After completely neglecting this blog for three years while I pursued my Doctorate, I woke up two nights ago to a message from a friend telling me that an article of mine was going around Facebook. Imagine my surprise when I opened this site (after spending 5 minutes trying to recall what my password could be) and saw that it had over 1,300 views! I decided this would be a good opportunity to share something I’ve been kicking around in the back of my mind for a while now. Let’s begin with a story:
James Stamp was one of the most influential brass teachers of the 20th century, and his approach to the trumpet has only become more popular since his passing in 1985. You can’t swing a cat without hitting a trumpet player who uses a Stamp exercise or idea in their playing, and what’s really interesting to me is that players of every stripe.
The Stamp Warm-ups & Studies book is a valuable addition to any trumpet player's library. However, the CD that continues to be included in the Amazon product description is NOT included. Instead the product contains a link for downloading the tracks in an MP3 format which is not as versatile for playback as a CD format would be. James Stamp was one of the most influential brass teachers of the 20th century, and his approach to the trumpet has only become more popular since his passing in 1985. Trumpet Building Blocks: First Year Overview of my teaching method. Daily Drills and Technical Studies for Trumpet James Stamp, Warm-Ups + Studies. Background edit. James Stamps; James Stamp Trumpet Method Pdf; James Stamps. Contents. Background Stamp was a professional musician from the age of 16, starting in the Mayo Clinic Band. After having played in different Minneapolis theatres he was asked to play 4th trumpet in the. Arabic text script after effects free. Playing 4th trumpet.
One year, as a Teaching Fellow at UNT, I was assigned a student (let’s call him Sam) who was a sophomore. Sam had studied with another teacher for his first year and was really struggling to meet the demands placed upon him by the school. His sound was bad, his range was bad, and his technique was bad. His UDE (a rigorous jury students must complete at the end of their 2nd year) was coming up in 8 months and it seemed like there was no chance of him passing. At the beginning of the lesson, I had him open his book of flow studies and saw that all the right things had been penciled in by a previous teacher: “Use lots of air!” “Keep the throat open and relaxed.” “Make this sing.” etc… But none of that was happening. The sound was closed off, tense, and did not resonate. After the first couple of minutes I thought I may have found the root of the problem. I asked, “Sam, who are your favorite trumpet players to listen to?” Silence. So I asked, “Do you listen to trumpet players?” “No.” “Can you name any professional trumpet players?” “No.” And therein I discovered that my hypothesis was correct. Sam did not know what the trumpet is supposed to sound like and thus could not create a good trumpet sound. For his first week, instead of assigning etudes and technical studies, I had him listen to a long list of trumpet players on YouTube. Håkan Hardenberger, Alison Balsom, Maurice Andre, Phil Smith, Chris Martin, Matthias Höfs, etc… Sam was a type A person, so he came back to his next lesson with a list of everyone he listened to and what he thought made each player’s sound/approach unique. It shouldn’t be surprising that with his very first note, it was an incredible improvement! Over the course of the next two semesters, Sam improved tremendously and passed his UDE with flying colors! Now I’m definitely not writing this to express discontentment with Sam’s previous teachers. I know one of them and that person is a fantastic person, teacher, and player. What concerns me is that Sam’s situation is not unique, is not rare, is not even surprising. It is actually perfectly ordinary for people pursuing music in college to never listen to their own instrument!
In the article I wrote a couple years ago that gained popularity, I contrasted the pedagogical approaches of James Stamp and Vincent Cichowicz. Stamp’s approach is physiological in nature, meaning that you should be aware of the workings of your body and tweak those to obtain the desired sound. Cichowicz’s approach is conceptual, meaning that if your sound concept is strong enough your body will find ways to create your desired sound without you having to be aware of the physiological aspect. And while these approaches are diametrically opposed, they both begin with the exact same step. Sound Concept. One cannot obtain a good sound physiologically without first understanding what a good sound is. By the same token, one needs to have a sound concept in order to use the conceptual approach.
This is what I refer to as the “Missing Link in Trumpet Pedagogy.” If the two primary pedagogues of the past 100 years agree that having a sound concept is the foundation for everything else, then why do we start beginners on the mouthpiece? Why do we start them on F or G, or C? Why do we begin with leadpipe buzzing? Why do we assume that if a high schooler or college student has a bad sound, that it’s because they aren’t using enough air? Why do we assume the throat is too tight, the teeth are clenched, the tongue is too high? Teachers usually start with those elements because they (supposedly) represent the basic building blocks for everything we do on trumpet. But that is simply not true. The foundation of good trumpet playing is the sound concept. After that, everything is just technique.
So where do we go from here? I submit that teachers should assign more listening than long tones or lip slurs. More than Clarke or Arban studies. Especially at the beginning of a player’s training, they should be spending time every day diligently listening to recordings and professional live music. Only in the context of great musicianship do technical studies and etudes make sense. Keith Johnson writes, “The first step is to recognize a good sound. All other skills and requirements follow this primary accomplishment” (The Art of Trumpet Playing pg. 26). Johnson does not say that the first step is creating a good sound. The first step is recognizing it! A person can only consistently play at a level they hear. I may surprise myself now and again with something that’s a little better than I imagined it going, but those are flukes created by accidentally using more air or less of something else. I can only consistently create music at the level I can conceptualize it. I regularly tell my students, “Your brain is your musical instrument. You must learn to play your musical instrument before you can ever hope to play the trumpet” (or some variation of that). Listen to lots of music and have your students listen too. Share a recording with each student every week. One thing I’ve incorporated into my teaching is to have a “recording of the week” that I share with every student at the beginning of each lesson. I’ve talked about this with other teachers and had one of them tell me, “There’s just not enough time in a 25 minute high school lesson to spend time listening.” My response was, “If you only have 25 minutes, how can you afford not to work on the most fundamental skill?” As teachers, let’s require more listening of our students. As performers, let’s require more listening of ourselves.
Thanks for taking the time to read this! I had originally planned to make this article two parts with the first half being about the “missing link” and the second suggesting ways to incorporate listening into a daily schedule. I feel that this article is long enough on its own and I would like to cover the discipline of listening in a separate article. I would love to get your feedback on this article! Do you listen as part of your daily practice? Who do you listen to? How has it helped you as a performer? As a teacher? Is there anything in here you would like to argue?
Getting the trumpet to consistently do what you want it to do is a lifelong process, and there are many legitimate ways to approach playing the horn. Like most trumpet players, I use concepts from several different schools of thought in my own playing, but one of the people from whom I’ve borrowed the most is James Stamp. I’ve recently developed a practice tool that has helped me do a better job of putting a couple of his ideas into practice, and I’d like to share it here (more on that in a minute).
James Stamp was one of the most influential brass teachers of the 20th century, and his approach to the trumpet has only become more popular since his passing in 1985. You can’t swing a cat without hitting a trumpet player who uses a Stamp exercise or idea in their playing, and what’s really interesting to me is that players of every stripe seem to like Stamp.
Håkan Hardenberger is a fan, (see Mark Dulin’s great January 2009 ITG Journal Interview), but so is Wayne Bergeron (see Derek Reaban’s write up of a 2008 Bergeron masterclass). I don’t know about you, but as a trumpet player who strives for proficiency in all types of playing, hearing two names as different as those attached to the same set of ideas perks my ears up.
Most of us know James Stamp’s method book Warm-ups and Studies as well as the book’s ubiquitous “Basic Warm-up #3” (if you don’t know “Basic Warm-up #3,” ask my wife how it goes. It gets stuck in her head like a Disney song).
As I see it, the backbone of Stamp’s philosophy to remain centered at all times, and the specific techniques in Warm-ups and Studies reinforce this philosophy, especially this one from page four:
Keep thinking down going up and thinking up going down.
I had an “A-ha!” moment a couple of years ago while reading Craig Morris’ excellent series of blog posts Stamping It Out. In particular, this excerpt caught my attention (from the second post in the series):
Imagine that you are playing facing a tall brick wall (if you have an actual brick wall, that will be even better). Assign each brick its own unique note. The top brick on the wall is pedal C; the bottom brick is however high you are able to play; Bb, C, or A should be right in the middle. Before you play any note, find its location on the brick wall, and then place the note there when you play. Thinking in this manner improves three things: 1) As mentioned in the book, it helps to keep you from playing sharp in the upper register and flat in the lower register. 2) It keeps you balanced when you play, preventing you from puckering out too much when you are in the lower register, and from stretching too much when you are in the upper register. 3) It gives you a more concrete placement of each note before you play it. When playing the trumpet, we have almost no visual feedback or guidance. If you play the piano, you know where every note is; they are all laid out in front of you. The same thing is true of string instruments, albeit to a lesser degree. With the trumpet, however, we have almost no visual help. But if you visualize the place each note resides on your virtual (or hopefully real) brick wall, then it will reinforce to your body where each note goes, and what is involved in placing it there.
This made a lot of sense to me, and I started putting it into practice. I began thinking of high notes as lower on the imaginary brick wall and low notes as up near the ceiling. Like most players, I struggle with over-tightening in the upper register and over-loosening the chops below low C, so this approach was just what I needed.
James Stamp Trumpet Method Pdf
I used this concept in the abstract until fairly recently, when I decided to experiment with an artificial “brick wall,” so to speak. Meet my latest (and nerdiest) creation: the Stamp Strip!
Trumpet Method Of James Stamp
The basic idea is similar to what Craig Morris outlines above, but I’ve given each “brick” its own printed note name. While playing Stamp, scales, flow studies and the like, I associate each note I play with the printed note on the strip. Using this tool keep my high register feeling easier and more accessible and my low register less tubby. I’ve noticed a big improvement in ease of playing as well as smoothness of slurs.
My hope is that the Stamp Strip could be useful to other players, so I’m offering it as a free PDF download:
Some assembly is required, but not much. Just cut along the dotted lines, tape the strips together (remember that pedal C is at the top and double C is at the bottom), and hang it wherever you practice the most. That’s it!