Canadian Musician - September/October 2020 | Page 30

BRASS
Chris Coletti is an internationally acclaimed trumpet soloist and chamber and orchestral musician. Famous for his work with Canadian Brass (2009-
2019), Coletti is also assistant professor of trumpet at Ithaca College School of Music. He has performed and/or recorded with some of the biggest
names in music, ranging from the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic to Kanye West and Quincy Jones. As a content creator and influencer,
Coletti has thousands of monthly visitors to his online videos, blog, social media accounts, and newsletter. www.trumpetchris.com.
By Chris Coletti
Some Thoughts on
Practicing…
How to Have the Right Mindset When You Practice,
Improve Efficiency & Develop an Effortless Approach
The word “practice” is an interesting one. In one sense,
it’s time spent working out kinks and uncovering
inefficiencies – it’s what we do to improve the
various aspects required to play the trumpet well.
In another sense, trumpet is our practice – a daily
ritual akin to yoga or meditation.
While I am certainly not a “perfect practicer,” I sound my
best when I’m pairing a consistent, thoughtful, and peaceful
daily routine with a big project or performance (or set of performances)
that inherently pull(s) me to sound my best.
Establishing Your Routine
Ideally, the routine is something that touches on every technical
aspect of trumpet daily and is modified slightly every week,
depending on how effective it has been. Changes can be to
the material itself, or the ratio of time allotted to a particular
exercise vs. the full routine.
Musically, there should always be a project coming up. This
is essential. Spending lots of time in the practice room without
having meaningful and challenging musical experiences to
look forward to will often solidify what you already do. This
is not ideal.
Performing and collaborating with others that inspire you,
on the other hand, will make you question everything. Great
musical experiences and collaborations help you ask
yourself better questions about what you should be
working and improving on in the first place. Of course,
the current pandemic limits our projects and collaborations to
recording projects, but this can be extremely useful! I always
have several recording projects I am working on at any given
time and they each make me think hard about how exactly I
want to sound and, more importantly, what I need to do to
get there.
To work on effortlessness, in particular, the two areas that
seem to matter most are improved sound production and the
pursuit of highly developed flexibility. Developing excellent
flexibility teaches you to use your air better and bring the notes
closer together, putting the entire range of the trumpet within
arm’s reach.
A good benchmark of flexibility is the ability to do lip trills.
Once you can do these consistently, it’s like suddenly playing
a piano when before you were playing a toy with giant keys;
the toy can sometimes be more accurate, but everything else
is clunky and limited.
Having excellent flexibility makes the trumpet easy. Fortunately,
a beautiful sound is also effortless, although attaining
it takes hours/years/a lifetime of work.
A forced sound is unfortunately common on trumpet. This
is achieved by playing past the point of diminishing return. It
can sound ok, but will never be pure and truly beautiful – and
certainly not effortless.
Playing with too little sound is also very common, and also
inefficient as the physics of trumpet are heavily reliant on air
speed and air volume. (Note, that pertains to the amount of
air, not loudness.)
Happy trumpeteering!
This article is based on a post from Chris’s official blog
at www.trumpetchrisblog.com – a valuable resource for
anyone interested in becoming a top performer.
30 CANADIAN MUSICIAN