Hello, Internet! How are you today? Looking fine, I see. Is that a new haircut? No, wait... new frames. Yeah, that's it. Been working on any good Bach lately?
Okay, all introductions aside, I do have the ideas for two nerdy posts I'm probably going to do back-to-back, but first, I thought this might be relevant. It's something that's come up a lot for me recently, and something I'm also getting really adamant about, mostly because I'm angry with myself that it's something I even have to work on. This should be instinctive, but... alas.
I've been enjoying my lessons with Obi-Wan, though I've noticed a recurring theme. It's something that I haven't really thought of as an issue before, though I've heard it said in a few different ways in retrospect, but never in a way that's made it out-prioritize everything else I'm working on until now. Now, several people in the non-trumpet brass department back in Pallet Town have been on my case for several reasons in the past, and rightly so, I don't consider myself to be that fantastic a player. As I've said before, I don't think anyone should consider themselves that fantastic a player, since once you do, you risk allowing yourself to not improve, and justify it by saying you've reached your goal.
Random aside, because it seems appropriate in the moment. I came up with this plan to keep myself motivated throughout my career, and I encourage you to do the same. It's a very basic plan, and when you'll hear it, you'll think it trivial, but it's necessary. All you have to do is make sure that, once you achieve a goal, you set a more impossible one. For example, one of these days, I'm going to perform Brandenburg. That's my first goal. Once I do that, don't remain satisfied. I set a new goal: I'm going to perform Hungarian Schnapsodie. After that monster is under my belt, I'm not done. By that point, I'll be considerably more skilled than I am now, so I have to make my goal more impossible... how about this? If I manage to accomplish that (and before you scoff, I've heard it performed ON THE TRUMPET, so it's possible! Look up Malcolm McNab, I think he's on iTunes), then I just aim higher. This way, there is the sad reality that I will never accomplish all of my goals, because I'd have a never-ending stream of goals going. But, it means that I never stop working to just get better and better.
Anyways, back to business. I don't consider myself a fantastic player, but I'm trying really damn hard, and I'm getting more legit as time goes on. Anyways, people have been getting on me for ages about various flaws. The usual trumpet ones always pop up: your sound is too brassy, your sound is too shrill, your attacks are too harsh, you're too loud (heh, going to rebut that one in a second), your notes are too short, and so on, and so on. All you trumpets have heard this all before, I'm sure. So, when I went to Viridian City, I expected the comments to be mostly the same.
Then, Obi-Wan's very first comment in my lesson came as a shock. I find people here are very nice when they critique... sometimes I wish people would be meaner, I'm certainly used to them being that way! He told me my sound was too small, too contained, too lacking in colour, too... careful. Part of it was just an inhale thing, but even when we sorted that out, my sound would start big, then revert during moving lines. After some experimentation (as O-W so correctly said, we're all essentially learning the instrument on our own, and our teachers only hear us one hour a week, so they give advice, but the other 167 hours, we have to critique ourselves and teach ourselves), I figured it out... I had become so self-conscious of all these little things that I had inadvertently made an introvert out of myself. I had become afraid to go out there and play. I had become afraid of my own instrument.
Probably the two most useful pieces of information I have gained in the past month of lessons is this fact, and on just how useful air patterns away from the horn are (seriously, they fix like all the things). O-W was right in saying that, in a real 60-piece orchestra, I'd be dead tired in no time, I'd conditioned myself to play to myself, and not PLAY the TRUMPET for people. This has been the main focus of my practice for the past couple weeks, is just getting a relaxed, confident, colourful, free-flowing, full, broad, TRUMPET sound. So many other issues don't even need fixing when this happens, because they no longer become issues, you're playing the instrument the way it's meant to be played, and so everything works out.
Now don't get me wrong, the advice everyone has given me in the past is valuable, and I'm not going to disregard anything. I've just learned the most important lesson about the trumpet: don't let anything, and I mean ANYTHING, get in the way of filling the entire room, concert hall, even WORLD (conceptually, of course) with your huge, gorgeous trumpet sound. And it's not volume, you can still play pianissimo, but a THICK pianissimo. If you think of the quality and dynamic of your sound as the size and colour of an object (it really doesn't matter which is which, they're interchangeable), changing one shouldn't effect the other, so why let it? A nice, thick, ringing pianissimo and a nice, thick, ringing fortissimo differ in dynamic, and a little bit in colour (I don't want you to get the wrong idea when I say that), but need the same intensity, the same depth, and the same ringing quality. Really, the secret is simple: immediate, deliberate, continuous, advancing air. Never step back, never give up, never surrender. It's that easy.
So, that's my little rant of the day. As I said before, I have two nerdy posts to make (maaaaaybe three, given the events happening this and next week), and by that point it'll be after the masterclass and probably after the orchestra concert, so back to the trumpet. See you then!
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