The Illusion of Competence in Trumpet Practice

Source: YouTube automatic captions, formatted for reading. Captions may contain errors; refer to the video for precise wording, sounds and demonstrations. Dates and offers reflect the original recording.

I’d like to talk about arguably the biggest mistake everyone makes in their journey to improving their playing it’s the illusion of competence it’s the belief it’s the picture that I’m doing things correctly now to get from where you are now to where you want to get to that dream Avatar there is a Formula there’s a strategic set of steps that everyone can do if you’ve got lungs you’ve got lips you can hold the instrument you can play the instrument at the highest level now of course

we’re working on developing three octaves whether your trumpet or trombone or whatever brass instrument you’re on we want you playing those with ease and consistency so it’s when these steps don’t get followed where things go wrong and you’ll be practicing something and you could be absolutely convinced that you’re doing something right there are a bunch of errors that people make there’s some common and some less common the big ones are overblowing overexerting we call it burning the pizza too much energy from the psychology that we

have to blow that can create a locking of the throat the velsa maneuver I call that Thro it’s like we’re articulating in the throat it might be a bouncing jaw it there are so many different errors that prevent people getting from that dream avatar from that three octaves at all volumes with ease so you need to be very very conscious of everything that you’re working on and how you’re working on it and it’s all based on the feeling of what you’re doing so of course we

learn drills that oppose an error now think about that we do drills away from the instrument that train the brain we got Brian the brain here and he needs to know exactly what to to do so we need to tell him Based On A Feeling and an understanding the psychology and psychology the feeling of e easy efficient playing we need to tell Brian the brain here exactly what you want him to do that way when you’ve done the drill you appreciate the feeling eyes closed absolute

100% Focus introverted learning is an absolute must you discover what the body’s doing then that allows you to detect the errors that you’re making and then you can reject the errors going no no I’m we’re not going to do that Brian then we’re going to correct the errors based on the feeling and ultimately what comes out of the out of the instrument we can go from playing no notes with perfect process and perfect feeling which is really important then when we start to play notes we

recognize that we start to engage the body we start to tighten up if you were to think of the highest note that you can play the top of your range right now what message does Brian send to you he he sends you got to exert got to tighten the chest got to pinch the lips and we have to blow hard that’s not the way the system works and that’s everything that we do now if you can relate to what I’m saying here it might feel like

a real big stretch to come and have a look at what we’re doing here but once you recognize the process the steps the formula that is required to get past your playing obstructions you need to make sure that you’re doing the drills and exercises correctly not trying to go from here to here diverting around this way we take the shortcut we go straight to uh eliminating your problems and overcoming the obstructions to get you to your dream Avatar there’s no time for the illusion of competence

so come and join us you can can do a 7-Day free trial I don’t expect you to just come and sign up straight away because you don’t know what the course is about recently someone said it’s like the Tardis your Doctor Who the Tardis from the outside it’s a little blue box from the inside it’s an absolute massive new world so if you want to discover an easier better way to play to get past your obstructions to develop into the player that you want to be

come and visit the free trial then you got seven days you’ve got the full access to the entire course that we’ve been developing for 30 years it’s all there we’ve got subscribers from all over the world different instruments different standards different styles all working through eliminating their errors and constantly battling the illusion of confidence I’m there every week to keep you on track and give you all the guidance that you need so come and try our free trial uh 7 days it won’t cost you a

cent until day eight and it’s like right I’ve loved everything that I’ve seen show me more let’s get cracking so I can’t wait to see you in the course have a great [Music] [Applause] [Music] day