Connecting great players to our own playing
By Ryan Beach
When applying the GOLD Method to your practice, there are two general types of approaches we will have - one for learning repertoire and another for learning and imprinting fundamental skills on our instruments. For the vast majority of repertoire, the tempo progressions you find in the app will be sufficient to break things down in a methodical way and imprint great habits. For learning and imprinting fundamental skills however, slowing things down and adding a tempo progression won’t necessarily be the most effective approach.
When talking with a friend and former client recently, I shared a way to approach finding inspiration for our playing and connecting it to the work we do in the practice room. I thought sharing this with all of you in a blog post would serve a dual purpose - getting you the information with the hopes that you find it interesting and helpful, and also hoping you’ll reach out to me and let me know if it makes sense and is actually helpful after you read it.
How do we know when we’re at a professional level?
The conversation between my friend and I centered around the question, “How do I know when I’m at a professional level?” He works hard, and has seen a lot of progress as a result of those efforts. But he didn’t feel like he was making as much progress as he would like toward developing the quality of sound, articulation, musicianship, etc., that he heard from his favorite players.
After asking a few questions to fully understand, I got the picture that part of the issue he was facing was a lack of clarity surrounding the attributes he wanted to develop. When I asked him things like, “How would you describe the sound you want to make?” or, “What player has articulation that you admire”, some answers were confident, others not as much.
In response to this, I shared the following thoughts.
Listen to great players
The first step in developing any skill on your instrument is the creation of a clear mental model, or mental representation, that you will draw from when getting feedback. Generally speaking, this will happen through listening to great players that you want to emulate, or modeling done by a teacher in a lesson.
This step cannot be skipped. If you cannot recall your mental model with clarity and accuracy, it will be difficult to compare your current efforts against your mental model, making it almost impossible to make decisions that will move you closer to your goal in a meaningful way. My suggestion for trumpet players is to break down the various skill categories that make up our fundamental playing (sound/tone, articulation/response, ease/flexibility, first attacks, multiple tonguing, dynamic range, musicality), and choose a player or recording that you wish to emulate for each of these skills. Non-trumpet players can do this with their own skill categories relevant to their instrument.
Describe the attribute in 2 or 3 words
Next, we want to listen to those recordings a few times and try to describe what we like about it in 2-3 adjectives. For example, let’s use the recording of Phil Smith performing the third movement of Haydn’s trumpet concerto (linked below). In this recording, I’m focusing on Phil’s sound, as sound/tone is the category I’m trying to define. The 3 words I would use to define his sound in this recording are focused, brilliant, and full/dense. It would probably be a good idea to listen to a few different recordings to get a fuller picture, as certain recording qualities can make the same player sound different.
Now that we have defined attributes of Phil’s sound that we want to incorporate, we have a much clearer mental model that we can use to track progress. Instead of saying, “I want a great sound like Phil Smith”, we can now say, “I want a focused, brilliant, and dense sound like Phil Smith”. Those qualities are more tangible than simply saying great.
Phil Smith Plays Haydn Concerto 3/NYPO/Mehta
Make an educated guess
In my practice, I’ve often skipped this step, but it’s essential in connecting our mental model goal to our current ability. For each of the adjectives we picked, you’ll continue this process by making an educated guess as to what needs to happen on our instruments to create those adjectives. Using our adjectives for Phil’s sound, the question might look like this: “How is a focused, brilliant, and dense sound created?”
If you have a teacher, this is a perfect question to ask them. More than likely, they will have explored this as well, and will be able to guide you towards a concrete answer. If you don’t have a teacher, you’ll have to make your best guess and try it out.
In my opinion, a focused sound is created by breathing and keeping the air forward on the lips while playing. A brilliant sound is created by playing exactly in the center of the sound, so we have both high and low frequencies in our sound. A dense sound is created by projecting the sound far away from you, so the sound is encouraged to fill all the corners of the room you’re in.
Now we have a VERY concrete list of things to work on in our practice sessions. When we are working on developing a sound like Phil Smith, we want the air to be forward and the sound to be centered and projected. Each repetition you perform (and record, there should be a good amount of self recording), you can ask, “Was the air forward?” “Was I in the center of the pitch on every note?” “Was my sound projected far away from me?” If the answer to these questions is yes, see if you can do it again! If the answer is no, find out why. Adjust your focus. Maybe you need to start a little slower. Or maybe the exercise is too difficult. All of these things highlight the experimental nature of deliberate practice. It will take trial and error to eventually get to a consistent result.
Pick an appropriate place to start
The final step is to design a routine with exercises that will allow you to have a forward, centered, and projected sound 90 percent of the time or more right now. We don’t want to put off having these qualities. We want the qualities now, and we must drop our ego and adjust the difficulty accordingly to meet our current ability level.
When I’m working with students, I’ll usually do three different drills to help them hear/feel a forward air stream, a centered sound, and a projected sound. Then we will work to combine them and hear/feel what the result of that combination is on just one note. The challenge then becomes to increase consistency on repeated attempts of that single note. Then (this would happen after the lesson/masterclass), the student would expand into long tones, scales, arpeggios, and other fundamental exercises, all while maintaining a proper level of difficulty and keeping that focused, brilliant, and dense sound they know they can create.
Conclusion
I wrote this blog in an effort to help connect the inspiring playing we hear on a regular basis into the work we do in the practice room. This process will take time and planning. But if you want to own your own playing, I don’t see many ways around doing this kind of work. Teachers and coaches are important resources to help point the way, but it will be important to have ways to develop your own processes and your own values as a player. As I mentioned in the beginning of this blog, I want feedback if this resonates with you. Reach out on the contact page, or on my website, or social media, or wherever you can find me. Thank you, I hope you enjoyed this article!