Diminished 7ths

My favorite exercise! I do these everyday, without fail. I have found that diminished 7ths help air flow, smooth out register changes, increase range, and improve flexibility and finger dexterity. I was prescribed these by Ryan Anthony, who learned them from David Zauder during his time at CIM as a student. Diminished 7ths are fantastic because the intervals are equidistant from each other (as compared to major/minor arpeggios), making the ascent/descent a little easier and much more predictable. The same could be said for any scale/interval combination of similar attributes (eg. whole tone scales, tritones, quartal/quintal sets).

Mouthpiece Articulation Exercise

Mouthpiece playing is a polarizing concept in the trumpet world, so while I do advocate for the use of this exercise, I believe that it should be done in moderation. That being said, this exercise is very helpful for clarifying attacks, general centering, and speed of air behind the tongue. This exercise can be used with any scale or pitch collection in any range. The most important thing to take note while working on this exercise is to play with a metronome and either a tuner or a drone! This was one of the standard practice tools taught by Tom Booth (SMU) during my time in the studio there and it is one that I have found can really help some of the issues listed above very quickly, with lasting effects after prolonged use.

Clarke 2 Variations

Clarke studies are fantastic exercises for trumpet players of all levels because there is so much that can be done with them. Clarke 2 is a favorite from this book and is arguably the most used study from the book. I have included a PDF here of major, minor, whole tone, octatonic, and chromatic variants. Practice these slurred, single tongued, K-tongued, double tongued, and triple tongued (depending of what you need to do to improve your playing).

Range Extended Lip Slurs

For me, flexibility is the single greatest technique to hone as it leads to better endurance, range, and overall better follow-through. This is another exercise from Tom Booth that was considered part of our everyday practice routine. Notes are provided on the PDF with tips and suggestions on how to work on these slurs efficiently and safely. As a general rule of thumb, if you are struggling to get the same line three times without success (particularly in the later, higher sets), stop, rest, and move on.

20 minute long tone exercise

Before you quickly move past this one, just give me a second to explain! This long tone exercise is like musical yoga for trumpet players. For the past 10 years, I’ve worked on this exercise to really work on body awareness. This allows me to relax and relieve any tension I may have while simultaneous work on air flow, tuning, and lastly, sound. Sound ends up being a tertiary benefit of working on this exercise and really just reinforces the idea of form following function (relaxed body+constant air flow=resonance).

This exercise is helpful for those dealing with 1) a spread aperture, 2) body tension (arms, hands, neck, shoulders), and 3) note starts.