Relaxed Concentration

Trumpet playing can be a very stressful thing, playing on an instrument which seems to want to embarrass us in front of the audience. Whenever we play, it is quite alarming how tense we can get, all of that tension never helps us play anywhere near our full potential. I’m not talking about tension of the lips but of the mind and the body. When we play the trumpet we unnecessarily worry about whether we can play the high note, or if we have enough stamina or we sometimes just get tense while sight reading. It is useful to sometimes understand why we are tense; ask yourself is it because you know you can’t really play the piece? Or maybe it’s because you’re thinking negatively and worry about something that is not important. We normally get tense when we are out of our comfort zones, sometimes we don’t even realise that we are tense because for some people it is the normal state of being while playing. This is not good for our playing and we have to take positive action to bring us into a state of relaxed concentration.

Focus on Your Breathing

Breathing slowly is something that always relaxes a person. We must try to think of blowing out into the trumpet as a controlled sigh. When you are playing a solo, or any piece for that matter, it is very important to know where and how you are to breathe, and vitally, to stick to it. So many times you see players make mistakes because they let their breathing control them, rather than controlling their breathing, it’s so easy to put it right. When playing a high and loud passage, make sure that your focus is only on the lungs pushing that air fast out through the lips, otherwise you will be wasting energy. Stay cool, and relax!

Do, Don’t Try!

Don’t try to play notes but simply play them. We don’t try to do things we know we can do, we don’t try to walk, we just do it. Is your playing not as fluid to you as walking, if not then you need to feel more comfortable with your trumpet. It needs to feel like it’s your best friend. Friends spend lots of time together learning about each other, this is what you should do with your instrument, learn how it responds to you. When you are performing and you feel tense, play the same way as you do in your practice room. The practice room is where you should learn how to relax.

Take Control

When things seem to be going wrong things are always magnified up in our heads. Making mistakes is part of being human. Don’t worry about them, and crucially don’t let them make you make more mistakes. When we concentrate on playing x, y and z correctly we forget about the importance of conveying the emotions of music. Ironically when we focus on telling that musical story we seem to make fewer mistakes. We have given our brains something positive to do.