Stuffyness

[KyleL]

I've been using the simple approach of just thinking of take a nice full breath and then blowing it through the trumpet. This has helped me greatly most of the time. However there are periods where no matter how I try to free the breath, the notes come out stuffy and restricted. Today I had a really bad experience where no notes would speak. I got really frustrated and just put the horn down for a couple of hours and then came back. For some reason my tone had opened back up and the air flowed more freely.

I have had my braces off for about 1 year now, and am struggling with consisntency. Could this be causing the problem above? My chops didn't feel tired (which added to the frustration), but they did not seem in sink with the air. Should I be giving my lips more time to adjust to playing 3-4 hours a day?

[dbacon]

[KyleL]

Im studying with Charles Decker at Tennessee Tech University. He basically says its an air issue. He does alot of the AHH TOO exercises. They help, but on some days like today they don't.

P.S.-not saying that isnt the right way of going about things, but I was just wondering if anyone has an idea of what might be causeing this. Also, those were invisiline braces, so my it's not like my playing is really bad, there are just nagging consistency issues.

[Don Herman rev2]

Braces could be the reason (on or off) -- any significant change can cause consistency issues as your body adjusts. More practice time means you should also be resting more -- maybe you're just pushing too hard?

If you get frustrated, put the horn down and listen to some music (doesn't have to be trumpet, or brass -- good music is worth listening to, no matter the instrumentation or genre). If you need to keep playing, try getting a nice, gentle, rich middle G (in the staff) in your head and playing it for a while. Let the tension flow out of your body, breathe and exhale into the horn to sound the note. Frustration leads to tension, which hurts the sound, which causes more frustration... take a break, as you've been doing! Rome wasn't built in a day, and slow improvement is better than quick frustration from pushing too hard, too fast.

As Dave said, your teacher is in better position than any of us to assess your progress. We all have good and bad days. As time goes on, the "bad" become better than our earlier "best". Your (my) goal is to become a musician who plays trumpet, not just a trumpet player.

HTH - Don
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"After silence, that which best expresses the inexpressible, is music" - Aldous Huxley