3
Introduction
Since starting to play the trumpet more than 30 years ago, I have considered a modern approach to
playing. Over the years the range of music that I have played has steadily diversified and the
expectations for a professional trumpet player now are different to when I first started out. Versatility
is expected, so we must identify the areas of music we wish to perform and then learn the easiest way
to adapt our technique. This is an exciting journey and one you can enjoy, using the Modern
Approach to Playing the Trumpet (M.A.P.) to help you reach your musical destination. Whatever
your trumpeting background, this book will help to improve your technique by: synchronising and
developing an awareness of airstream, then adding an articulation approach with the use of breath
accents and a soft, fast single tongue that can develop your rhythmic ideas, along with solidifying your
consistent working range from bottom F# to top C. The most important focus is the co-ordination of
all of these techniques, so that in time they all become one natural and gentle approach that requires
little or no thought when improvising.
A trumpeter’s goal is to play to the best of their ability with ease for a healthy amount of time every
day. In this richly diverse time for making music, trumpeters are asked to cover a wide variety of
styles and are often required to improvise. To reach a point where we can best serve the music, we
must spend our lives developing the muscles and technical control that make playing the trumpet as
easy and as painless as possible. The long term goal of control will lead to the development of
strong muscles.
When improvising on the trumpet the technical focus can often be forgotten, as the musician is
thinking of artistic issues; playing in style and expressing an original and personal approach to the
music. When playing with ensembles containing drums and amplification, your technical control can
change as the natural harmonics of the trumpet are harder to hear. Your excitement can build in a
way that does not occur in the practice room and this can make you play louder than normal. With
these technical and environmental hurdles to deal with simultaneously, it is not at all surprising that
trumpeters sometimes develop an insufficiently supportive technique where brute force can replace
control. Incorrect habits could be forceful breathing and tonguing too hard, thus stopping the
airstream and leading to too much mouthpiece pressure, then bruising resulting in inconsistent
playing ability from day to day.
We can protect ourselves by thinking of these issues and preparing ourselves in the practice room. If
it does not sound good in the practice room playing at a quiet to moderate volume, then it will
compromise your ability to develop if you only sound impressive playing at a loud volume with a loud
drummer!
With good technique you can control the trumpet easily in order to realise your ideas and develop
them further. Quiet playing will also enable you to play louder with more contrasting tone colours to
choose from.
Ideals of the Modern Approach
The trumpet should become a legato airstream machine.
Visualise that you have only one register
Tonguing should be viewed as a nice start to the note and nothing more, with the airstream
the main focus in attain