Details of my first lesson this year

I had my first lesson of the New Year on Friday.  I emailed my instructor and told him that I had my horns with me and wondered if it would fit into his schedule.  He send me a message back that the time would work, but he wouldn’t be able to play as much a normal because he was doing a “Coffee Classics” concert in the morning and a show later in the evening where he was playing principal.  It was some Gabrieli followed by Pines and Fountains of Rome!  I told him that worked fine for me, and it turned out to be a really interesting lesson.

We started with some Rochut (as we normally do) and after a couple he said, which one did you do with David Krauss?  We turned to number 13 and he asked me what suggestions David had given me during my lesson.  It all flooded back to me, the discussion about connecting the sound, and making sure that I had an energized sound by taking a full nose breath and keeping a “Super Hero” pose.  I played the opening of this etude with those thoughts in mind, and it sounded really good.

Then he said, let’s take this a step further and he asked me to slow the tempo down significantly.  He reminded me about the lesson that he had taken with Jay Friedman as well as the conversations that he had with John Hagstrom about not relying on the valves to produce the notes, but to have the air on all the time to seamlessly move from one note to the next without ever hearing where exactly the change took place.  As I played one of the phases in Rochut Number 13, he said, that’s starting to sound like what I’m looking for, but we need something less angular.

He went into his library and found another etude for me to play that was more linear, and I ran this a number of times, VERY slowly, making sure that my air was “on”, but not playing any louder than normal.  Finally he started shaking his head, saying, “Can you hear it?”  As is typically for me, I told him that I understand what’s he’s listening for, but from behind the bell it sounded very similar to what I had played the first time.  He told me that the subtle difference between what I was doing behind the bell was making a HUGE difference out front.  He said that what I was playing was reminding him of the chorale section in Urlecht from Mahler 2.  He went to get a score and we starting playing the opening line from that movement.

I began on the 1^st trumpet part (he was on second), and the approach to airflow that had been established with the Rochut and other etude was firmly in place.  The sound and blend between us was seamless.  When we got to the phrase where the 1^st trumpet part sustains a whole note and the 2^nd trumpet is descending in quarters, I was able to hear the resultants buzzing in my ears very strongly.  There was one note that didn’t line up perfectly, and I asked him if we could play it again, slower.

We got to the problem note, and he put it right where is should be.  Then we traded parts and I played the 2^nd trumpet line.  When we got to that descending line, there were 2 notes that I had trouble with the first time, and on the second time (much slower) I locked in where I should have been the first time.  It’s very interesting to me that I hear the resultants much easier when I’m playing the first part.

This lesson continued to bob and weave through very familiar concepts, and we stopped and investigated each one in detail during the course of the hour.  It was a “deep dive” that was prompted by a heavy playing schedule, or else we may not have steered in this direction.

I’m reminded of another quote from Jay Friedman that I keep on my music stand,

“As the dog days of summer come to a close and the fall season begins, I started thinking about the concept of practice and the many ways and means to improve as an instrumentalist. I think many people make a mistake of thinking any time spent playing an instrument by themselves is practicing. If the object of a practice session is to cover a certain amount of material in a certain amount of time and you finish sounding exactly the same as when you started, I think you've wasted your time unless you played everything perfectly. Over the years I have told students countless times, "I would rather have you play 2 bars perfectly, than play the whole book in the same way you always play." Repetition is only good when some new improvement is added to your repertoire. To cover material with the same flaws in your playing is not only a waste of time, but actually teaches you to be satisfied with the status-quo.”

I thought I would share a great first lesson for 2009!