The Beginning

 

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My trumpet journey began at the age of 6, on an old cornet covered in dents (and the occasional hole!) donated by my Aunt. I took to it pretty naturally, overcoming the initial technical hurdles very quickly and displaying an aptitude for sight-reading. Within a year I was playing along to ‘Favourite Movie Solos’ and engaging in summer band camps. The trumpet was just a fun hobby, and I certainly didn’t have any intention of pursuing it professionally.

 

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By about the age of 11 or 12 I was playing in lots of ensembles, across a whole range of styles. Grade 8 (the highest British musical exam before diplomas) was in sight and I could access a top D with enough reliability to be impressive for a 12-year-old. Whilst I was aware of limitations in my playing; my age and naivety made any struggles perfectly excusable (sure, I struggled with parts of the Haydn concerto, but there aren’t many 12-year-olds who could claim to find that music a breeze). So, with misplaced optimism, my parents made the bold step of purchasing me a proper professional trumpet for my thirteenth birthday; a brand new Schilke B5! It was a brave gambit; could a teenager be trusted with such a valuable item? Would it end up at the back of a cupboard? Atop a rubbish heap? Or might it be traded away for playing cards (or worse…)?
 

 

Diminishing Returns

 

I loved that trumpet. From day one I resolved to treat it with the upmost care and delicacy. Indeed, when I came to trade it away some years later it didn’t have a single dent or scratch! If my parents had been worried the trumpet wouldn’t have been used, they could certainly breathe a sigh of relief; although that outcome may well have been preferable to the reality…

 

The new instrument had me fired up; I became intensely interested in the subject and finally started listening properly. My inspiration came first from an Alison Balsom CD, it was such an intoxicating sound, and one that I had never realised the trumpet could produce. This opened the proverbial floodgates and I began listening to trumpet music obsessively; in short order my all-time hero and role model became Wynton Marsalis. Classical and Jazz music were equally fascinating to me and within a couple of months of receiving that instrument, I had set my heart on becoming a professional trumpet player. I didn’t know specifically how life as a ‘trumpet player’ worked, or much about the profession at all in fact; but I knew I wanted to do it.

 

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Throughout my musical journey I had always been fortunate to receive private tuition, and was well-informed enough to know that this was not a light undertaking and would require an enormous amount of time and effort. I was entirely prepared, and expectant, to put the hours in. I recognised that in order to play with the seemingly effortless quality and musicality that I heard Wynton produce, one needed sensational technique and instrumental control. From the outset I was willing to commit to tackling ‘the boring stuff’ and working daily to improve the fundamental aspects of my technique. I sought out advice wherever I could get it; teachers, peers, internet forums, Youtube videos and interviews. 

 

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Over a few months I steadily increased my practice time from about an hour a day to three or four, by the end of the year I was regularly notching up five or six hours of practice daily. Almost immediately there were aspects of my playing that leapt forward; scales and dexterity, multiple tonguing and chord recognition amongst them. At first, it felt like rapid progress and there was undoubtedly a sense of satisfaction and achievement that came from flying up scales or shooting up arpeggios, but there were some perpetually frustrating shortfalls; my endurance didn’t improve, my range stayed stuck around that top D, and that Haydn concerto remained an insurmountable challenge. I told myself it just needed more time, more work, more dedication. I followed heavy technical routines religiously: 18 months of Maggio for an hour a day, another 18 months of a 3-hour daily Schlossberg/Clarke routine and a further year of a substantial Stamp routine. All traditionally considered to be staple methods for building endurance and strength, yet I still experienced the same shortcomings, the same limitations, year on year on year.

 

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By the age of 16 or 17 these weaknesses were causing real problems for me; every performance was a nail-biting gamble and every rehearsal a nervous wait for the inevitable collapse of my endurance. I can distinctly remember preparing the First Movement of the Haydn concerto for a series of auditions; knowing that I had literally one shot at the middle section per day. before it became simply too difficult to get through. As you can imagine, there is only limited musical sparkle anyone can apply to a phrase they are only able to complete once every day. I remember sitting in warm-up rooms and meeting accompanists, only to sing or hum through the piece, paranoid that playing even a few notes would jeopardise the imminent performance, which, more often than not, ended rather unsuccessfully anyway. I scraped through music college auditions, more on my boundless enthusiasm rather than playing ability, but the problem continued to persist as I prepared myself for the next step on my trumpeting journey.
 

The situation came to a head in my final concert before starting higher education; a truly disastrous attempt at the Piccolo solo from ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, in front of my peers, girlfriend and her Dad! I can laugh about it with friends these days (it was a fairly notorious performance…) but at the time it was a sickening experience. Less than two months away from studying the trumpet ‘full time’ and I was still having complete embouchure collapses in performances, and performances of relatively standard repertoire too. The event was incredibly timely however, as less than a week later I was scheduled for my first meeting with master trumpeter and professor Paul Mayes.
 

 

Reset

 

That first lesson with ‘Trumpet Prof’ Paul Mayes was truly revelatory; I arrived with a diligently prepared Arban study, complete with rapid tempo and circular breathing. As usual, I fell to pieces about two thirds of the way through and began reciting the regular list of brass players’ excuses. It was at this point, however, that Paul began to challenge my very knowledge of the trumpet to the core. What he showed me was that; for all my pontifications on K-tongue modified, note bending, long notes or lip trills, I didn’t actually understand, on a scientific level, the process of trumpet playing. For my whole life I had subscribed to commonly touted ideas of gym-style ‘trumpet’ workouts to enhance my ‘lip muscles’ or engaging in all manner of peculiar sounds and practices under the misguided impression they were enhancing my playing. 

 

What the Trumpet Prof started me on was a new journey of understanding, experimentation and analysis. Together we reset my playing, a TOTAL reset; not a mouthpiece adjustment or change of jaw angle, but a full-blown back-to-the-beginning reset, based purely on scientific principles to guide my development. Whilst it may have seemed like starting from scratch, and any thought of performing a concerto was some way off, what became overwhelmingly obvious was that, by detaching myself from the brass myths and misnomers I had followed religiously since childhood, I began to exceed every single one of the limitations I had fought against for so long. Suddenly I was hitting notes higher than I ever had, feeling a new sense of freedom and ‘strength’ in my embouchure and exhibiting a level of flexibility I could only have dreamt of a couple of months before.
 

Of course, it took time and dedication, along with an enormous amount of experimentation and refinement to develop a fully functioning and consistent system, and over the next five years I made a vast number of discoveries, and conducted all manner of successful and unsuccessful experiments, gradually evolving my technique across the board.

 

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This newfound technique finally allowed me to follow my long-term dream of pursuing the trumpet seriously and I was liberated to begin developing my musical abilities and stylistic flexibility. I studied with some of the finest trumpet players in the UK, including some of my life-long personal heroes. It has been a truly wonderful experience and I count myself as incredibly lucky.  Now, I hold a first trumpet position with a small Orchestra in Europe, have performed across some of the most prestigious venues in the UK and have worked across symphonic, commercial, west end and jazz spectrums.

 

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Throughout the latter stages of this journey I spent many hours thinking and planning my own teaching system. One which was rooted in science and based on a fundamental understanding of the physics and biology that relates to the action of playing the trumpet, and a system that recognised the uniqueness of every person. I was determined that my teaching would be tailored specifically for each individual; advice given based on their own preferences, experiences and particular anatomy. Moving away from the more traditional approach of  ‘this worked for me so it will work for you’, ‘Herbert Clarke practised these exercises for several hours a day, if you do the same you’ll have the same success’ or ‘my mouthpiece is more comfortable higher on the lip so you should do the same’, and trying instead to assess every student as an entirely new challenge, with their own unique strengths and weaknesses; prescribing exercises, experiments and advice drawn from the underlying scientific principles to work SPEFICIALLY for the student. I’m not here to teach ‘my method’, but to assess and identify what will work for YOU.

 

Thanks for reading!
 

I feel immensely fortunate and grateful for the amazing experiences I have had on my journey so far. I owe so much to so many, and I would like to thank the myriad musicians and teachers who have helped and guided me. I would also like to take this opportunity to extend a special thanks to a few people who have been particularly kind, supportive and generous to me, I will be eternally thankful:

 

Paul Beniston, Gerry Ruddock, Will O’Sullivan, Noel Langley, Paul Mayes and, of course, my parents!