Practicing the Trumpet

Practice doesn’t make perfect, but perfect practice makes perfect. Making sure you practice correctly means you will maximize your efforts. This page will cover the core fundamentals for proper practice.

Metronome

If you don’t have too much music experience, practicing with a metronome is recommended because it keeps you on beat, building your internal metronome. In music, staying on beat, not speeding up or slowing down, is really important, yet really easy to mess up. If you don’t have an internal clock or metronome, practicing with the metronome will help build that.

Tuner

Additionally, practicing with a tuner is also recommended. Especially when new to music, your natural pitch may or may not be reliable. A tuner will make sure that you’re in tune and stay in tune.

Practice Length

It’s better to practice 10 minutes a day than 50 minutes in one day per week. Breaking up your practice sessions each day instead of skipping a day or two here and there is miles better. When you practice, even if it’s 5 minutes a day, it is far more beneficial than missing a bunch of days. If you’re new to it, try setting a timer for how long you want to practice. For beginners, aim for up to 30 minutes per practice session. Any longer, then break it into two practice sessions: one in the morning, one in the afternoon or evening.

Practice Structure

Let’s say you’re practicing for 30 minutes. How should you break that time up? The best way I have found is that you take the first 5 to 10 minutes to warm up, which I’ll have on another page, then practice your scales and arpeggios, then play what gets your fingers moving, switch to sight-reading or working on a specific piece, wrapping up your practice session by warming down.