Feelin’ The Burn This Winter (RoutineTracker: Winter 2020)

Winter 2020

Hey trumpet-lovers,

With Spring right around the corner, here’s BTB’s latest RoutineTracker. Inside you’ll find what’s been up, along with plenty of food-for-thought in the practice room. As with many of BTB’s articles, this one is choc-full of stupid mistakes by yours truly.

The Dumbest Shit I Keep Doing

If you’ve read much of the blog here at BTB, you know I like to mess around and experiment with the embouchure. I’m not exactly sure why, but I am beginning to consider it a serious mental condition.

For some reason, I find the tedium of a debilitating trumpet routine oddly cathartic. All-in-all, this little hobby has taught me a lot about trumpet playing. However, all of this chop-trashing hasn’t always lead to the most musical results.

For example, my initial attack often resembles more of a buzz-saw than a clear trumpet tone. I’m also no stranger to the double-buzz. And, for the most part, I’ve been able to get away with these discrepancies. Predominantly playing lead-trumpet, often alongside amplified instruments, there’s always been plenty of room for a little junk on the sound.

But things are changing.

This Is What Scares BTB 

I recently accepted a gig performing the posthorn solo from Mahler’s 3^rd Symphony with a local orchestra. When I accepted the gig, I was super-pumped to make some new friends and meet the challenge. 

However, that initial burst of motivation soon devolved into a sweat-drenched anxiety. I even tried – unsuccessfully – to bail on the gig. I admit it. I was – and am – a little scared. Scared of sounding bad, scared to practice, scared to listen and scared to do a bad job. Pretty much all the normal shit we get scared of.

I even rationalized and tried telling myself that it was all a waste of time. A waste of chops. Not worth the stress. I even tried convincing myself that it would set me back from my goals. Wow. Now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure I exhausted just about every excuse and form of denial in my repertoire before finally sitting my ass down to practice.

And in doing so, I learned a few things.

Lesson #1: You Learn Classical Music Just Like You Learn Jazz

By listening to some recordings, I learned a very valuable lesson – the great orchestral trumpet players of lore are not synthesizers. They are flesh and blood humans blowing a metal pipe just like the rest of us.

This reminded me of something I learned from the great Warren Leuning. While rehearsing together one afternoon, he laid some solid advice on me. Basically, he said that nearly everything we need to know can be gained by playing along with the recordings. From an early start as young jazz phenom, to having a great career in film scoring industry, I’ll take that reminder straight to the bank.

Lesson #2: My Poo Sounds Like Poo!

The tough thing about shedding this great symphonic work is that it really put my BS under the microscope. Remember the above remark about my initial attacks? Well, yeah. They are not NY Phil ready.

I looked for some tips online and learned that the top handful of orchestral super-studs sure do talk a lot about ‘poo’ attacks. No, not poop attacks – poo attacks! Although, truth-be-told, mine sound a little bit more like the former.

From what I gather, the poo-attack is like a breath-attack where you start the note with the ‘p’ movement at the lips. This was very strange at first. I will say, however, that even after missing nearly every note in practice, I do feel more secure hitting a good, clear tone during normal playing.

Lesson #3: I Have Been Living In Embouchure Hell

Sometimes I really wonder if my trumpet-playing days are coming to an end. My teeth have been feeling the brunt of playing for nearly six months and it hasn’t been fun. At first, I thought this tooth thing was a tooth thing. But upon further examination, it may in fact just be another excursion through embouchure hell. I won’t bore you with the details of how I ended up here, but I will share this – it took two off-days, and another six days of very light playing for the burning feeling in my lips to go away. 

Lucinda Lewis, in her book ‘Broken Embouchures’ describes a scenario where the embouchure becomes so fatigued that it refuses to contract as it does in normal playing. This is presumably a defense mechanism against further fatigue. She calls this precarious situation ’embouchure overuse syndrome.’ And the problem is that this can become ‘learned’ as a new playing balance. This means time off from playing will not necessarily improve the situation. And what is needed is a retraining period for your old embouchure habits to reemerge.

This is making a lot of sense to me these days. It’s been a weird time feeling like I’m cramming the mouthpiece into my teeth without actually pressing any harder. It makes sense that the problem may be stemming from the embouchure not coming forward to meet that pressure. We’ll see what happens. I don’t want to stop playing, but I also don’t really want to play. C’est la vie. 

The End

The stress of this orchestra job really put a lot of my playing habits under the microscope and I am grateful for that. Along with a better understanding of the attack, I was also forced to accept something I’ve known deep down inside for a long time – my chops are trashed. Don’t get me wrong – I still have my good days. But, for some reason I can’t stop beating the shit out of my face.

I’m starting my rehab by reinstituting a few days off per month – something I do when I’m gigging a lot. I’ve also decided to go back through some old playing journals and articles from last summer. I seemed to remember my chops feeling great during that time and found some practice videos to back it up. Maybe I can recreate some of those methods with my current goals.

Thank you for reading and please be well my dear virtual pals. Be safe, wash your hands, and feel free to drop a comment below.

PS – Here’s A Little Playing Clip

I hadn’t done any lead playing in a few months and was itching for some fun. I love Al P. so much.