If you have spent any time working with a trumpet teacher or talking to a well-established player you will know that daily and consistent practice is extremely important. What may be even more important is an understanding of what we are trying to accomplish while we are practicing. I often tell my students that there are three levels of goal setting that will help to achieve the best results. These are short-term, long-term, and the in-between.
Let’s start with the long term, or the big picture. I often think of this as the “career goals” that we want to reach. In no way are we going to reach these in one practice session, or even in a week. One of these goals may include working in a Broadway pit orchestra, recording as a first-call studio player, winning a job in one of the top military bands or a symphony orchestra. It is highly unlikely that these positions will be held by eighteen year old players. Simply they are a product of years of hard work. One of the most productive ways we can reach these long term goals is to find someone who has the career, or has attained the same goal you wish to reach. Find out what they did, or how they developed throughout their career. Having a long term goal also gives us clues as to what we should work on for our in-between and short-term goal setting. For example, if your career goal is to win a job in a symphony orchestra your time will be spent studying excerpts and scores, listening to recordings of your musical role models and of course, studying with someone who has taken and won those auditions.
I need to interject here, the long-term goal may, (and probably will) shift as your career develops. You may find that you start getting calls for work that you hadn’t considered, or maybe life takes you to a new location where the work opportunities are different than originally planned. It is perfectly ok to shift your focus, but it is always good to know where we’re headed.
Ok, the mid-term goals are things we may accomplish in a year, or a few years. Maybe we plan to take a few regional auditions, study with an accomplished player or pedagogue. This could even include continuing to play the same jobs that you already have but your focus is on improving certain aspects of your playing. Again, these are things that will not change in one day, but are goals that can be reached in a shorter amount of time. Always remember the focus is pointing toward the long-term goal!
Short term for many students this is the most overlooked, myself included. It’s easy to be a dreamer, to constantly think of those longer term goals, but small goals will help to tackle the small victories that build to long-term success. An example could be a practice session focused on a particular phrase in a concerto that has been giving you trouble. Maybe you have never felt comfortable improvising over specific chord changes. This could even be as simple as spending ten or twenty minutes during your fundamentals practice working on multiple tonguing. If we assign small tasks we know we can accomplish in one sitting, and that will help us to grow as musicians, we are guaranteeing steady improvement. These may seem small, but once all of these victories are stacked up it will be easy to recognize how far your playing has come.
In short, think about where you want to your playing to end up and set your long term goal. This will help to establish the more manageable checkpoints we will strive to reach. It all comes back to the day-to-day, when we sit down and practice. It has been said that practicing is also significant in reinforcing your confidence. By knowing we can find something to accomplish every time we sit down to play we are building the habits needed to grow into a life-long career with the trumpet.
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