James Stamp info

[Timp]

Hello all

I am doing a research topic that compares the teachings of Bill Adam and James Stamp. I would appreciate any information about Stamp's teaching methods. I know that he didn't just have one method, but what were the basics that he had most of his students do and what was his main philosophy. If you would like to help me out, please reply to my email address John_Timpani@baylor.edu. Thanks for the help!

[swthiel]

I think it would be cool to see the answer to timp's questions posted in open forum as well! I suspect that I'm not the only one here who's using Stamp's exercises but never had the opportunity to take lessons with Stamp or one of his students ... that's one of the reasons why posts like janet842's "Dissecting Stamp" are so fascinating!
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Steve Thiel

[janet842]

My lessons with Jimmy were one hour long, once a week.

I did the same Lips Alone exercise that is on page 3 (8th ed) and the Mouthpiece Alone exercise on that same page. Other exercises that I did were 3, 4a, 4b, 5 and 6 - in every conceivable key - and every exercise by memory. No reading the notes. I also did the exercise on page 17. Of everything I worked on, number 6 was what I spent the most time on. If you take 6 in all the major scales and minor scales, that takes a long time. Jimmy was a stickler for perfection. Every note, every drill was to be precisely executed and if it wasn't, I would have to do it over and over for him until I got it right. The rest of the lessons were on whatever I happened to be working on, whether it was etudes, concertos, or audition preparation (orchestral excerpts). The focus on those materials was always the application of the principals taught in the warmup exercises to those pieces: transition from note to note, steady breath control, tone quality, etc. Breath control was huge.

There are a lot of exercises in the book that I never did. I suspect that he had exercises tailored for whatever the needs of the particular player were. My needs apparently didn't require those exercises -- or he hadn't developed them yet.

If you want to take a few lessons with someone in your area that took lessons from Stamp, give Bert Truax a call. If you don't yet have Roy Poper's book on the Stamp method, I would recommend that you buy that and read it. Some of Jimmy's philosophy is in there. Check out Bert's website at: http://www.berttruax.com/Index.htm

I've started working on Dissecting Stamp, Part 2. I'll try to have it done and posted by early next week at the latest. Part 2 is very dependent on Part 1 being learned correctly.

Janet