Practise high notes in short sprints, on fresh chops

If you want to improve your upper register, practise it fresh, for a few minutes at a time, and then go and do something else.

Where most people go wrong

A lot of players I know who are trying to play in the upper register give everything up in the practice session before they get to it. They spend 50 or 60 minutes warming up. They do their fundamentals and their long tones. They play some pieces. They do what they think they should do, and a lot of it is good.

Then they get to the end and try to play high notes. By then they are really tired. They get frustrated, annoyed and judgemental with themselves. It gets worse. They throw the trumpet down and get angry.

Don't do that. Be smart about it.

Fundamentals still matter

Do not quote me as saying fundamentals are not important. They absolutely are. They are what I built my entire trumpet playing on, and all of those things matter for general trumpet playing.

But if you actually want to improve your high notes, the best way to do it is fresh.

How I got my reps

I got good at playing high notes by playing video games. Every time I died, I picked my trumpet up and played high notes. Then I put it down and played more video games. Doing that over and over again gave me a lot of reps on fresh chops.

That is the whole idea. Play, go and do something else. Play, go and do something else.

What a sprint looks like

Ten or fifteen minutes is all you need. Not even that. Five minutes. Three minutes. Get the horn up and go.

You don't need to prepare. You just need to explore, and geek out a bit.

Rest is part of it. When I warm up, I try to rest as much as I play. Ten or fifteen minutes of playing, then a coffee, and when you come back everything feels great.

It also helps to notice what the rest of your routine does to your range work. If something you warm up with makes the high note work easier, it is a good thing to do. If it makes it harder, it is probably not the right thing to do while you are working on range. Feel that day to day.

Use the same rule for fixes

The same goes for any new idea you are trying on the trumpet. Don't treat any one of them as the holy grail. That is not how this works.

If you try something and learn something from it, go down that path for between 5 and 15 minutes a day, maximum. Then do not think about it any more. See what that small amount of work does over the course of two, three or four weeks.

The question is not "does it fix everything if I think about this one thing?" I guarantee it won't, because tomorrow it will be another thing. All of us have to be a bit disciplined about not getting obsessed with any one fix.

One thing to try this week

Once a day, before you have played anything else, pick the trumpet up and play high notes for three to five minutes. Then put it down and go and do something else. If you have time later, do it again.

Watch the full video

More trumpet advice

• Performance nerves: play to an audience of one
• Hear the note before you play it, and let the trumpet come to you
• Warm up for the day in front of you, not the same way every day