Expanding Your Trumpet Playing Sweet Spots

Recognize and Expand your Sweet Spot

Think of your sweet spot as the parameters within which you’re feeling good, sounding great, and trumpet playing feels pretty easy. Often referred to as your comfort zone, expanding this area is the key to having a more enjoyable musical experience and greater musical control as a trumpet player.

Begin to think of your practice as a time to develop your range of control. The greater your range of control the wider your sweet spot will be. This is to say, the wider your area of executable skills which are always there for you in your back pocket.

Obviously, there are a wide variety of applications for the sweet spot method; range, tempo, dynamics, endurance, etc. Preferably you will be able to eventually develop the technical facility to execute all of the musical passages required of you without having to think about it. An excellent way to make this possible is to occasionally practice well outside the expected guidelines.

Then, when you’re on the gig, you can aim to stick with your sweet spot.

Margin of Safety

Benjamin Graham calls this buffer zone the margin of safety. Once you feel you have a sufficient margin of safety over your required professional skill set, you are free to put parts of your routine into maintenance mode. For example, if you are playing a show which has a high F in it, what/how do you need to practice to always hit that high F? Likewise, if you are required to double tongue at a certain tempo, how fast do you need to be able to articulate to always hit that speed easily?

When you determine a specific goal for what you would like to be able to do with ease, you can then begin to visualize your routine as it will be some day. By having an idea of where you’re going, it’s easier to determine where your time is best spent.

Your sweet spot is where you have the greatest musical control. By expanding it you open the door to greater expression which leads to a more fulfilling musical experience. You’ll have a lot more fun playing.

In the following image think of the blue triangle as being your sweet spot while the curved line is your learning curve. Remember, the sweet spot is not only where you have technical control, it’s also where you will experience the most fulfillment playing. By pushing the boundaries of your sweet spot you’ll be able to expand it over time and experiment with more adventurous ideas in practice.

Application

Get creative with how you apply this model to your practice and please think outside the box. Things like range and tempo are easy to understand in this way, but how about ideas like mouthpiece placement, which fingers you use to play passages, or postural alignment? Really have some fun with this and let us know what you come up with!

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