Adam Moxley-White, Musician

Etudes

Sat, 07 Sep 2019 09:11:13 -0700

I used to spend months and months on one etude to try and force it to work, but honestly it just led to more and more frustration. I remember spending an entire semester in Grad school on one etude (and other things as well), and getting to the end of the semester and my teacher saying, it has improved, but your articulation is still not consistent from one note to the next. It frustrated me, but I had learned something.

Etudes, and music in general are not about being able to play it perfectly within a day or a week, but learning and improving through working on it for a certain amount of time. Recently, I came back to an etude that I had been initially assigned to work on 2 years ago. At that point, I couldn't even get through the whole etude even after working on it for a few weeks. Well, I've picked it back up, and can now play through the entire etude after a few weeks of working on it. However, it is still quite under tempo, the articulation is not as steady and clean as I would like, and my breath is taking up too much time.

But I'm not going to beat this one particular etude into the ground, I recorded it today, and sent it to a friend for feedback or just to listen to. These individual aspects of playing can be worked on through other means. I can pick an etude, such as a Vurm or Reynolds, that really works on playing steady 8th notes, or I can play simple melodies or pick solos that force me to breath quickly in time.

This one etude does not have to be perfect before I move on. In fact, it never will be "perfect." There is no arrival, merely process. I am grateful to have improved since the last time I worked on the etude, yes there is progress, but I can work on the things that need more improvement in other settings.

Time to Keep Exploring,

Adam

Hungry

Tue, 05 Feb 2019 03:47:45 -0800

We all have more room to be hungrier in improving our skills. We need to constantly find and stoke inspiration within ourselves to be the best players that we can be. Vince Cichowicz says, "You're only competing against yourself. If you play the best you can, that's all you can do." Finding that balance between always offering the best we can in each moment, and trusting that the hard work we do each day is enough is the challenge. We will always be at least somewhat unsatisfied with our playing, and that can be a good thing. However, we need to be aware that there will always be better players than us, and worse players than us. YES, we have to work incredibly hard if we want a lucrative career in music; no one will hand it to us. However, we need to have the awareness that we can only offer the best we can each day and each moment.

Bring the best ingredients we have available at all times to play the music at the highest level. Keep trumpet playing simple; focus on the breath and the song. Stay hungry by feeding a steady stream of inspiration. Stoke the fire, and work on fundamentals. Vince Cichowicz is also know to say, let's go "back to basics" to many students. I feel that tension right now. I have so much that I want to do, I am so hungry. I need to go back to basics, and remind myself the core fundamentals of how to make easy tone production. It's easy to get discouraged, but I am reminding myself that I am working very hard, and offering the best I can today. That is enough.

Part 2: Scheduling Practice

Mon, 04 Feb 2019 05:29:23 -0800

Learning to schedule one’s practice is similar to learning to live with a budget. It is necessary for us to know how much time what have, cultivate a plan on how to use it wisely and effectively, and stick to it weekly while adjusting overtime. There are times when we have unexpected events or things that come up and disrupt our plan. This is okay, in fact, this is normal. In budgeting, we cultivate an emergency fund, so that we don’t have to worry about where the money comes from when the inevitable emergency arises. So what is the equivalent of an emergency fund when it comes to scheduling?

Build in margin to our schedules. There are only 24 hours each day. When scheduling what and how much you will practice, be realistic and estimate how much time each of those activities might take. For me, building in margin looks like 10 mins of transition time between finishing one activity and starting the next. It also means, that I build in gaps of slightly unscheduled time (if possible) so that if I need to restructure my practice, day of, I can. The key is that we aren’t doing this everyday, that’s exhausting, and I lived like that for years. Cultivate a plan each week, to attempt to forecast the demands of that particular week. For example, this week is radically different than last week because I have a recital hearing on Friday. My practice schedule looks very different than last week. I hope that I can learn about scheduling by budgeting, and I hope I can learn about budgeting by scheduling.

Time to Keep exploring,

Adam C White

P.S. One thing about budgeting that has been really hard for me is to plan for more than one month ahead. Maybe I can learn about budgeting by improving my scheduling, like I am now.

Scheduling Practice

Wed, 30 Jan 2019 05:40:19 -0800

Practicing is a daily part of any successful musician’s schedule. How much we practice? When? How frequently? Etc. Are all decided by the musician themselves. There have been many teachers and books that suggest scheduling one’s practice. I attempted this many times in undergraduate, but was often unsuccessful because I was too aggressive in my scheduling, and gave up. Once I got to grad school, and had much more time to practice, I knew I would get about 3 hours every day, but never really made a concrete plan. This is taxing on the brain and the body. I was waking up everyday, thinking about when I would practice that day, and frequently having to restructure my day.

Recently I had an amazing conversation with my fiancé where she encouraged me to schedule my practice time weekly. Weekly!? This was a revelation to me. I’ve been doing this for a two weeks now, and I love every bit of this. I spend Sunday evenings now scheduling my week of practice, and a few other important, weekly tasks (it’s like a big puzzle). I wake up every morning now, not having to think about when I’ll practice (sometimes I still do though… but I don’t have to). I can go throughout the day (week), trusting the plan I made for myself. I do take time after my warm up to plan what I will be practicing during those ~3.5 hours each day. My mind is much more free, I feel much more rested, and I am much more likely to go to bed and wake up around the same time.

Time to keep learning,

Adam C White

P.S. what about when things come up and disrupt my plan to practice? We will touch on that soon!

Intonation and Forward Sound

Tue, 08 Jan 2019 10:39:28 -0800

Playing forward yet soft is no easy task. It takes an immense amount of imagination, but should also be quite simple. It is easiest to find a steady reflection when playing loudly; it caters toward a firm grip. The positive challenge is that acoustics will explode when we play with a steady center of the pitch. Our sound can get a lot bigger, more full, when we play efficiently in the center of the pitch. So we must experiment at a louder dynamic at first without limiting our imagination or potential to play soft.

The next step is to demand from our minds what we want to hear through our bell. Hear a soft or medium dynamic with an extremely steady pitch. It will be easier to let go of the corners, and "relax." However, we should relax our bodies, while maintaining a firm grip in the corners, send a steady flow of air, and most importantly, a strong musical message. The mind is what sends the signals. Eventually the ideas that we have in our mind will come out as reflections of the ideal. It might take several days or weeks of experimenting to get consistency, but making daily progress is the key. One step at a time.

Time to keep exploring,

Adam C White

Firm Grip

Mon, 07 Jan 2019 07:48:16 -0800

A firm grip: Not too tight, not too loose. This is the beginning of consistency for many activities. When using a bat, club, violin bow, etc. one must hold the tool firmly throughout the entire range of motion. It is this idea that is connected to the corner muscles for brass players. While sending a steady flow of air, brass players must maintain firm corners while playing through the entire range of the horn. In fact, this enables the vision that we have musically to happen more easily, when we maintain a consistent grip while sending a strong musical message.

Gabe Dimartino has given me multiple lessons on forward sound, and using his tool/concept of "reflection" to help achieve that forward sound. Tim Hudson would talk about maintaining a grip, and used the baseball bat analogy above, many times. Dr. Rob Murray helped me see that everything works together. We must have forward corners, with steady air, AND a strong musical message. All of these work in sync, we cannot do one entirely isolated from the other. All of these concepts are beginning to make sense to me. I am able to have a more consistent sound throughout the register of my horn. When the sound is too light, I have usually loosed my corners instead of maintaining grip and sending a lighter musical message. When the sound is thin or physical, I have usually gripped too hard with the corners or with the rest of my body instead of my corners. Rather lets maintain grip, send a steady flow of air, and send a strong musical message. Wiff Rudd and Gabe Dimartino also talk about having a steady sound on the mouthpiece and leadpipe, this can only be achieved by firm corners, steady flow of air, and a strong musical message from the brain.

Time to Keep it simple,

Adam C White

Progress on Audiation

Wed, 19 Dec 2018 10:48:37 -0800

Well, I've been working on a solo and an etude this week and spending much more time off the horn developing the mental picture of what I want the piece to sound like. This has involved clapping the rhythm, conducting, sol-feg alone, sol-feg with singing, sitting still and hearing it clearly in my head, playing the mouthpiece to test my sol-feg in time, using the power lung while clearly hearing the phrase, and using the staccator likewise. Wow, I am seeing the fruit of this, but it is much slower and more intentional than previous preparations.

It is humbling to look at a new piece or section, singing through it in my head while testing pitches throughout with the piano. I am seeing the need to develop this skill over time. I am grateful for the emphasis I am getting on this ability to sing clearly from the brain. This strong musical message is ultimately what the body will follow. As Phil Smith says, "find musical solutions to technical problems." The clearer we can get the mental picture, the easier it will be to achieve through the medium of our instrument.

Clear Mental Image

Mon, 17 Dec 2018 06:55:05 -0800

I have heard of musicians, pianist especially, who can look at a piece of music (on a place ride for instance), hear it clearly in their head, and memorize it. I tend to jump into playing a piece before I can do this. Now it is a skill to be developed, but we can begin with simple steps before demanding an unreasonable task on a first attempt. As trumpet players we know fingerings, and often press valves with a general idea of how something should sound, and then meet in the middle. Rather, let's develop a clear mental picture of rhythm , then tempo, then pitch, then style. Listening to recordings, planning the breaths as a part of each phrase, and using a tuner or piano are all valuable tools. However, when do we start testing this mental picture on the horn, we must be willing to continue to refine the mental picture.

Honestly, I am not sure of a good time table for introducing the horn. I'm just experimenting in my own practicing. I worked on my mental picture of one piece last week (esp. rhythm and tempo), and this week I am going to develop the pitch as well. Part of this will be working with solfeg, the mouthpiece, and some playing of one or two phrases on the horn. However, we must continue to take a step back and make the mental image even clearer. Once we start working on the horn, we need to be humble enough to set it aside and work on developing the clarity of our mental image again. This will more likely be for a particular passage, interval, or phrase. This is a process, and will not be perfect this time. I hope this tool will be helpful in learning a solo slower, yet quicker. slower initially, but quicker overall. This tool is for efficiency.

Time to keep exploring,

Adam C White

Chest High

Wed, 12 Dec 2018 07:22:03 -0800

"Keep your chest high." This instruction from my undergrad teacher Tim Hudson never really made sense to me. This week, however, I was listening to an interview with Peter Bond, trumpet player with the MET. In this episode he mentioned almost being canned, but he reached out to his friend in the section who helped him breathe and playing like a singer. The analogy that he used is to pretend you're blowing out birthday candles (not ideal), and then take a breath and sing note. Notice that your rib cage has radically different functions. He advocates that playing the trumpet is more like singing and less like blowing. This allows for more resonance, and ease of the musical line because the exhale is more natural.

What Tim had been trying to explain to me finally began to make sense. I'm exploring this concept more by playing simple melodies, and keeping the chest high. There is also an exercise that has one breathe in with the arms extending up, and keeping them up on the exhale to help keep the chest elevated. The disparity I still have is maintaining a sense of balance and groundedness while having an elevated upper body, a high chest. Let's keep focusing on the music.

Time to Keep Exploring,

Adam C White

Break

Sat, 08 Dec 2018 06:50:24 -0800

You've been working hard, tackling your weakness, and preparing solos/etudes. The Jury/concert is over, and now what? For me, I still wanted to practice, but my motivation to keep tackling my weaknesses was pretty low. I have music for Christmas gigs I can work on, but what about other things? How can I still keep the horn on the face, work on valuable things, and be motivated?

Do you remember why you started playing your instrument? For me it was two things: it was fun to play good music with friends, and I loved the emotional connection to beautiful music. So I return to these roots. Here are a few things that would and could be valuable for me or you to practice before we choose to start learning new repertoire: duets with friends, work on an easy/old etude or solos, play fun and/or beautiful melodies (hymns and folk tunes for me), go to a jam sesh, or throw on a Youtube karaoke to a favorite song and play along (Disney or Broadway for me). There are countless more ideas. Ultimately we want to keep the horn on our face for a similar amount of time, maybe slightly less structured, and engaging in some more fun activities. Who knows you might end up finding something fun to incorporate into your normal practice.

Time to Keep it Simple,

Adam C White