on in our lessons that my mouthpiece was in an odd place. I can't believe I was even making a sound like that, as when I go back to demonstrate to people how I used to play, I can't break the treble clef. A normal trumpet embouchure should be half upper lip, half lower lip, and if it's skewed at all, upper is favourable. I had about a fifth upper lip, and four fifths lower. That's BAD. Bad to the point that I failed my first-year jury, and knew I wouldn't have what it took to be a performance major, so I went into musicology.
That summer, I decided I had to do something about that. I worked my ASS off, and by the end of it, had my mouthpiece where I needed it. As I started the next year, another trumpet student from my high school had started as a freshman, so I decided my first performance had to be to show him how much I had improved. It wasn't NEARLY perfect, and I still had that rough, untamed sound, but it was at least a 300% improvement from when he had heard me last (which isn't as impressive as it sounds >.>).
It wasn't until the end of my second year, into the start of my third, that me and the other trumpet in my year really started talking. On the inside, I always wonder if there was a skill threshold I had to pass in his mind for him to consider me worth it, but I try not to think about it too much. That's something I think about a lot, of the music community as a whole, but will be the topic of later discussion.
Into my third year, I decided to be ambitious and embark on a serious undertaking: my first private solo recital. It would be just over an hour of me and me alone, including the Arutunian as my finale, and the third (and "fourth") movement of Hindemith. Sadly, that was also around the time I hit a slump, and the recital went nowhere NEAR as well as I felt it should have, even now.
Thankfully, the slump ended that summer. Sometimes I wonder if I only ever improve over summers, plateau during the school year, and then jump up again the next summer. That year, I did the one thing I wish I had done ages ago: joined our region's youth orchestra. That experience was the best thing for me I could have imagined.
I had another recital in my fourth year, this one split 50/50 with an amazing friend of mine who plays clarinet. And this one went pretty awesome, even though we had a MASSIVE logistic scare the day of (I might write about that later, it really inspired me to see so many people coming together to make something work, literally half an hour before a concert, WITH NO VENUE). I played the Halsey Stevens as the finale (it was my signature piece of that year... I find I have pieces that signify each year, and that was it), and NAILED the ending (there was an arrival note that spoke noticeably late in the recording, but I was proud of myself regardless, considering how the previous year's recital had gone).
And that brings me to now. I'm still taking lessons, and I'll be auditioning around North America for a grad program, taking Performance this time, as I feel I might just be ready. I'm still playing in the youth orchestra, as I found out recently, so this is looking like it'll be an awesome year. We'll just see what it has in store.
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