Tips for Beginners: How to Fix Common Trumpet Mistake

As a beginner trumpet player, you are likely to face common issues that prevent you from progressing. In this article, we will break down common trumpet mistakes and help you approach your instrument the right way. 

Ignoring Warm-Up

A proper warm-up is essential for both excellent performance and preparing your body and preventing physical problems. Playing a trumpet engages facial muscles, tongue, and lips and if they are not ready for demands placed on them, you’re at high risk of fatigue and serious damage.
Warm-ups for trumpet players are as important as stretching for athletes before intense physical activity. Warm-up exercises prevent you from hurting your lips or straining your muscles. They will improve your endurance and prepare your muscles for actual work. Start your practice by playing long tones or doing lip slurs to loosen your lips and relax your muscles. This will help you effectively manage playing challenging passages or high notes. 

Incorrect Posture 

You can’t get a good tone and proper breathing if you have bad posture. Moreover, it’s a direct way to reduce your playing abilities and damage your health. Incorrect posture doesn’t provide enough support for the weight and pressure. This typically leads to back pain, muscle strain, and sometimes respiratory issues. Incorrect posture impacts the airflow and trumpet tone, making it more challenging to control. Before starting your practice, ensure you keep your back straight with feet shoulder-width apart and hold your instrument without excessive tension in your hands. 

Inconsistent Practice 

You know that practice makes perfect. Once you arrange your trumpet practice schedule, try to stick to it and not miss sessions. Inconsistent practice keeps you from progressing and personal growth. You can’t work on your skills and build good habits of playing if you skip sessions. Inconsistency makes it difficult to retain the information and prevents steady progress. 

Neglecting a Metronome 

A metronome is a key tool to improve timing and rhythm. It also helps musicians not slow down or increase the tempo when it’s not necessary. A metronome is the best way to learn to stay at a specific tempo and play in time with other players in the ensemble or a band. By practicing with a metronome, you improve your musical skills and performance quality that also boosts your confidence as a player. Musicians who play alongside a click easily break the habit of playing at an inconsistent speed. 

Blaming Your Gear Instead of Technique 

No matter how much money you invest in your trumpet accessories, if you lack proper technique and don’t work on your tone, embouchure or range, your playing will suffer. Improve your playing before starting to invest in an upgrade. While the gear is only a tool, your playing technique is what impacts your sound quality. 

Incorrect Tongue Placement 

Proper tongue placement is important for clear articulation and focused trumpet sound. On the other hand, once you have issues with correct tongue placement, it disrupts the airflow and leads to poor intonation.  Ensure you place your jaw forward, keep your teeth separated, and your tongue low. Avoid placing your tongue on the roof of your mouth or moving it around, as it will block the airflow. The fastest way to bring your tongue in a proper position is to say “tee”. With the “T” sound you place your tongue behind the teeth arching toward the top of the mouth.  

Not Listening Enough Trumpet Music 

By listening to other trumpet players’ recordings you can learn more about their technique as well as feed your brain with enough material to come up with your own ideas. For a trumpet player, listening to recordings is an essential part of the educational process. Similar to a vocabulary that you boost with reading more books, you enrich your understanding of music and playing technique by listening to more music. By limiting your education just to listening to your own playing, you can’t boost your style and sound as you have no role model to draw inspiration from. 

Wrong Hand Position

This is an issue that the great trumpet player Allen Vizzutti stresses when speaking that a wrong hand position can make even a professional sound amateurish. The right position is when you keep your right hand rounded, with fingertips on the valves to play them evenly and rhythmically. With a rounded hand shape it’s easier to coordinate the movement of the valves with your articulation. 
Ensure that you play with your fingertips, not flat parts of your fingers. Keep your little finger on the top or insert it in the ring, especially when you need to hold your trumpet or use a plunger mute. Your left hand should be placed from the bell side, at the end of the lead pipe, just above the area where it meets the main body. Hold your instrument in a way to stay around the valves with a ring finger in a ring and your thumb in another ring. 

Incorrect Embouchure 

The embouchure is the way you shape your lips and mouth when playing. Incorrect embouchure leads to a poor tone and reduced endurance and range. Typically, players play a little bit off to one side of the lips or more on their top or bottom lip. To quickly fix your embouchure say emmm and then say eee. These two steps will help you give your mouth corners a necessary shape. Slightly tighten your lips and make puuu sound to create a small aperture between them. Bring the mouthpiece to your lips and create a tight seal around it. Ensure you keep your lips tight without overpressure. When you inhale, keep your chin parallel to the ground. 

Poor Finger Technique

Trumpeters use their fingers to push and release valves to create different musical patterns. However, if your finger movement is not precise, you get sluggish and inaccurate note changes.  To correct your finger technique, play attention to your right hand. It should be in the same position if it were holding a bottle of beer. Place your thumb against the first valve casing and try not to hook it under the lead pipe. Remove your little finger from the ring to let other fingers move with less tension. Lift your fingers high and slap them down. 

Too Much Tension While Playing

Many trumpet players squeeze all muscles in their bodies once they start playing high notes. However, to make your high notes really great, you should learn to stay relaxed, as tension leads to cutting off the air and spoiling the vibration of your lips. Start by practicing relaxed playing in the low register first where you don’t force yourself but feel comfortable.

Final Word

Playing a trumpet requires patience and consistent practice. There are many typical mistakes that trumpet players make, however all of them are easily manageable. Once you start working on your embouchure, finger technique, correct posture, and relaxed playing, you will notice how your tone changes. 

Recently we have shared Professional Trumpet Tips for Better Technique. Check them out to boost the way you play your instrument.