Over the past few weeks, I will fully admit to not being as focused as I normally am. Maybe I’m burned out from work or maybe the warm weather has me distracted. Still, I’m forcing myself to put in time behind the horn even if it is just an hour a day. At the same time – I know this isn’t a race. I’m going to work hard and let it come to me but I don’t want to turn practice time into a punishment.

Fortunately – something occurred that put me right back where I needed to be mentally. I got a lesson with one of my favorite trumpet players – Ingrid Jensen. As many of you know – I hold her in a very high regard. She is a great player and an amazing improviser. I will buy any CD that she is playing on because she is always adventurous and exciting to listen to. Let me take this opportunity to say that she is a great teacher too.

At the suggestion of Pat Harbison on the Trumpet Herald – I sent her an email and asked if she had time to work with me. Once we got our schedules together, we met at Peabody Institute in Baltimore. I played Summertime for her and she accompanied me on piano. I was really, really nervous but once I settled down and focused on music – I did ok. The first thing she showed me was the lead pipe exercises. I immediately realized that I was not doing them properly. She got a completely different sound when doing it than I did. The sound had more energy and she helped me duplicate that. Once I placed the tuning slide back in and played – my sound COMPLETELY changed. It contained that same energy from the lead pipe exercise but it was amplified. It was pretty amazing. Afterwards – the remainder of my lesson focused on learning scales/chords and using my ear to hear changes and intervals. She showed me several ways to incorporate learning scales and chords with my regular routine. It was great. Needless to say – I left with a new energy and focus. I’m hoping I can maintain it. Ingrid also suggested a book by Scott D. Reeves called Creative Beginnings. I actually already had it in my library but now I plan on putting it to good use.

I’m anxious to start working on some of the things we discussed but I also got a call back to attend the jazz master classes again. A majority of my time over the next week will be spent preparing for that as there are some new tunes on the list. I know I can’t learn all the scales and chords well enough in a week. Still, I am very anxious to modify my routine to include more work with them. I may work on tunes less and focus more on getting familiar with sounds (major, minor, dom7) – playing what I hear in my head. Working with different sounds and intervals will open up my ear to new ideas. Ingrid referred to it as playing in the sandbox. I liked that analogy.