Time flies, doesn't it? This blog has been sorely neglected over the last few months as I have had numerous changes, events, and responsibilities with which to deal. Primary among these was changing employers and jumping through all of the employment hoops that accompany that sort of thing. Related to that, and my career as a contractor, I also underwent a change of contract and work location. Then there was taxes to deal with, including having to file my father's final taxes. Fun.
However, my trumpet playing did not fall off a cliff this time, and I have been working with a specific set of Schlossberg's Daily Drills and Technical Studies which has been prescribed over the years to help people rebuild embouchures. Why did I start doing it? Well...
As I was progressing in my comeback, I developed a pronounced problem. I suddenly was having trouble playing from G above the staff up to about B. Oddly, everything above that was still there, so I had what is termed a "break" in my range.
My first instinct was to vary my mouthpiece selection. Ordinarily, this would not be the first thing I'd suggest to someone in my situation; however, I had recently moved to much more efficient, shallow designs and I was wondering if that was the root of the problem. I quickly snatched up a few various used mouthpieces that were a little larger in diameter and a little deeper to see if that did the trick to test along with some of my current pieces. The situation, unfortunately, did not improve. It's really strange -- and frustrating -- to be able to play a ledger-line E or F but not be able to get the A above the staff to sound. Weird!
My next step was long tones and pedal tones. My pedals were as good, if not better, than they've always been. And yet I still could not get any sort of decent tone in my upper-middle range. To say I was discouraged would be an understatement. The only thing that seemed to give me some hope was that I didn't seem to have quite as much difficulty with this on flugelhorn. (That's another reason I tried a change of mouthpiece to begin with, though.)
Finally, I was browsing on Trumpet Herald and uncovered a thread titled "The best advice I received on Trumpet Herald". This post, which was essentially a thank you letter, documented a specific set of Schlossberg studies put together in a systematic way which did wonders for this gentleman who had suffered a dramatic downturn in his playing due to some dental work. Turns out this routine became his staple and it completely fixed his issues as he rebuilt his embouchure. He did not know the name of the person that provided the info to him, but he wanted to say a long overdue thank you now that it was about eight years later.
Through the discussion, it was determined that the kind soul that provided the info was Dave Belknap, a West Coast player, who sadly had passed away in 2016. It is sad, indeed, that the thank you never made it to him directly. I have been using the routine for a few weeks now, and already the break is starting to "fill in" and I am greatly relieved. I will be using this routine from now on to keep things stable but flexible.
Outside of this, I discovered the online music collaboration platform known as bandhub.com. Ever see those people on YouTube do musical collaborations and want to do something similar but not own a bunch of recording gear? Well, head over to bandhub and get started -- it's FREE. I'm not joking, it's free. And no hidden stuff, either. It's brilliant. Their model does include a membership level if you want, and that enables a couple features like adding reverb and panning/eq to recordings when mixing (yes, that's all built into the platform), but you don't need any of that to get started jamming with a bunch of strangers or friends. There were only about three trumpet players on there when I joined and now we have about ten, but there are a ton of songs to get involved with, so there is no shortage of work for an amateur with some free time to spend. The platform supports PC and they also have apps for iOS and Android. As I said, it's brilliant. Some things may be a little clunky, but all in all it is incredibly well done.
I made a few hardware acquisitions over the last few months, but I'll hold off on that until next time, so that's all for now.
However, my trumpet playing did not fall off a cliff this time, and I have been working with a specific set of Schlossberg's Daily Drills and Technical Studies which has been prescribed over the years to help people rebuild embouchures. Why did I start doing it? Well...
As I was progressing in my comeback, I developed a pronounced problem. I suddenly was having trouble playing from G above the staff up to about B. Oddly, everything above that was still there, so I had what is termed a "break" in my range.
My first instinct was to vary my mouthpiece selection. Ordinarily, this would not be the first thing I'd suggest to someone in my situation; however, I had recently moved to much more efficient, shallow designs and I was wondering if that was the root of the problem. I quickly snatched up a few various used mouthpieces that were a little larger in diameter and a little deeper to see if that did the trick to test along with some of my current pieces. The situation, unfortunately, did not improve. It's really strange -- and frustrating -- to be able to play a ledger-line E or F but not be able to get the A above the staff to sound. Weird!
My next step was long tones and pedal tones. My pedals were as good, if not better, than they've always been. And yet I still could not get any sort of decent tone in my upper-middle range. To say I was discouraged would be an understatement. The only thing that seemed to give me some hope was that I didn't seem to have quite as much difficulty with this on flugelhorn. (That's another reason I tried a change of mouthpiece to begin with, though.)
Finally, I was browsing on Trumpet Herald and uncovered a thread titled "The best advice I received on Trumpet Herald". This post, which was essentially a thank you letter, documented a specific set of Schlossberg studies put together in a systematic way which did wonders for this gentleman who had suffered a dramatic downturn in his playing due to some dental work. Turns out this routine became his staple and it completely fixed his issues as he rebuilt his embouchure. He did not know the name of the person that provided the info to him, but he wanted to say a long overdue thank you now that it was about eight years later.
Through the discussion, it was determined that the kind soul that provided the info was Dave Belknap, a West Coast player, who sadly had passed away in 2016. It is sad, indeed, that the thank you never made it to him directly. I have been using the routine for a few weeks now, and already the break is starting to "fill in" and I am greatly relieved. I will be using this routine from now on to keep things stable but flexible.
Outside of this, I discovered the online music collaboration platform known as bandhub.com. Ever see those people on YouTube do musical collaborations and want to do something similar but not own a bunch of recording gear? Well, head over to bandhub and get started -- it's FREE. I'm not joking, it's free. And no hidden stuff, either. It's brilliant. Their model does include a membership level if you want, and that enables a couple features like adding reverb and panning/eq to recordings when mixing (yes, that's all built into the platform), but you don't need any of that to get started jamming with a bunch of strangers or friends. There were only about three trumpet players on there when I joined and now we have about ten, but there are a ton of songs to get involved with, so there is no shortage of work for an amateur with some free time to spend. The platform supports PC and they also have apps for iOS and Android. As I said, it's brilliant. Some things may be a little clunky, but all in all it is incredibly well done.
I made a few hardware acquisitions over the last few months, but I'll hold off on that until next time, so that's all for now.
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