Etude Books

One of the hardest things about studying music seriously, is not the 1 hour a week we spend with our teacher, but every other day that we have to practice by ourselves. In team sports, participants practice and train as a team, but training as a musician is often a solitary experience. Our teachers often function as athletic coaches in the sense that they guide us, encourage and point us in the right direction. But after the lesson over and especially after school is over, how do we practice? What do we practice, how do we maintain our playing, continue to improve and when we get into a rut, how do we get out of it?

I think awareness is the name of the game, as well as being able to learn and gather information, try it out to see if it works. It's simple, if it works, keep doing it, if it doesn't, throw it away. Obviously we are all built very differently so different things are going to work for different people, but the true skill is in being able to sort through all of that stuff to find out what works for you. If you do a lot of James Stamp warmups, great! If you need to do some Earl Irons Lip Slurs great! Or you need some soft Clarke Technical Studies to get your chops focused, do it. But the point is to try these things to figure out what works for you.

Here is a list of some etude books that I recommend for young players:

Etudes:

40 Studies (VOISIN) By Wilhelm Wurm.

Twenty-four Melodic Exercises, Op. 20 By O. Boehme. For Trumpet.

34 Studies (On Orchestral Motives) By Vassily Brandt. Edited by Robert Nagel. For Trumpet.

Practical Studies for the Trumpet By Edwin Franko Goldman.

The Complete Solfeggi for Trumpet By Giuseppe Concone, edited by Korak. Instructional book for Trumpet.

One Hundred Studies for Trumpet Trumpet Method. By Ernst Sachse.

These are just a few books off of the top of my head that have good basic/fundamental material. The easiest way to improve is to take material that isn't too extreme in difficulty but is gradually pushing certain limits of the player. For example if you can tongue the goldman 1st study at quarter note equals 80, try to work it up to 85 for the next week. Trumpet players tend to obsess over "higher, faster, louder," but when working on this material, I would focus on the basic three: sound, rhythm and intonation. I also work out of all of these books for clarity of articulation, ease and control.