The Trumpet Player

Playing the trumpet is a many-faceted challenge. The player must think of themself as a musician, foremost, but the process of becoming an expert musician on the trumpet requires an approach that combines the thought processes of an artist, musician, scientist, and athlete.

The Artist

The Artist must have the creativity to form a perfect mental vision of the end result.

What story is the music telling? What tonal picture is it painting?
How do you want to tell that story and/or paint that picture?
What is the emotional content of the music, and how does it evolve?
How is the story and imagery reflected in the composer’s markings?

Without this vision, all the science and “athleticism” will produce at best an impressive but sterile technical performance, without the beauty and emotional content to move the listener.

There is not necessarily a single vision that is “correct” for any particular piece of music, and you don’t even have to tell the story the same way each time — in fact, it is likely that your vision will change as your understanding of the piece deepens. But you need to have (and express) an opinion.

The Musician

The Musician must understand how to translate the artistic vision into musical language, such as…

tone quality
tempo
articulation (hard or soft attacks?)
volume and dynamics
phrasing
vibrato (or not)

…and how to vary this language to create an emotional response in the audience.

The Scientist

The Scientist must analyze and understand what strengths and skills are necessary to overcome the challenges presented by the instrument and the music. They must then create an effective practice routine designed to develop those strengths and skills, over time, while building a foundation of endurance, strength, technical speed and flexibility, skill, and knowledge for the musician to be ready — in advance — for whatever challenges lie ahead. They must, like any scientist, be constantly gathering feedback from their experiences — listening to themselves practice and perform, tracking progress, writing down fastest metronome speeds achieved, highest notes played with good tone, which exercises are accomplished to standard, etc. — and use that feedback to create new practice plans.

The Athlete

The Athlete must be in touch with their body, understanding when they have reached their limits while constantly striving in a disciplined manner to reach new limits. Trumpet (like many other musical instruments) is a very physical instrument requiring strength and endurance in addition to speed and coordination. Playing too hard one day can actually set the player back for days, yet never testing limits prevents those limits from ever being surpassed. The Athlete must find those physical limits and understand how his own body responds to playing below, at, and beyond those limits.

That being said, it does not require super-strength to play the trumpet well, or even to play well in the high register. The first focus of practice should be to develop efficiency and endurance, after which you can work on power (i.e. volume and range).