Lesson Learned

[ssbtrumpet1]

So, the old saying "Don't Fall in Love With Your Sound," I finally learned what was meant by this. I had a lesson with a teacher/mentor/friend today, and I was playing a piece out of the Top Tones book and I couldn't connect all the registers on the horn. I would play from the upper middle register, down to the low register (low Ab or G), then back up above the staff and I couldn't do it w/o fluffing some notes and losing the comfortable feeling of the MP on my face. My friend played the same excerpt from the Top Tones book in his usual fantastic style, and couldn't really tell me what I was doing wrong.

Fast forward to this evening, and I'm playing through another etude out of the Mel Broiles Book that covers the same register issues that Top Tones book does. And I don't know why it hit me right then. but I backed off on the volume (even though I don't remember playing that loud) and started playing through the phrases at a MF or slightly softer, and all of a sudden, there was no problem with the register shifts. Then I started to pay attention to my pivot and things really opened up. The MP felt comfortable on my lips and my lips never got stiff or unresponsive. And I felt like I could've played all night like that with no endurance issues. Then I remembered back to my lesson and my friend/teacher never played above a MF while he was playing the etude either. So end conclusion: I was blowing apart my chops playing too loud in the lower register. And that prevented me from playing all the registers of the horn w/o having to stop and reset my chops. LESSON LEARNED!