MUSICAL GROWTH – #8 Final Piece

For this final blog/ lesson, I learned to play my all-time-favorite jazz song, L-O-V-E by Nat King Cole. I found a trumpet solo transcription alongside with an acoustic bass part. It was from a website which provides free interactive music sheets that had audio over the whole song and could directly play a specific part …

MUSICAL GROWTH – #7 Concert C and F Blues solo

For this week, I was learning how to do solo and improvisation on Concert C and F blues. The tutorial videos that I followed were similar to the ones last week (which were about B♭ and concert G solo). I felt like I did better in this practice because the tutorial videos specifically introduced and …

MUSICAL GROWTH – #6 B♭and concert G Blues solo

This week, I learned how to do solo/ improvisation over B♭ and concert G blues. It was actually a lot more difficult than it seemed to me. I was very used to following exactly written on the music sheets and had never done any form of improvisation previously. It was quite a challenge having to …

MUSICAL GROWTH – #5 Licks

On the plan, I said I would learn how to do trumpet licks from "Dizzy Atmosphere," however, I just realized that there were too many high notes in the song that I often found myself focusing on reaching the notes instead of learning the lick skills. That's why I chose to follow through another tutorial videos …

MUSICAL GROWTH – #4 Expanding Range

For this week, I learned how to expand my playing range without hurting myself. The only thing that I was proud of when playing trumpet was that I could reach really high notes. However, I knew that I usually played them the wrong way as many of my previous trumpet teachers have said. I would …

MUSICAL GROWTH – #3 Special Effects

For this week, I learned to play special effects that are used in jazz music through watching video tutorials of Charlie Porter on YouTube. This was a completely new thing to me since these effects were mostly used in Jazz music. I experimented with different effects: shaking with both hands and lip trill, fall/drop with half-valve …

MUSICAL GROWTH – #2 Articulation

For this week, I was learning how to do articulation in a jazz manner through video tutorials by Charlie Porter on YouTube. Part one of the videos taught three jazz articulations: swing, tongue and slur combinations, and cross-accenting. Part two was examples of good and bad articulations. It was quite a challenge as I have only learned …

MUSICAL GROWTH – #1 Warm-Up

Since I haven't played trumpet for quite a while, I decided that I will start off easy. The first thing I will do is to remember how it felt playing it. I searched up some scales (as I forgot most of them), found a daily warm-up routine for trumpet and a video tutorial of warm-up …

MUSICAL GROWTH – The Journey Begins

- INTRODUCTION - I have had this weird love-hate relationship with trumpet for a long time and at one point, I decided that it was too much for me so I quitted. Now, after four years, I hope that I can stand up from where I fell and pick it up again. I am currently really interested …