Endurance

[BBB1976]

Hi everyone

I'm playing in a socially distanced Wind Band which is nice.
I can play the parts, but the trumpet is on my face for 2 hour rehearsals constantly! Any practice suggestions for this kind of endurance??
Any ideas would be much appreciated.

Best

[JayKosta]

Do part swapping - in that kind of situation there's no need for bleeding heroes.

Jay
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[deleted_user_687c31b]

[BBB1976]

Thanks for suggestions.
It's not possible to swap parts due to covid.
So, am playing 1st and was looking for more practical ideas.
For example, am doing an Arban routine - taxing the chops and then resting. Practice ideas?

Best

[abontrumpet]

When it comes to trumpet-endurance, it's just the same as endurance athletes.

Spend most of your practice in a super comfortable zone (at least 80%). Only 20% or less should be spent really trying to push your limits.

Then, mitigating the time on the horn surrounding rehearsals. So if a rehearsal is on a tuesday, I'm going medium on sunday, light on monday, and basically no more than 5 minutes out of rehearsal on tuesday.

If you have many rehearsals a week then it's harder to really "increase" endurance like you would in an off season. But (assuming all things are perfect in your production) in order to increase endurance on the horn, you need to be meticulous about the amount of time you are spending it and be striving to increase it about 10% in minutes per week.

Stay as fresh as possible and never really get "fatigued." Sometimes it's really hard to come back from fatigue. Do the same in rehearsal. Rely on superior resonance, quality, and intonation to really magnify yourself over the band. But play nice and easy through rehearsals as well.

Many angles to take on this, but combining increasing quality, increasing weekly time, but mitigating time on horn leading up to rehearsal is the way to go. No secret bullet.

[Kumara999]

Why would it not be possible to swap parts? In my band we all have all parts printed off - so if need to switch from 1st to 2nd its already in your folder - no need to hand off the part.
Heather

[BBB1976]

Good one abontrumpet!
I like what you say about staying fresh also.
Yeah definitely nice to be playing during these times!
As I say, not having a problem with playing the parts, but just need to keep shedding!
Have had lots of really fantastic suggestions privately, so thanks folks. Indeed, I really appreciate the inspiration!
Am off to practice my Arban etc.........
Stay well everyone,

Best

[zaferis]

Endurance is not a single thing.

If you're playing the first book, you've already had some success. So now iit's a matter of being smater and more efficient.
You brushed off the idea of part sharing - that's not smarter. Come up with a solution not an excuse. Copy a part, a page, a few measures, give it to your #2.

Learn where you can lay out, many band part have significant unison or nearly unison sections-a great time to take the horn off your face.
Find those places that you can "cruize". - play with a minimal amount of effort - drafting like a racer will do at times.

I really don't think during a two hour rehearsal the horn is on your face the entire time. Either way, stop playing unecessarilly, warm-up just enough, don't practice before or during, don't play the whole time the director is warming up the band, take a bathroom break, when the conductor is working with the woodwinds - rest / stretch / have a drink of something (light tea, lemon water, etc something to keep the juices flowing)
Prepare your music, the better you know the material the more you will relax and play more efficiently.
Make sure during breaks and rests that the horn is truly OFF your face. REST.

In your practice schedule, train like an athlete. Build a plan that covers several days: A max workout day followed by a lite day that then ramps up to another max day. I like a 3-5 day cycle. You can't have max day after max day, there is no time for the muscles to recover and rebuild.
Then if you know you have a killer rehearsal coming prepare for it.

Then endurance is not all about muscle strength. I actually think it's more about efficiency - working smarter not harder. As you get better you do the same amount of work with less effort. Practice, practice, practice.

Specific books or drills??? all of them, done well/properly
You want a work out? Pull out a bunch os Sousa marches (solo cornet parts), start at the top and keep going, all repeats, only break long enough to turn the page(s).


Be generally in shape (exercise more), and HYDRATE... the body in good working order.
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[Seymor B Fudd]

[zaferis]

P.S. I forgot to mention TONE & PITCH.

Work on having a good tone and good pitch, both help each other and will also help your endurance.
If you're constantly adjusting pitch, you're working harder and you won't last as long.
_________________
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Adjunct Professor
Bach Trumpet Endorsing Artist
Retired Air Force Bandsman

[gwood66]

[JWG]

As a trumpet hobbyist, my endurance "tricks" for building stamina consist of (1) practicing with a large throat mouthpiece and rehearsing and performing with my "normal" mouthpiece and (2) using a Warburton P.E.T.E. regularly to build strength in my embouchure muscles when I know that I have strenuous parts to conquer.

(1) Large Throat Mouthpiece: I regularly practice on a Flip Oakes XT Extreme Trumpet mouthpiece that has a huge throat (#11 Bore) and that forces me to work much harder to keep my embouchure "tucked in" to keep a good foundation. Then, I use Flip's O mouthpiece or C mouthpiece (#26 bore) for rehearsing and performing. I play only Bach 1.5 size rims (i.e., 670/1000" or 17mm rim) for consistency of vibration area. Presently, many mouthpiece manufacturers now have a method for ordering larger throat mouthpieces, especially on their symphonic models. I suspect that you can get a similar stamina benefit from using a #20 or #22 Bore during practice then switching back to an efficient #26 or #27 bore throat for rehearsing and performing. I had difficulty trying to build "efficiency" on my regular mouthpiece, because the resistance of my regular mouthpiece prevented my embouchure muscles from having to train harder. By training hard on the XT, I had all the power and stamina that I needed when I switched to my normal mouthpieces. I disagree that stamina and endurance result from merely learning the skill of "efficiency". For the most part, I can come back after a long vacation and hit within a few notes of my max range, because I have learned the skill of hitting high notes. Conversely, ask me to play for 4 hours nearly continuously after a long vacation, and there exists no way that I could do it. Like in sports, you earn stamina and endurance through rigorous training. If you cannot build stamina and endurance, then there exists something wrong with your fundamental technique. In Trumpet playing, this usually means excessively pressing (the blood supply out of your lips), upper body tension in one's throat or upper body, or weak wind system support from your gut.

(2) P.E.T.E.: One can use a P.E.T.E. in a number of ways to build one's embouchure muscles, as it has both a small end to focus on your embouchure aperture strength and the disk end to focus on your "pulling/holding" strength against the air flow. Simple biology: trained muscles with more white and red muscle fibers have more strength and endurance.

Over the 10 years or so that I played with a local community college wind ensemble, once I learned these tricks, I had superior endurance and stamina to nearly all the "young guns" who played with me in the 3-4 hour rehearsals, despite aging beyond the half-century mark myself.

My $0.02.
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[wilder]

lots of great advice here. I would just add practice alot. As in 4,5, 6 hours a day. jw

[Steve A]

Just offering my two cents: I'm not arguing with anyone else's results, but personally, I've never found that physically oriented things like switching mouthpieces, or changing gear, or strength building exercises (PETEs, or loud drills, or bending exercises, etc.), or dramatically increasing my playing time did anything helpful for me. (And goodness knows I've tried all of them at many points in the past, and I probably will again in the future.)

I'm not saying others are wrong - they may be right for themselves, but for me, I think all of my improvement in endurance since I was out of high school, like truly 100% of it, has come from learning to be more efficient. If you're already efficient, adding strength might add to your endurance, but if you're not efficient, and are burning through too much energy for too little results, increasing the amount of energy you have available to you won't make a meaningful difference.

Simply spending lots more hours might indirectly teach you how to play more efficiently, but my experience has been that dramatic upswings in practice time left me in the short term with a gratifying (but misguided) sense that I was really doing good work, but in the long term tired and bent out of shape, and without real progress to show for my efforts.

[harryjamesworstnightmare]

Here's something to learn pertinent to the question posed by the OP, watch starting at 13:45. The whole video is very much worthwhile. This is George Vosburgh's interview with Monster Oil.

https://vimeo.com/253800020
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[Andy Del]

Either there is a degree of exaggeration here, or you need to find a new band.

If you have a rehearsal with no resting for an entire 2 hours, it can’t possibly be a rehearsal. Sounds like a nonstop run through of music.

What a useless thing to do. Does your conductor not stop and work on passages that need it? Or are ALL the other sections so perfect they don’t need attention? Seems to me that the musical direction of the band has a few questions to answer if things are as you describe.

I know that after a 2 1/2 hour quintet rehearsal I am toast, or approaching it. I am certainly not playing nonstop, and at times will take it easy. We also stop discuss, work in smaller units, etc. Still very tiring.

So I would chill about this and consider why you have to work so hard.

Cheers

Andy
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so many horns, so few good notes...

[BBB1976]

To Brian James

Thanks for your link on Monster Oil!
Great video, with very practical tips. I really related to it when I've played sessions/shows - you definitely have to practice with the correct preparation in order to do a good job!
Man, I think you have just got me hooked on Monster Oil!
I see there are many artists - anyone found any particular helpful videos?
Thanks again Brian.

[cheiden]

I've certainly played with reading bands that just read one tune after another with minimal breaks and minimal section work. Sharing the lead parts helps. Laying out on unisons too. I manage WAY better in groups that have good dynamics and don't play loud all the time. Saving your face when the band constantly overblows is almost impossible.

It's a bit on a non-sequitur but I've done a brass chamber workshop a number of years where you play morning, noon, and night and rarely suffered endurance problems. They reliably observe dynamics and take breaks as often as needed. It helps that it's all brass and they don't take endurance for granted the way orchestras or other mixed ensembles routinely do.
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