Its time to practise! What are you going to play? Are you mentally preparing yourself or are you just going to pick up your trumpet and see what happens?

Do you have expectations for the day? Do you know what results you want? Will you be disappointed if you don't achieve them. Did you have a good day playing yesterday?

These may not be conscious questions that you ask yourself but they are questions that exist somewhere in your subconscious. Your reactions and feelings during a practise routine are testament to the fact that you do have expectations.

Your expectations must become conscious and more importantly, REALISTIC!

You must learn to discover exactly what you are working on, why you are doing it and how best to approach it.

WARM - UP

The same principle applies to warming up. What are you actually doing and why? Most students do far too much playing as a warm up routine. You are preparing muscles to learn new skills. Blood sugar needs to be circulated throughout the muscles as fuel. This can be done away from the instrument by flapping or fluttering the lips and cheeks very loosely. Do exercise one from lesson one except this time allow your corners and cheeks to relax. Make the sound that a horse makes.

You have already started your warm up and you are not even in your practise room yet!

Your warm up should be as much about reprogramming your belief system (training the architect) as it is about muscle preparation. You will be amazed at how loose and ready you are to play, just by fluttering on and off for five minutes or more, then doing the five exercises from the previous lessons. It all takes about 10 minutes, then you are ready to quickly push your limits.

PUSH YOUR LIMITS!

What does that mean? There are 4 techniques to develop.

- Sound

- Articulation

- Intervals slurred or Tongued

- Range

That's it! That is all that exists. If you have these techniques covered at all volumes, you have the instrument conquered.

The Only No Mystery Guide to Trumpet Mastery shows you what exercises to do and how to develop sensibly and quickly. You need to discover your flaws in order to fix them and improve.

A resonant sound comes from a relaxed balance of airflow and aperture corner tension. Articulation improves if you push the speed of your tonguing to the limit. Flexibility improves by speeding up harmonic slurs; efficiency is a result of speed. Intervals tongued is merely a combination of sound, tongue and aperture corner tension being synchronised. Range should be pushed early on as the muscles are fresh. Why try to train tired muscles??

Most players spend far too much time on technical development each day while harboring an unrealistic expectation of results. This usually leads to frustration. Frustration is a rejection of reality! If you accept your current ability, know what needs working on and how to do it, then all you need is patience and dedication: Success is unavoidable.