Look At You Go!
Let’s take a look at all you’ve achieved so far:
At this point, you have learned an means of practicing pretty much anything in a way that promotes a natural ease to playing by committing to the Primary Practice Space.
You are also cultivating, day-by-day a terribly positive and productive attitude toward trumpet playing by systematically Brainwashing yourself in the best way imaginable. That being said…
You are doing a great job! 😀
You have established a life-line to continued progress by way of deliberately choosing the habit of daily practice through a personalized Daily that you will do.
Your basic playing mechanics are either good enough to develop excellent habits or swiftly moving in that direction through the Five-Point Mechanics Checklist.
And finally, with your manageable and fundamentally secure practice rotation, you are fully locked and loaded with a solid plan for systematically and progressively developing your playing technique, endurance and range.
What else is there to say?!?
Well, there is one thing left to do, and that’s making sure you have a plan in place for adjusting your Practice Plan as you progress.
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The Evolution of Your Practice Plan
Remember, your Practice Plan consists of two main parts; the Daily, and the Practice Rotation. Each of these parts is governed by what you want to play, the “I Will Definitely Be Able To Do This” scale, and simple, no-nonsense guidelines for getting there progressively.
From here, you just need to know this:
Be careful not to get caught up trying to change or cram more into your routine.
Your Practice Plan is already hugely serviceable. Always remember, the more time you spend getting comfortable with a small stable of exercises, the deeper and more permanent your progress will be. And as those basic drills become more automatic, “big picture” changes come as a natural progression.
Say you are practicing your major scales. At first, you may notice that your finger technique is weak. As your finger dexterity improves, you begin to become aware of your airstream. Along with your airstream you start to notice that you can better “support” with the embouchure. This goes on and on as you discover deeper levels of your playing.
All the while practicing the same scales.
Making Changes to the Daily
While the idea is to get a solid Practice Plan going and stick with it for the long-haul, it can take some trial-and-error to find something that suits you.
Once you do find something that fits into your life, it then becomes a matter of getting all we can out of it.
This video will offer some suggestions for making changes to your Daily. These points can easily be applied to your Practice Rotation as well – But remember! It’s a good idea to stick with something for at least a couple months to really gain some perspective.
Here are some suggestions for your future Dailies.
Always remember to keep things at a 9/10 on this guy:
Helpful Daily Ideas:
- A simple exercise that addresses your greatest technical weakness.
- Rotating exercises from your Practice Rotation into the Daily slot on a monthly basis.
- Exercises that develop the ear:
- Play and sing back tones using a keyboard, piano or trumpet.
- Listen to a recording repeatedly until you can sing in your head.
- Transcribing and play bit of recordings you enjoy.
When to Change Your Daily:
- Beginning of each month.
- After achieving a defined goal.
- When intuition tells you you’re ready to move on.
before moving any further take this moment right now and figure out when you will change your Daily.
Write it into your Ultimate Practice Tracker!
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Stick To The Plan!
Before moving on, you need to be aware of one thing:
There will be periods of time, often as long as a few months, when it feels like you are making zero, or even negative progress. This is expected, and is the reality of learning skills. But, if you are practicing in an intelligent and common-sense way, and sticking to the guidelines defined in your Practice Plan, you can be certain that you will come out the other side.
These periods of seeming stagnation are met with leaps in ability when those results are ready to present themselves. All we need to do is let the learning happen below the surface by coming to the practice room, listening, and sticking to the plan.
How is Your Comeback Coming Along? Please Share with Your Fellow Comeback Players in the Comment Section!