Why Your Trumpet Practice Is Outdated

Source: YouTube automatic captions, arranged into paragraphs. Captions can contain errors. Refer to the video for precise wording and demonstrations. Dates, invitations and offers reflect the original recording.

The trumpet and brass world is still stuck in the last century. Now, that might sound offensive to a few people, but let me explain before you go clicking away. Now, good. Human instinct says that we’ve got to get the job done and we use all the strength possible in order to facilitate the outcome that we want. And I’m just seeing so much material out there encouraging muscle use and manipulation in order to create the sound on a brass instrument. Left hand up when we activate. Now,

good. Right here. So, here we go. Now, that was just a kind of nervous little [laughter] [music] Nothing. Pretty Pretty relaxed? [laughter] There’s nothing going on. Trust me. Thank you, guys. Take a seat. Awesome. [applause] The reason that most people get stuck is because we use strength and we’re using strong arms and strong breath and a strong mouth to try and force a result out of the instrument. And I can guarantee from my own experience and working with all level of players all over the world

for over 25 years that when you hear what I have to say about brass playing and actually sit down and work through 10 simple steps, you will change the way that you think about playing forever. It will be easier, and it will sound better. Things are more connected. Things are actually more connected. Feel the resonance in my body more. That’s really interesting. That’s amazing. That’s a bit of a revelation, actually. That’s a bit of an epiphany moment, I think, for me. That’s brilliant. Beautiful. That’s amazing.

So, [laughter] I’ve never had it under good breath like that. [music] Plenty to work with there. I I’ve never actually been able to do that. I’ve never been able to play that freely before. I haven’t. Seriously, never Did you know that the orbicularis oris here is a sphincter? That’s right. You heard it here first, folks. It’s really strong, and we’re being taught to use it in an incorrect way if we’re looking for optimum efficiency. And that’s why I call myself Last Resort Spence, cuz people wait

until they’re broken before they come and chat. So, here was at the punch-the-wall time. This is really cool. [music] [music] Hey, Greg. Man, everything’s going really good. Actually kind of phenomenal, honestly. I’ve been really trying to implement the things we talked about. [music] I highly recommend it coming across to the Mystery to Mastery site. Click any of the links that are nearby, come through, and let me explain to you. I can’t give it all in one lesson here. There are 10 steps. So, we work through

each one of them. Take less than an hour, and you will start and understand things about playing that you’d never considered. And rather than waiting until you’re completely frustrated or broken, which I work with a lot of people that are actually broken, let’s not get to that stage. Let’s get your playing to a higher level. Uh you can do it here. You can sign up within 2 minutes, and it’s not going to cost you a cent. So, I’m going to give you everything that I’ve ever

learned. I’ve been doing Mystery to Mastery for about 25 years, a little bit longer. And uh once people actually understand what I’m doing, all of a sudden, like someone said at Eastman in New York, I thought Mystery to Mastery was snake oil, was a gimmick. They left going, “That was the best presentation that I’ve ever seen.” And the feedback we’ve got was from a lot of people that was the best presentation at the entire conference. And for the 50th anniversary of ITG, and I thank them

very much for having me, that’s a pretty big accolade. So, uh I’m very excited to have that feedback because we have to do things a little bit differently. And here, in Australia, we do things a bit differently. We’re from Australia. We do things differently. Unfortunately, sometimes the difference is not always a good thing. But as I said before we started, we have to do things differently if we’re not getting the result that we want.