Practicing: Sound the Trumpet

I’ve been switching up my practice routine a bit lately. Sometimes I get into ruts. I tend to focus a lot on tone and sound and playing exercises – flexibility, slurs, lip bends, scales, etc. This is all good stuff to do, but I’ve been finding more and more lately that while this kind of practicing helps me keep my trumpet technique in shape, it’s not really helping me on a lot of my gigs. Sure, it’s important to maintain ones chops – range and endurance and basic technique – but I only have so much time each day to practice. Most of the money I make from playing is from private cocktail jazz gigs and from church/wedding gigs. Maybe I should be focusing my practice attention on making my playing in those situations better. Instead of playing tonguing exercise in Arbans, why don’t I make up my own, specifically creating exercises that work on arpeggios or scales that I might use while improvising on a tune. If I’m doing lip bends, why not do them in the form of the triads from the Giant Steps progression? I’m starting to realize that I need to make the most of my practice time to truly get the maximum amount of musical benefit out of the little time that I have. The key for me is going to be, I think, finding the balance of keeping the trumpet maintenance portion of practicing in balance with the music making part of practice (learning tunes, playing etudes, practicing music for upcoming shows/projects). I just discovered a really cool website and iTunes podcast series that’s been giving me some great ideas.

Sound the Trumpet: How to Blow Your Own Horn. There is a ton of info on this site and tons more if you start clicking the links. Chicago-based trumpet player and educator Jonathan Harnum has put together a massive amount of info on his site. And he also created a pretty sweet podcast series on iTunes: Sound the Trumpet: Podcast for Trumpeters. This past weekend I listened to the podcast interviews of jazz trumpeters Avishai Cohen and Ingrid Jensen. Harnum specifically questions these masters on what and how they practice the trumpet. Hearing how these players balance the time they have with what they need to work on has been a big inspiration for me. The Ingrid Jensen interview was particularly enlightening, specifically with regard to her use of a drone in her practicing. She sets up a tanpura drone (but one could use anything to create a drone – or for that matter, another person can create the drone if practicing with someone else) in whatever key and then she practices off of it. Scales or arpeggios or patterns or even progressions with the intent of hearing the actual intervals in relation to the drone note. And the cool thing is that the drone could be the tonic of a chord or it could be the third or the fifth, or whatever. This concept really reminds me a bit of my friend and bandleader Bobby Zankel’s interpretation of Ornette Coleman’s Harmolodics concept. This drone practicing is all about developing the ear. But at the same time you can practice necessary trumpet technique. I just downloaded a free tanpura app from iTunes. I’m going to practice with this tonight to see what kinds of things I can come up with. I might try to keep the drone going and set up a pulse with my metronome and then assign myself a scale to play. Or maybe triads over a partial cycle of fourths.

The possibilities are endless. And this is really the key to practicing. There is so much to learn and the journey is such an individual one. We have to make the most of what we have. A quote from Jensen’s interview sums it up nicely:

“Really get it together as it’s supposed to go, but also explore with it; take it down the road, take it for a walk around the block, climb to the top of a building and come back down with it, and then come back and play it exactly as it’s supposed to be as well.

There is no end point. The more you learn, the more that you find out there is to learn.”

I’m excited to explore my practicing more. I always enjoy playing but I’m going to try, or rather allow myself to make the most of it. Check out this site and the podcast. Great stuff!

Album Spotlight: Avishai Cohen "Introducing Triveni"

Avishai Cohen’s album “Introducing Triveni” is ridiculously good. You should listen to it. It’s streaming in its entirety for free here - and if you like it, you should consider buying it at this very same link.

“Introducing Triveni” is one of the best new albums I’ve heard in a long time. Everything about it is good: great tunes and arrangements (the originals and covers are both equally strong and compelling); exceptional individual playing, wonderful interplay between the trio’s members; excellent sound, production and mix; and even great packaging.

I have a few of Avishai Cohen’s other albums (“Flood” and “After The Big Rain”) as well as some of the albums of an ensemble he plays with, Third World Love. Everything I have heard with Cohen on it is good. He is a really special player - the complete package. I’m generally not into super physical trumpet playing – the whole High, Loud, and Fast school. While I really do admire those who can play like that (it shows a serious level of commitment and devotion to get to such high levels of technical prowess), I usually enjoy music that hits me, moves me, makes me feel – often the pyrotechnic stuff alone just doesn’t do it for me. Sometimes though there are players that have these amazing technical abilities that also have the gift of being able to tell a story. Master musician trumpet players like Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown, Booker Little, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, Dave Douglas, etc. Those guys can all play high, loud, and fast, for sure, but they can also really sing through their instruments while stretching the limits of what is physically possible on the horn. BTW – as an aside, I should really include Miles Davis on this list of virtuosos whose music I admire. Too often Miles doesn’t get credit for having the capabilities to  play high, loud, and fast, which he does; but it’s his ability to slay you with one note that does it for me (and millions of others).

Anyway, I’m rambling, back to the subject at hand – Avishai. He’s not really a high, loud, fast guy, but he can certainly burn on fast tempos. And he’s got high chops (not Maynard Ferguson chops, but I bet Avishai could pull out a Double C if he needed to). And I’m sure he can blow down the Walls of Jericho – but he also can play beautifully at a whisper.  Maybe most importantly, Avishai has impeccable musicality and he swings his ass off. He clearly knows and has seriously studied the tradition and lineage of jazz trumpet players. But he also has something unique and personal to say – always with a beautiful tone in all registers of the horn.  And he has amazing control, a real command of the instrument. When I hear him play I imagine that he has the ability to execute whatever he wants. That’s kind of the goal with playing this music. You want to be equipped with the technique and knowledge to play whatever enters your head/exits your heart. I think Avishai has these kind of chops. And he’s only 34. It’s going to be fun to watch and listen to him mature and develop. “Introducing Triveni” is a good venue to observe him at this moment in his artistic path. There’s a definite acknowledgment of (and respect for) the history of jazz, but there is also the underlying notion that something new must always be created to keep the tradition of development and innovation going. Have I mentioned that I like this record? When you have some time to really listen, check it out.

For more on Avishai Cohen look here: http://www.avishaicohenmusic.com/

And check out this WBGO interview and live session excerpts with Cohen and Triveni.

It also looks like Cohen is manning the trumpet chair (succeeding Dave Douglas and Nicolas Payton) in the San Francisco Jazz Collective and also touring with his siblings as The 3 Cohens.

Listening Contest Winner

The winner of the fifth installment of the Outside Pants Guess The Trumpet Player contest is……..no one! Well, technically someone did guess the first trumpet player but no one guessed the second. The correct answers: the first recording was of Don Cherry playing his song “Art Deco.” The second recording is a cover of “Art Deco” by Avishai Cohen off of his ridiculously good recent album “Introducing Triveni.” I guess I went too obscure with these two recordings. Though someone did correctly identify Don Cherry, someone else thought Cherry sounded “old and maybe had chapped lips!” Awesome! Oh well. You gotta listen to more Don Cherry, people :)

More to come on Avishai Cohen and “Introducing Triveni” tomorrow - an Outside Pants Album Spotlight.