Rethinking Trumpet Learning: Knowledge, Integration and Experience

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Here’s a simple question. [laughter] Are you happy and satisfied with your trumpet playing or your brass playing? Very simple question. Are you satisfied? Are you happy? If you weren’t to get any better, you live the rest of your life playing the way that you are now. [snorts] Are you happy? Is it consistent? You’ve still got chops at the end of the gig. You enjoy playing. You’re confident. Are you happy? If not, would you like to be a different player, a better player? It’s a yes or

no question. If you like, no, I’m happy. I don’t need to be any better. Great. I’m Greg. Nice to meet you. If you’re not, what’s the problem? And how bad is it? What do you want to do about it? Now, a little bit about me. Traveled the world for 30 years as a professional trumpet player and I’ve been teaching and learning because the original traditional books that I was learning from ended up creating more confusion and frustration with trumpet playing than anything in the whole world.

And I could not get the answers that I wanted. Not that there’s anything wrong with the books. It was the clown behind the instrument trying to figure out what the books meant. They’re all loaded with ink. They’re all loaded with uh exercises, but if you’re doing it wrong or you don’t understand it, you can waste a lot of time. And I got to the point where I was going to quit or make a substantial change to my understanding, [snorts] which is why mystery 2 mastery was

developed 21 years ago. Now, as I said in my previous video, I’m going to change the T to a two. And this is kind of funny and I’m going to explain why this is so relevant for trumpet playing. I’m calling it out. I’ve been doing this for a long long long time. And I’m considered a snake all salesman from lots of people cuz they don’t understand what I’m doing. And I’m going to share share it with you today. And I’m going to make you a better

trumpet player today. If you’re not happy right now, right here. If there’s a problem, you’re not happy, you’ve got an issue with your playing, we can fix it. We can fix it right now. Okay? And as those that know me in the professional world, when I want to achieve something, I will achieve it. The last lesson I said, I’m changing that to a two. Last lesson, last video, I’m changing that to a two from the T. And I’ve done it because I don’t just say words,

I take actions. I decided to teach myself golf left-handed through co as a neuroplasticity project after tw and I’m a terrible golfer right-handed never had lessons after 12 months I was in inside golf which is a national magazine Tiger Woods on the front cover learn playing left-handed I learned golf with my eyes closed on a balcony filming myself knowing watching lots of professionals knowing what to do knowing what it looks like filming myself finding all the errors that I was making and fixing it. Don’t do

that, Greg. That’s not it. Do this. I don’t care where the ball goes at the moment. Just learn the process first and then we’ll see where the ball goes later. That’s sort of the micro part. The macro parts, learning the the fundamentals of the swing. Do that lot. After two years, B-grade club championship club champion at Pinian Springs Golf Course here on the Sunshine Coast. I do stuff and I get it done because I like achieving things. And if you want to achieve things, especially on

the trumpet, here we go. So, I’m calling out a lot of the the methodology, a lot of lessons because there’s a lot of confusion, there’s a lot of contradiction, and I’m going to cut through it right now and say to you up the front, right up the top here, that if you want to make a change in your plane and you want to do it now, you can do it in under an hour at mysterymastery.com with 10 simple, powerful, proven steps. Okay, I’m not going to

go through it all here right now with you. I’m going to give you a couple. But if you want seriously want to change and people go, “Are you trying to sell me into a um a subscription?” No, I’m not. I’m trying to give you seven days of hopefully the best lessons you’ve ever had. You won’t know until you try it. I um I I hated pineapple on pizza until I tried it and it turns out it’s delicious. I know some of you don’t like pineapple on

pizza. Not everyone’s going to come along and go, “Oh, he knows what he’s talking about.” Because they won’t take the time to try it. So, once you Let’s Let’s start with a couple of undeniable facts. Every single person on this planet, if they have a mouth and a finger and some lungs, has the strength to play the instrument. Undeniable. How do you say that, Greg? Well, let’s prove it. If I get you to put your finger between your lips and just relax. Let the air fall

out. Everyone can do this. [sighs and gasps] Okay. Now, if we do the lips up to the fing to the finger. Now, don’t do it more than you need to, but do it enough to not have a leak. That’s the ovicularis orus working. And it’s working activating the corners inwards. Now, we’ve been taught to buzz and watch what happens. Bottom lip rolls over, mouth goes out. That’s everywhere. Nine people out of 10 that I see do that. So, if I get you to say T for

two, T for two. Too [clears throat] Now, we don’t buzz when we play. The lip vibrates on its own. It’s all in the 10 steps. I go through it all. If you haven’t seen it, you’re a blast brass player having problems, you need to see this, right? So, what’s the point here? When I do the mouth up, you cannot blow the lips apart. You cannot blow the lips apart. You’ve got these massive muscles, massive uh energy from the body creating as much compression as possible, but

you can’t blow your lips open. I call them lip zip zips. You can’t blow them open. It’s too strong. It’s stronger than all of this. But what everyone’s doing is pinching down. I see this every single day, whether it’s a professional or a beginner. We’re we’re taught to buzz. We’re taught to tighten in the middle of the lips and blow hard. And on that point, [clears throat] people say you got to blow faster to play higher. And people say you got to blow more air, which

is faster, to play louder. [snorts] How do you play a high loud note? Sorry, how do you play a high soft note? Blow fast slowly. How do you blow a loud low note? Blow slow fast. That makes no sense. And the body is not involved in pitch at all. Everyone can do that. Everyone can do that. So then if you do this now while you’re watching this video, body’s not involved. Body’s not involved. But you got to blow faster to play higher. No, you don’t. No,

you don’t. You got to understand how the ovicularis orus works and how oscillation works and how the instrument works and how they all work together. If you want to know that, come and do the 10 steps. Take you an hour. You’ll be a better player and it’s going to my guarantee is you’re going to play a better sounding note easier by the end of the hour. C M2M coming out. The second [laughter] part of mystery to mastery this next 20 years is calling out the psychology

that is wrong around the world. and proving to you without all this blooming nonsense and crazy he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I’m sick and tired of that. I’m going to prove to you all exactly what’s going on here. Obvicularisa rorious muscles smile. This works used car salesman limited range limited endurance. We don’t have the goalposts that I call them the inside the aperture the sides of the aperture the aperture corners working correctly on the rim. When you know how the aperture corners work on

the inside of the mouthpiece rim [sighs and gasps] uh playing becomes easier. Then I say brass playing’s no harder than humming and they go you absolutely gaslighting us. We can hum pass passively. We can hum actively and hum softly. Hum loudly. We’ve got energy. We’ve got oscillation. Consider this. I call this oscillation. If you go and then go. [laughter] [sighs] Now, it’s not natural, but it’s possible to add an oscillation point over an energy flow. [laughter] I’m not blowing faster to change that pitch. By the

way, it takes no more physical effort to to add an oscillation over an energy flow. So, I work on what’s called no notes and we get the energy flow into our mouthpiece. And then when we add the oscillation using the mouth in the correct way, it takes no extra effort. So, all of a sudden, you recognize that brass playing no harder than humming and singing. And you’ll feel it. All we’re doing is moving the the oscillation point from here up to here. But what everyone’s doing,

and I’d say everyone, I reckon probably 99%. I’ve had a dude yesterday was in the military for in the US military for 25 years, 23 years. Um, bit busted, needs some help. This is the opposite of everything I’ve heard. He’s seen my stuff for a while. Took a while to take the plunge. I hear that all the time. I call myself second u last resort spent, right? I’ve tried every other book. I keep hitting the ceiling in the same place because I’m using all these different

methods, but I keep hitting the but okay. I’m that busted. I’m that frustrated. I might take the plunge. Talk to Spence. Well, don’t wait. Do it now. Go through the 10 steps. Don’t get to that point where you’re broken. Please. There’s so many broken people. I’m working with them all the time. So, let’s play easier. Let’s get it right. Let’s figure it out. Right. So, we’ve got the energy. It’s not natural but possible to go ho ho ho to add the oscillation without activating the body.

It’s the same in the mouthpiece cup. It’s the same. We don’t need to activate the body to go from a no note. Everyone can do this, right? But there are things going on with the mouth and inside the cup and inside the body that I need to share with you. I’m not going to turn this into an hour and a half lesson because not everyone’s sitting down in their studio watching a video about to practice. You can do it for free for seven whole days at

the the uh the website. I charge $200 for a 1-hour lesson and change people’s brains completely. But this is 15 bucks a week. 7 days, 24 hours of free lessons. And you have it for 7 days. And then if you stay, you can stay for a month. Well, the smartest thing you can do is uh stay for 12 months and you will not know how good you are at trumpet by the end of the 12 months because it’ be so easy and so opposite of everything

you’ve ever heard and so easy to play. It will blow your mind. Or you can say, “I don’t like pineapple on pizza without ever trying pineapple on pizza.” [laughter] Anyway, so then when we’re humming, I can go I didn’t blow to play over two octaves. It’s ridiculous. Then if I activate, if you were here, I’d put your hand on my abdominal wall. [music] You won’t feel anything activate at all when we’re playing in the upper register. Then if I get start humming actively, Okay. So whilst

I’m active, I’m active because it’s loud and it’s a long note. The mouth inside the cup changes the pitch. The body has nothing to do with it. The body’s role is long notes and loud notes. You can argue with that. That might go against everything that you’ve ever thought. Every book you’ve ever written, I don’t care. I talk to people every [clears throat] day from all over the world, different um realms of life, orchestral players from um you know, principal trumpet players of orchestras, lead players

of big bands, jazz players, it doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter what instrument of trombone players and French horn players, tuber players. Here’s the next one. What’s the first thing I do? First thing I do, put the finger between your mouth. [sighs] Take a breath. Send your attention to your throat. I call it the body’s concert hall. Why do I call it the body’s concert hall? Well, firstly, is it a familiar feeling? [sighs and gasps] Most people go, it’s completely foreign. If it’s not foreign, it’s

familiar, but not when we’re playing the instrument. So because we start going into overexertion and tight throat because our lips are too tight and we start to get vala maneuver and choking and all that sort of stuff because we’re overblowing and the mouth’s not working right. We’re using really strong muscles against each other. Okay. So if this is an unfamiliar feeling when you’re playing or when you’re even when you do it like that, that’s where you’re going wrong. And I call it the body’s concert hall.

Why do I call it that? Because I don’t think about putting air out through the the sand out through the air. Sound out through the air. Sand out through the bell. I don’t think about that. I don’t think about projection as being active blowing out there like everyone does and they overblow. The way to make this sound amplify and project is to open up back here. We’re not blowing through the instrument. The instrument’s got air in it already. We are just energizing the air that’s in

the pipe. But what happens below about a high C or D? We put the air into the pipe. It hits the belt. There’s a reflection because of the change in air pressure from inside the pipe and outside the pipe. Then the energy wave comes back in into what I call the body’s concert hall because I’m releasing energy and I’m letting the sound back in. It’s the opposite of blowing out. I literally open if I was to poo attack. I’m not blowing. It’s like letting the air

out of a balloon. You release the energy. The energy hits the pipe. The pipe hits the bell. The bell hits the atmosphere. The atmosphere comes back, reflects through. I want it reflecting into a concert hall. Got a tiny shoe box. And has anyone felt like this? Oh, you sound great, Greg. Everyone that said sound great when I was killing myself playing wanted to smack over the head with my trumpet. And then I’m saying I’m I’m I’m chopping out. I’m playing really hard to high C, high

D, high E. I’m like, how do you play another octave? And they’re going blow blow faster. Blow harder. What? I can’t. I’m going to break. I’m going to explode. I’m blowing hard as enough as it is. It’s not it. It’s not it. When you understand that there is a a breath, a relaxed body, passive release, that energy hits the cup which goes into the horn which then creates a reflection and the what I call the bed sheet. What the milk spout bottom lip bed sheet. This

is all explained in the 10step tuneup. You want to be a better player? Do it today. Won’t cost you anything. release the energy. The power comes back and sets the lip into oscillation, right? I see this all the time. We got to play. Check it out. Next time you got to play something, why do we do this? I call it the mircat. [snorts] And [clears throat] when we breathe, why lungs are here? [sighs] [gasps] Air in. Relax. Let it out. Right. Not. [laughter] Okay. So once

we understand the mechanics of this and the feeling of the sound being back here and going ah and not blowing through the horn, we don’t blow. We support, we release the energy. Then as we have to open the chops because we change pitch horizontally, we open volume vertically. There’s more displacement vertically. Horizontal is pitch, vertical is flow and volume. Horizontal is pitch, vertical is volume. That’s how it works. And the tongue changes position. And that’s all explained in at Mystery Mastery. That’s enough. I was going

to do a couple, but I’ve done three. I want to stay for an hour. I’m not going to. If anything that I’ve said in this video makes sense to you or you’re curious or rather than be critical, be curious. Go into the comments and write you are full of [ __ ] Then go for your life. I’ve been there, done that. I’ve gone the hard way. I’ve played the hard way. I’ve done the buzzing. I’ve done the closed throat. I’ve done the teeth closed. I’ve done

the migraines. If you’re happy doing that, clap your hands. Right. Great. I wasn’t. If you are having problems, the reason is you’re overexerting. You’ve got a misunderstanding about what happens in the mouth and what the air flow is required. We’re doing it too hard. We’ve got big muscles working against each other, making playing difficult. I don’t really mind what level you are. I can guarantee that I can make someone even at the top level play a bit easier sound. Open the sound up, make it freer.

I guarantee it. Very, very, very, very, very, very few people that I see actually play dot and the sound just oozes out. For every one of those players that do exist, there’s a million people that can’t do it. And the thing about this, my friends, is that even people that are members of the Windworks Trumpet Academy, they might have been there for two years and they’re still getting it wrong. And they’ll put their hand up and go, “Greg, I’ve had to go back to the Lago

stage because I didn’t recognize.” I call it the illusion of competence. I didn’t realize I was getting it wrong. That’s why we do weekly master classes and teaching Tuesdays to get on there and help people recognize that they’re actually doing inefficient things that they don’t need to be doing. My number one mantra is don’t use what you don’t need till you do need it. Eliminate any involuntary or unnecessary muscle activation. If you do that, you will play better. You will sound better. It will be easier.

Okay? [clears throat] And I’ve lived this life and continue to live this life to help you and players get better, to overcome playing ceilings. And it’s time to call out a lot of stuff. I’m seeing videos of people that can play great, saying things that are so opposite to what they think they’re doing, it’s not helpful. They’re trying to give tips, but what they’re doing and what they’re saying are two different things. I see it all the time. Buzzing, range, you know what the body has

to do. I’m strong and I’m blowing really hard. You know, range comes from the body. No, it doesn’t. No, it doesn’t. No, it doesn’t. It’s not. That’s not the way Bernoli uh said it worked. That’s not the way phys physiologically speaking, it’s not the way it works. The tongue arch is not what changes pitch. It’s involved, but it’s not what changes pitch. there’s so much uh sort of contrary information. So if you are confused or you don’t know what to practice, you’re about to sit down

and do a practice session, you don’t know what you’re going to practice or you are practicing, if you’re working from a book, are you doing it right? Are you doing it efficiently? If you’re having problems, maybe the process that you’re using with your Schlloberg or your Caruso or your stamp or whatever, I’ve done them all. If you’re having problems, it’s the way that you’re approaching the ink. There are things going on inside the system that you’re not recognizing. And that’s what I do. I help people

diagnose their problems and offer solutions. And it’s all based on training the brain. the feeling of playing. The brain does not learn from hearing. It doesn’t learn from seeing, reading books. It hasn’t learned how to do it. We’re doing a physical motion. So, we have to train the feeling of that phys physical motion. And I’m going to finish with this. The traditional teaching is someone hears a sound as a beginner. You try and copy the sound or you have a teacher that says copy this sound.

Then from that sound then we put a bit of ink in front of it to learn a tune or an exercise from that. That might sound crappy, okay, or good. Right? Then we’ve got the ink. Then we’ve got the brain stores the feeling so it can recall it next time. So what if it sounds good but the students doing this and doing this and doing this sounds great. It’s terrible technique but it sounds great. The brain is storing that feeling. So ultimately eventually when that player

gets to a level where they’ve got a ceiling of can’t I can play a high C but I can’t play higher than it. I’ve been stuck here. I’m running out of chops. I’ve got terrible endurance. I’ve got all this pressure in my throat. Uh but it’s okay because it sounds good. Okay, you can do that if you like. I was like that and I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t satisfied cuz I’m seeing all the great players in the world going I want to play like them. What

am I doing wrong? So I had to put all the books aside and understand that the brain learns from the feeling. So the way that we should be doing it if we had a flowchart traditional way is sound ink store feeling it’s ask about we learn the feeling first then we gradually add sound without compromising the feeling then we add notes music ink or improvising whatever the case may be without compromising the sound and the process. You can criticize that all day long and you can

send me hate mail. I don’t care because it’s just logic. And the reality is we show the brain the most efficient way to do it. We get the logic part of the brain on board. We have the experience and we change our playing forever. We’ve got knowledge. We’ve got integration where everyone goes wrong. And we’ve got the experience. Now, we could have an experience that sounds good, but the technique’s terrible, but it’s stored forever until we run into problems. So, how about we gather the knowledge,

the information, and then go, right, how do I integrate that into my playing? We do the drills. We know what we want it to feel like. Then, we slowly add sound and have the experience ultimately of freer, easier playing and a better, more open sound. 100% of the time. So, if you want to play the best sounding, easiest note you have ever played in the next hour, maybe in the next week, probably in the next month, definitely [laughter] go to mystery to mastery, follow the things,

have a look, have a look at the testimonials if you want to. Great. Have a look at all the great players that have said wonderful stuff. Fantastic. Have a look at the users that have said stuff. Excellent. That’s not going to help you, but it might get your belief system on board to go, he’s not a snake or salesman. This might actually work. I might take the plunge. Take the plunge.com. Right? try things a bit differently because what um Einstein said um don’t use the same

along the lines of paraphrasing of don’t use the same thinking that caused the problem to uh try and fix the problem. Right? You cannot fix the problem with the same thinking that you use that caused the problem. So let’s change our thinking and get better results. There’s no issue with uh going, [clears throat] “Oh, I didn’t know that.” Because 100% of the people that have lessons with me is that’s the opposite I’ve ever heard, but it works. Okay, great. You can keep doing what you’re doing.

Mystery two, second installment. We got 20 years of calling it out. Mastery, not mystery to misery. Giani Marinucci, not mystery to mediocrity. Pete Olstead, we don’t want to be mediocre. We don’t want misery. We want mastery. And there’s nothing wrong with getting people moving towards mastery. Do we ever get there? No. But let’s work on getting better and better and better with good information delivered. It’s good fun. It’s easy to follow. and you will get better. Okay? And if you want to go all the way

to absolute mastery, this will help because you’ll be able to diagnose where you’re getting off track, where you’re going off wrong. So, on that note, brass people, have a wonderful uh practice session next. Ideally, you’ll be in your practice room. you’ll have a video on and someone showing you exactly what to do and how to detect things that you might be doing a little inefficiently. I hope you have a wonderful brass playing day, great day. We’ll see you at mysterymastery.com. Don’t wait. See you there.