#202: Jordi Albert - What 1500 Trumpet Players Taught This PhD About Getting Unstuck

Dr. Jordi Albert has spent 27 years researching trumpet performance, trumpet pedagogy, and musician health. After working with over 1,500 trumpet players — from beginners to professionals — he has developed a research-backed methodology for solving the most common trumpet problems fast.
In this episode, Dr. Albert breaks down:

Why 98% of professional trumpet players experience learning difficulties
How inner hearing and audiation directly affect your trumpet technique
The neuromotor science behind embouchure problems and how to fix them
Why focal dystonia and overuse syndrome are more common than you think
How to practice trumpet more efficiently using sports science
The role of lip health and biomechanics in trumpet performance
Why working harder on trumpet isn't always the answer
How to get unstuck on trumpet without changing your entire approach

Whether you're struggling with trumpet high notes, trumpet endurance, trumpet articulation, double tonguing, triple tonguing, embouchure problems, or flexibility, this conversation will change the way you think about practicing and performing.
Dr. Albert is the founder of the Global Institute for Music Research (GIMUR) and director of Your Trumpet Studio. His doctoral thesis on learning difficulties in expert motor performance on the trumpet was published by the Polytechnic University of Valencia.
🎺 Learn more about Dr. Jordi Albert: jordialbert.com
🎺 Your Trumpet Studio: yourtrumpetstudio.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Hello and welcome to That's Not Spit. It's Condensation. I'm Ryan Beach, and today I am joined by Dr. Jordy Albert, who is somebody that I uh had heard about very briefly, uh, with an association with Caleb Hudson with a project that was started feels like a couple of years ago now, um, when I first heard about it, the International Trumpet Research Project or the Research Center. And um I heard Jordy's name then and uh am now kind of excited to have the chance to uh chat with him because I believe the things that he has researched uh have a lot of um carryover or a lot of they correlate with things that I'm very interested in understanding. And I think we all really need to understand more deeply as trumpet players so that we can maximize what we're doing. If you don't know Jordy, he is a trumpeter. Uh he has devoted the last 27 years of his life to researching and understanding uh just how to have high performance on the trumpet and to get those types of successful outcomes people are looking for, and to be uh somebody who, from what I've read, is quite good at uh diagnosing problems. Like you've just developed a lot of knowledge surrounding how to hear people, how to see them, and be able to quickly figure out. And so I hope to pick your brain on how you learned all this stuff. But before we get to that, uh I appreciate you giving me some of your time to let me chat with you today.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Thank you. Ryan to invite me here. I'm very happy to be here. This is uh a good opportunity to share some ideas and some discoverings from the last years. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Well, we were talking right before the we turned the microphone on, and so it just seems like this would be a good place to start. A little bit about your backstory, um, how you got interested in doing all of the research that you've ended up doing over the past couple of decades. So maybe we could just kind of start. I guess it's storming there where you are right now. So if we hear some It was a perfect time. So why don't we just start with um just some of your backstory? Help us understand where you've been and how you got to where you are now.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

I started when I was seven years old in Spain in those wind band schools that we we have there, still have there. That though those schools are great for for learning music because we have a wing band. Some towns have have has like three wind bands in in the town, for example, 3,000 people uh living in a town, and they have three windbands of 150 members. So this is this situation, this is a specific situation in Valencia where I born when I was born. Um gave me many opportunities and is giving to many people opportunities to learn music. So I started when I was seven years old with a trumpet, and when I was 16, maybe a little bit before, I started to develop learning difficulties to play the trumpet. I was in a concert uh in front of uh I don't know, probably 2,000 people or 1,000 uh and I was playing a polka, I will never forget the name, and um the polka was ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. And everything was going right, but in the in the bridge in the middle of the two different themes of of the polka, I had to play and I got locked, like this. And I had never problems. I never had problems with playing the trumpet before. So everything was easy to me to learn and to learn the music, to play the trumpet, and this this day was very strange because I couldn't understand what was happening. At the end of the concert, I I uh ended the concert. I tried to finish playing. I I don't know how I finished the concert, but I did it. And the the last notes were a little bit better, but the sensation after the concert was very bad. My professor at this moment told me, don't worry, it's going to be resolved in the next 15 days. Take a rest. Have you ever heard about this 15 days rest that um they they yeah, it's very common to say it when people get overused syndrome or something like this, to say, okay, you have to rest seven days or 15 days or whatever, and it's going to be you are going to be safe. And sometimes it could be uh true that in my case was not. I started to have a very deep problem with the with the articulation. It started with the uh triple uh staccato tonguing, and then it was transferred to the double tonguing, and then to the single. So to me was the I think took eight years to resolve this problem. Wow, this was my first research because I was studying with great names in the world uh because I was a talented, not the best one, of course. I I was just uh one more of those uh trumpet trumpeters in the small town that can play easy. Yeah, I was not I was not the best trumpet player or young trumpet player, but I was talented and I was studying with great names from professors from France and Spain, and I went with them and asked what what do you think is happening to me? And because my legato still being um good or very good, they just told me, okay, please play it legato and slurred and then play it with articulation. And it looked like improving a little bit, but easily I lost, I lose it again, everything. So I started to research what was happening in my tongue and what learning the trumpet could mean. Uh and it it it was 1995, 1996. We had no the information that we have now, we had no internet, or we have we had not YouTube, we had we had internet but a small uh amount of information at this time. So it was my empirical uh research uh based based on the ideas that many professors gave to me at this moment, and I got very interested in understanding what's happening to me, but on understanding what was happening in my body as a human body. And I started to to study education uh in the univer at the university, and because the pro this problem I couldn't access to the conservatory. So I was studying in a kind of middle conservatory, middle school, and I went to the university, I was not too interested in studying education, general education, primary schools, secondary schools, yeah, this kind of pedagogy science, not specific in music, is it was more open to different disciplines or different situations of educational situations. And I was not too much in I was not too interested in this, but it was my option before to resolve my problems. And in my career in the university, I started to understand how the brain works when we learn something. Many theories about psychological uh development, uh many theories about learning, and I said, Oh wow, that could apply to my case. That could apply to teaching people because I started to see how the conservatory educational system was so different to the primary school system, something that in the 90s or at the beginning of the 21st century could be acceptable in the conservatory, like saying you have no talent for the trumpet was not possible in the primary school. You cannot say uh you have no talent to play the trumpet, to uh learn maths to a nine years old kid, but it was possible to say it to the same nine years old kid, you have no talent to play the trumpet. It started to make no sense for me because I was a talented guy and I lost my talent one day in front of 1,000 people. Yeah, it it had no sense to me at this moment. So I was and I had a very good professors in the university. I I I was uh uh I was very lucky with with this. And they were not speaking about trumpet, but I was translating to the trumpet pedagogy, to the trumpet learning every single thing that I was hitting inside of those rooms. So it was interesting, and it was the the the way that I started to to research on trumpet. After this, the the problem got 50% or 60% solved, and I could play everything slurred, and when I had to play triple tonguing, I could do it not for too long phrases, but I could do it, and I had a good sound, so I I could finish my career in in trumpet, and then I studied a master in in Spain and Cuba. I studied trumpet in Cuba and because I was interested in playing Latin and jazz music. I studied classical music, but I was very interested. I arrived to Mexico where I'm living now. I had many opportunities to teach, and I started to see many people with difficulties. And some of those difficulties were the same difficulties that I had in the past. So I I was very lucky with my professors when I was in the university, but I was very lucky because I I attended many different cases of trumpet players. The way that I diagnose, I prefer to use the word evaluate because diagnose is more in the medical sphere. Yeah, in in the I prefer to use evaluate because it's is the pedagogic, pedagogical word to to word to make sense. And um the way that I evaluate is it's very simple, it's just comparing cases. I I had I have attended probably more than 1500 cases, and that's a lot. So because this because this is it's very easy because some people when arrive with me say, This is I have never seen this, but I probably have seen 10 cases of the same problem, or sometimes 100 cases. Uh I have documented in my research 450 cases, documented. When I say that I have attended 1500, it sounds like an exaggeration because some people I have seen once or twice. But I have worked more than one week or more than one month, more than four lessons with 450 people. That's a lot. And because I started to have to have this kind of specialization, this kind of research, the cases that I have attended were at the beginning just learning difficulties. So I I have seen many learning difficulties cases. And when I went to teach some workshop or master class, people who arrived to the master class usually had learning difficulties. And what I my my first discoverings were basically two. The first one is all the trumpet players had 98% of the trumpet players, professional trumpet players that I had interviewed in my for my PhD dissertation. I interviewed 108 trumpet players, professional trumpet players, orchestras, jazz players. 98% recognizes recognize to have some learning difficulty during uh their careers. That's a lot. This was the first discovering that I saw, not for my PhD, before my PhD, I saw the same. And the second discovering is if 98% of the professional players had learning difficulties, we can say that having learning difficulties is the way to become a professional player. That's nice. So, because when we face a learning difficulty, we can say, okay, I'm dealing with something that is part of being a professional trumpet player. Some of them were not very big or very huge difficulties. But for everybody's okay, when I was 15, uh I started to develop problems to play high notes or to play staccato or to play uh slurte or or to play in the middle register. Every single trumpet player can relate some difficulties during his or her learning process. That's crazy. And because that we cannot say that learning difficulties is a problem for a trumpet player. It's something that we we need to understand and we need to attend. And I thought at this at this time, how many trumpet players abandoned their careers because they thought that one learning difficulty was the end of the career. Instead of thinking that this learning difficulty could be the beginning of the professional career. So this I don't want to speak too much, but this was the beginning of the process.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

It's amazing. And I mean, just let's just dive right in because I feel like I'm with you, and it makes a lot of sense because I'm one of those professionals who had problems or learning difficulties as you're calling them. And could we say that a definition of learning difficulties might just be like setbacks, something that was a problem that we had to solve? We could think of it that way, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Yeah, so I use I use the word learning difficulties because it's the the word that have been the tag for for um name this kind of situations in the schools.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

I'm only asking just because to make sure we're all on the same page about what you mean by that. That's all.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Uh we are on the same page, but the meaning of the reason because I don't use the the word the word problems is because I used to compare the situation of tagging um any case in the primary school or in the university. If I want to tag a case as a problem case, it changes the way that I front, I face this situation instead of learning difficulties or uh learning or methodology difficulties sometimes. Because we we have some sometimes we think that we have a problem for playing the trumpet. But the problem is the approach, the the strategy, the strategy that we are using just to learn. If if we have a learning style, for example, uh for some people it's very easy to use a chronometer to practice. Yeah? And they say, okay, I'm going to practice five minutes, and then we I'm going to press two minutes, and then that it is easy for somebody, but can be very difficult for another people. To me, it's very difficult to practice like this. So if I'm using the bad strategies that doesn't fit with my learning style, it's going to be very difficult to learn, but is this is not a learning difficulty. This is a methodology difficulty. I see. Yeah, like so I would. I prefer I prefer to to go out from the the word problem because I don't focus on this situation that is problematic. Do you do we have this word in English? Problematic.

SPEAKER_07 20:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

So I I prefer don't to see the problematic situation. I prefer to see the context of the situation. And this is uh uh I took this word from pedagogy, learning difficulties.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

Yeah, and I'm it's actually I I appreciate you going into it because I you are already we're getting a sense that you're talking about these things, A, very specifically, and B in a little bit different way than maybe most people might talk about it. So I think making sure, yeah, you like just knowing where you're coming from, I think is really important. Um, but I feel like a lot of people will be like, and that frame is so important. The frame and the way we think about it is if I think as a problem, there's something wrong with me. If it's a learning difficulty, it is something that I can over that frame makes all the difference. So let's say somebody is on board, they're like, all right, I believe you. It's just a it's a it's the beginning of my professional career. Obviously, the next step is like, well, what do I do? Like, what's how do I solve this? So do you have um let's say strategies that you would say, okay, let's start here. Let's try these things and see if they can. Obviously, everybody is different, it's all unique, but I kind of just want to see where you would go with the idea of how someone will begin the process of of figuring things out.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

Okay, it depends on the difficulty that you are facing, obviously. But I can say some tricks that it will sound really, really weird at the beginning, but it will make sense at the end. Okay, the third the first uh step is accept the situation and Trust your professor. It's very common in the trumpet world to move to one professor to the other, and when you go to with the other professor, with a different professor, to say, okay, everything that you probably they are not going to say it, but you can feel that everything that you learned was wrong. You learned in a wrong way. That's not true. The first thing this need to accept and understand that everybody that tried to help you gave his or her best to you. Probably you are learning something new now with this different professor. But the opportunity of being here was given by all the situations that you had in the past. The good situations and the bad situations. It sounds weird, but it is the first step to really just attend the situation, the learning difficulty. Because if not, around this learning difficulty, we have a lot of thoughts, thoughts, a lot of emotions, a lot of, you know. Second thing. Oh, probably this is this was the first. I'm sorry, I forgot. Your human value doesn't depend on the trumpet. Is that good English? Oh yeah. Sentence, yes? Okay. Oh yeah. Your human value doesn't depend, doesn't depend on your play. Doesn't depend, in fact, your human value, your human description, when you are facing difficulties, you are more human now than before. Before you had another different, another kind of difficulties, probably not in the trumpet. But now the trumpet is showing you that you are human. It doesn't take takes off value. It's showing that you are human. It's soundwork, I understand. But this is the first steps. Those are the first steps. You are human, you are facing a human difficulty. You are not strange, you are not an alien. You were not an alien before, you are not an alien before, or you are not uh uh that or you are not talented now, you were not talented before. Yeah, so start to think that you are just dealing with one specific situation in the trumpet. Yeah, I understand you love the trumpet. I understand you for you is the most important thing. Okay, start to this situation arrive to your life to make you understand if the trumpet is the most important thing in your life, because you have a lot of things in your life. So is the trumpet the most important thing, really? We need to understand this because passion in music is very important. That you before a human, you before before the trumpet, you are a person. I'm sorry, it to me it's very difficult to speak about these kind of things in English, but I hope the message arrives to the community.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

I'll share with you, I'll sort of repeat back to you what I'm hearing to see if I'm catching it. Uh, number one, the first thing is that the way I the way I'm hearing it is that our value as people doesn't the trumpet has nothing to do with their value as people. And not only that, sometimes people, when they encounter difficulties, they feel less than. They feel that because they can't produce on the trumpet, somehow there's something wrong with them, and they have less value because sometimes we get we get it mixed up. We think our value as people is how good we are at what we do, maybe. But you're saying not only is it not true that your value doesn't go down, actually, your value goes up. In terms of being now you're having a real human moment that you are dealing with this difficulty. And I would you you didn't say this, but you would probably agree that the growth that you get from this will make you a more complete person, it'll make you more resilient, it'll make you more creative. So you actually uh in some ways, this will do something, this overcoming this difficulty will do things that you wouldn't have without the difficulty.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

And not just in the trumpet. As a person. As a person, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

And number two, that you need to accept that this difficulty is there and that we can have our thing, our thoughts, and our emotions about it, but thinking about it through that and assigning judgment to it only clouds the ability to actually deal with the problem. And then you also talked about trusting your professor as well. Yeah.

unknown 27:13

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

So is that feel like an accurate? Yes, please.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Thank you. You you you can keep doing this. The and another thing that I saw during this uh process of attending learning difficulties is how the people make the the past guilty of the difficulty. It it's happening because my professor didn't teach me this, or this is happening because in the past I played a lot, or this is happening because somebody asked me to play three gigs in a row. You know, yeah, okay, probably we will find something that you need to learn that you were not doing well, but keep thinking about it is is not going to help anymore. Yeah, so it's just accepting and thinking that everybody that was in your life in your trumpet life, I'm 99% sure that gave you their best capacity of teaching, of helping. Yeah, uh I have I have met with many professors, and I I can say that everybody is trying to do their best when they teach. I included me. I missed many, many different things in my career when I was teaching. If I compare my teaching now with my teaching 20 years ago, I could say, oh, why I uh why I was not teaching this to my students because I didn't know this. Yeah, right. I'm not be guilty if I was not conscient about this. Of course, I I I can I have to give my best now with my knowledge now. So this is it sounds strange at the beginning, but this is the first step to attend a situation, a situation. And when I'm professor, I I I need to be in the same starting uh point. Yeah okay, I'm attending this student, so I cannot be guilty, I cannot be I cannot feel bad because I cannot help him or her, because that's not going to make me better. My value as a person, as per my human value doesn't depend on the on if uh if I can help more people or not. It was difficult to me to understand because I was attending at the same time 60 cases of learning difficulties. Obviously, some of them were not uh a full success, you know, some of them failed. We many people in in social media is saying that have the solution and it's not going to they are not going to miss any case. That's not true. That's not true, it's it's not possible. We need to be more uh human because we are going to as when we are professors, we are going to miss to how how to say it, we are not going to we're gonna make mistakes, yeah, yeah, all the time. Yeah, it makes me human and I need to accept myself. And the the the success of my student is not my the success of the people that is preparing or is attending the difficulties with me because are not my students, the the success of them is are not my success. Yeah, that that's very important too. When when we when for people who is attending students, and I'm sorry, you wanted to say something. No, I just had a question.

SPEAKER_02 31:13

I mean, I I resonate a lot with what you're saying right now. Um, and I think a big reason why is because I hold myself to a high standard as well as a as a teacher, you know. And it's just interesting. I'm not saying what I am not saying is that the success is mine, but I also believe that I am involved in the success, right? And so it part of my desire to help people create that sex, success is then what motivates me to keep digging and to keep learning and to and to make it so that 20 years from now I know things that I didn't know at this current moment. So, how do you balance like what's the balance like for you? How do you balance? I'm gonna push myself to give the best information possible, but I also know that I'm not gonna be perfect.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

You you just say that's all. I'm going to give my best, but I will accept if I I do some mistakes. Giving my best doesn't mean to be perfect. Yeah? Yeah, because this concept of being perfect, I I devoted my life to understand learning difficulties. I I got braces during two years and a half, and I didn't need braces because I wanted to understand what was happening, and I learned a lot from that from this uh experiment because it's it was the craziest experiment that I did. Yeah. And but it doesn't mean that I will be that that I will resolve any braces case because this. And when I start to attend somebody, I some sometimes I verbalize these ideas. I say, okay, I'm going to give my best, but it's not uh guaranteed, how you say guaranteed, yeah. Guaranteed that it's going to work. Because some years ago, I tried to motivate my students and say, okay, don't worry, uh we are going to resolve it. And I need it to to to me was too much pressure at this moment. I need it at when I had when it happened, I had to stop during one year because I I I got with anxiety after this. Yeah. Because it's not possible. We are human. We need to. I I'm going to try. You you are you are going to after my my explanation, please, you need to improve it. Okay, I'm going to try to explain one thing that happened to me in my life and changed the way that I understand this kind of therapy or specialized attention to learning difficulties. Before to the races um experiment, I went with a doctor, with a dentist, how you say um orthodonists. orthodontics. But we have different specialities. Specialities in Spain, uh, and we say orthodontics, they they have uh the dentist people who attend the ant surgery, uh maxillo facial surgery. Is that correct in English?

SPEAKER_02 35:02

Yeah, the I know what you're talking about for the last one, but I don't I don't know what the if there that would almost be like hospital stuff, right? Okay, so I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

He was specialized on this this kind of surgery, but he was cleaning my teeth, yeah, because he has his own uh clinics and and they attend many different cases, yeah. And one one dentist before him committed a mistake, and I was very close to losing one of my teeth. And I was complaining with him about the other dentist, yeah. And yeah, because I cannot I cannot understand how it happened because it looked very simple and it he made a mistake, and I was trying to complain with him. Yeah, yeah, he's one of the best surgery uh surgerians, surgery surgeon, yeah. Surgery on on this kind of very difficult situation. And he he told me, okay, Jorge, I'm not going to say anything bad about any of my colleagues. Because everybody who works with his hands can commit mistakes. It changed my pet my trumpet pedagogy because I I thought how many times we criticize the professors that this student had before? It's not needy to say your professors were bad.

SPEAKER_07 36:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

It's just when we we when we say I cannot understand how your professor doesn't uh didn't teach this before, for example. Or you should know this. Have you ever heard of this kind of uh sentences? You should know this, you should uh play this concert, you should yeah, this kind of things that we say to the students sometimes is not directly criticizing our colleagues, but indirectly we criticize, and it it's going to add more emotional problems to the learning difficulty.

SPEAKER_02 37:30

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Yeah, yeah, I see. So we need we need to do the opposite. This dentist, when he was attending me at this time, this thief didn't want it to criticize his colleague. They never meet. One was very recognized, the other one was one more in Valencia that was cleaning teeth tooth. I was not losing all my teeth, I was losing one tooth. I'm sorry, I I missed.

SPEAKER_07 38:03

I got you.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Okay, so to me, it was was a big change at this moment. So simple. I'm sorry, I I talk too much about this, but very simple. Don't add more emotional situations to the learning difficulties because having a learning difficulty is an emotional situation, is difficult enough to add more difficulties to this. Yeah, and if I'm coming back to the to the conversation, if I, as a professor, I'm adding more press to me because I have to deal, I have to resolve your problem, it's not going to help me to resolve the problem. Yeah, I don't want to add more emotional problems as a professor to your own problems. You know for example, one another thing that to understand this when we attend learning difficulties at some point, or for some people, they think that if they don't resolve the learning difficulty, the problem, it's they are going to show they this situation could be understood understood as a professor fail. Right.

SPEAKER_02 39:32

Can you can you improve it, please? In English? Uh yeah, if I'm if I'm understanding you correctly, you're basically just saying like it could be seen like someone comes to me and I start working with them and I share the information with them that they did not know, or they have a problem that they worked on with a professor and it didn't get resolved with that professor, that the professor failed that student in in whatever way that they needed them to succeed.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

Okay, but when he this student is coming with you, sometimes can feel a lot of pressure because the he wants or she wants to not make you feel like you are failing as a professor. Yeah, so this is the reason because I don't I don't say your success is just your success. Because I don't I don't want to add more pressure to them because sometimes they want to demonstrate that your methodology is working.

SPEAKER_02 40:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

It's too too too too much difficult situation to explain with my bad English.

SPEAKER_02 40:48

No, no, no, no. I think I understand. But you're saying that a lot of students want to they want to be like good stewards and ambassadors of the teachers that came before. And so if they feel like they're getting this image or whatever that their professor failed, not only do they have to deal with the learning difficulty itself, which as you describe as an emotional event for them, but also they would then be carrying around the like they'll view it as their problem that they've that the professor failed. Like they couldn't figure it out. Not that the so that they're carrying around that I'm not making this professor look good, or I'm not, I'm not doing, you know, I'm not making this professor proud of me or something along those lines.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

And it's it's going to happen the same with you when you are attending them. They want to uh fit all your uh demands because all the all all the all the they want to do, they want to make the methodology work to demonstrate that your methodology, the the new professor methodology, is working for them. Do you understand? So they are covering many, many emotional situations. Some of them it's not for everybody, but for many people is this. Okay, so how to solve it? I always to me there are two specific steps to solve any learning difficulties before to change embouchure, to change the way that they are blowing out, to change the everything. The first thing is can you hear it in your in your uh imaginary sound? If you cannot hear it, the problem is not your biomechanics, the problem is the connection between the inner heating projection and your biomechanics. This is my first question. For example, many people cannot play high notes. My first question is can you hear it in your brain? Because if you cannot, your brain cannot produce the signals to move the muscles and the skin. This is the second uh the second thing is the skin. I'm going to speak about this. That the first thing about biomechanics or neuromotor skills. Yeah, yeah. So biomechanics is not going to work if your inner hearing is not working. For example, I'm I have my trumpet here. I'm not sure if the sound is going to be nice, but I'm going to try it. Okay. Can you hear it?

unknown 43:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:26

Sounds good. Perfect. Okay. So just repeat in your brain. Now pianissimo. Now one tone up. Can you hear it? This is the inner hitting projection. It's the same that you were hitting. Now hit it with the um Chet Baker sounds. The sound, air the sound. Yeah, yeah. Can you hear this with air? Now with more Louis Armstrong sound. This kind of sound. Can you repeat it? This creation, this imaginary sound, you can create it in your in your brain. And it's the way that I'm using now to change the sound. Instead of thinking my biomechanics, I'm just putting a different sound in my brain and my biomechanics because our train reacts to my inner kidding. Yeah. But the first step is always the inner kidney. Some learning difficulties are easily solved when you just can hear this thing that is not happening in your bell, you can hear it just in your brain.

SPEAKER_07 45:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

Okay? So let's continue. Repeat. It's easy. So let's go one octave down in my head. It's is that easy? Yeah. It's the same. Okay. Same. Repeat. And one octave up. Can you hear it? I'm not just speaking to you, I'm speaking to the audience too. Okay, can you hear it now? One octave up. Which no which one is more clear, more is easy to hear it. One octave down or one octave up. For many people to hear the low C is much to hear imaginary hearing the lower C is much easier than hearing the higher C. So the problem we cannot say that the problem is the biomechanics when the first step that is hitting the sound is blocked. So what I do with any student now is to work about their inner heating during the attention of the biomechanics. Okay? Because I do both at the same time. And now I'm training many professional players. And because it was very hard to me to attend to many cases of learning difficulties. And it affected my playing at the end. And I moved to attend uh high performance players, is what I'm doing now, more than attending learning difficulties. And I use the same strategy for them. The first thing, I never change an embouchure before to do uh five steps. If we have time, I can I can I can speak more about it.

SPEAKER_02 47:25

He's got all the time in the world.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

Okay. I have a theory about this. I want to try to explain the theory. Playing the trumpet and playing any music, musical instrument responds to this diagram, this idea. Okay, first step, and it happened also in sports. First step is the imaginary action. In our case, is the sound. Second step is the biomechanics, and third step is the result. If the result fits with the imaginary movement, not movement, the imaginary result, the biomechanics will be automatized if you repeat enough. But what happened when you can reach a high note that you didn't want it to do it, it was just something that happened. Yeah, yeah, luckily. Can you repeat it? Usually you cannot repeat it. And the reason is because your brain has an ability to self-regulate your learning, but you need to want to do it, and do it to fit the process. So this biomechanics will be automatized when the thing that you wanted to do happened in your belt. But usually we are more concentrated on the result instead of being concentrated on the imaginary result.

SPEAKER_02 49:16

It's very funny.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

Okay, and this is the way that our brain processes the information. It's not my opinion, it's not my um idea. It's full demonstrated in sports. In sports, we have in basketball, okay? Do you like basketball? Okay, but have you ever seen a basketball? Of course. Okay, so this is the way that the simplified way to explain the learning process of shot shooting basket, okay? When the the player imagine the movement of the ball and the ball going into the basket, okay? This is the thing. Then they do the movement, his hands, his uh arms, and everything, all the body, and the result and it happened, and he gets the the the shot in. Okay, then his brain will repeat the action in the next try.

SPEAKER_07 50:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:36

But if you don't have if you miss the back the the shot, your body will try to add some changes to the way that to your biomechanics. But if you are not looking to the basket, even if you get the shot in, your body will not create any automatism. Do you understand? Of course. Because cannot recognize recognize that the biomechanics were good because the um conscient to being conscient about the process, this is another thing that is very interesting. Sometimes about the or under our understanding about being conscient is to feel our body. But being conscient about the the learning is not about feeling the sensations of our body. That could be good for some situations because to feeling our body too much sometimes is bad. That's another thing that I learned from the science and from my experience. We cannot be paying too much attention to the sensations. Being conscient about the process of about our learning process means to being clear about what you want to reach before to reach it. Yeah. This is this is the the definition of being conscious. Okay, this is the first step. Hearing clearly before to attend the biomechanics. Yeah? Can I ask a question about that?

SPEAKER_02 52:20

Huh? Can I ask a question about that? Of course. Um, I think there's I would love your take on this. I think what you just said is to be able to you want to be able to understand what it is you're trying to do before you do it. Right? Can you talk about how much specificity you do or don't need with that goal? Like, does it need to be, is it the more specific it is, is it better? Or is it is it like actually the simpler the better? Like, how do we know what a good thing? Here's a here's a specific example. Like when you say, can you hear it? Like if you play a note, can you hear it an octave higher? And then can you hear it with the Chet Baker sound or a uh Lewis Armstrong sound? Like hearing it an octave higher and hearing an octave higher as Lewis Armstrong, that's more specific, right? That it's Louis Armstrong, and then what kind of articulation you might want, it gets more specific. And in my mind, the more specific the better. But you are the expert here, so I'm kind of curious like what your take is.

SPEAKER_00 53:24

The more specific, the better. Okay. Kids the kids that you can see developing very, very fast always can hear a very nice sound in their imaginary sound. So the the the way that it works when you play, when what you teach, this is another thing to for professors. I'm sorry. Because I want to say too much, too many things, and my English is not enough to say this is amazing. You don't have to implement it. Okay, everything that you can say playing, don't say it with words. Because the imaginary sound will be much better if you play for your students. Instead of speaking about you need to do a softer articulation. Yeah, your student is doing, and you usually we say, okay, now do the same but softer. Yeah, it's very simple, and we use a lot of words to explain. And for us, it's very common, it's very normal to do it. But it's much preferable just to play it. Yeah, is his or she is playing, and you you can repeat and say and play. And say, please can you imitate? Because when you play, your result converts in the imaginary sound. It's the way that the learning process in when we imitate somebody. So in my pedagogy, it's always we have always music reference references. If we you are facing difficulties to play, we don't know. For many people, it's difficult to play the legatos. I will work with you with a recording of somebody who uh you like the music he plays or she plays. So you will put your headphones and you will play with play along with him or with her. So I I I don't trust in the imaginary sound of the students at the beginning.

SPEAKER_07 55:52

Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_00 55:53

I prefer to be clear and I use very simple exercises. So my answer is very specific, and you are going to see how much I play, uh I don't know, five seconds, and then I say I ask them now repeat in your brain with this sound, with this articulation, and not just the trumpet line, you need to hear all the all the music. You know, can you imagine how specific? And you need to hear this orchestra, not your orchestra in your brain. This one, repeat in your brain. So just this, and I hear the whole orchestra and the trumpet inside this, you know, and then okay, then uh another strategy is this very simple. They are hearing and I mute, and I need I ask your brain to complete these two seconds that are muted. Yeah, and then I unmute, and you still you uh hear again the mute, the real music, and I mute again. This is very simple, and I do this all the time during the process. So as you can see, I I'm not just attending biomechanics. Many in my case, in my uh research, I missed many years this inner heating importance, and I cannot now be guilty of this because I didn't know. But now that I'm very clear about this situation, my first step, or at least my first exercises during a biomechanic attention, uh that the attention of biomechanics is always inner heating projection. Okay, as much specific as possible. Second thing: I don't attend learning difficulties if the skin of the lips has problems. I have seen how easy it can be attending uh flexibility difficulties, or first do you know this hesitation problem?

SPEAKER_02 58:32

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so sometimes just to define that. Sorry, just to define it, I assume you were going to talk about when people are like about to start and then they kind of like wait for it, and it's kind of like uh instead of this easy in and easy out, there's kind of a wait or a hesitation.

SPEAKER_00 58:51

Okay, so this is not a trick and it's not going to be to be the solution, but before to attend the biomechanics, the before to attend the movement of the biomechanics, I attend the health of our biomechanics. Yeah, so if our skin is dry, because we live in a windy uh weather, and usually in a very cold weather, or lips get dry. Have you ever felt this? Oh, yeah. We if we have uh dried right lips, yeah, or like chapped lips or whatever, where it's kind of yeah, it's very difficult to play the trumpet. So we shouldn't attend any difficulties, any learning difficulty or any problem playing the trumpet if our biomechanics are not healthy. If we, for example, if we have an overuse syndrome, it's not the time to attend your difficulty. You need to rest. So, first thing is being clear that inner heating is the most important thing in a learning pro in a music learning process. And second thing is if we want to improve or we want to resolve any problem, we need to be healthy. And we have basically two different, three different layers of being healthy about our biomechanics. The skin is usually not attended. But we used to think about skeletal problems or eskeletical health and muscle health. But about these three levers, the most important thing is the skin. Don't forget the skin. That's very important. Yeah. So if you feel any problem here in this articulation, yeah, you need to visit a doctor, not a trumpet professor, because your body is giving you some signals of something that is happening here. If you feel that you cannot hold the embosure at the beginning of the practice, you need to ask a specialist. Because for many people, if you go to the to the, I don't know how to say it, if you go to a restaurant and you want to learn Spanish, you need to go to a Spanish restaurant. And probably they they can speak Spanish, but they are not going to teach Spanish. So if you come with me and you say, I have some problems here, I will say, okay, you you need to visit a doctor because I'm not the person who is going to help you. Sometimes we miss our functions. Is that correct in English? Yeah. We think that because we are trumpet professors, we should attend everything. It's not true.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:12

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:12

Yeah. So the the esquelette lawyer of this healthy biomechanics is attended by doctors, usually. Well, everything is attended by doctors, but it's only attended by doctors. Muscle situation, muscle setting situations, we need to be sure that all biomechanics are stable enough to attend the learning difficulty, attend the problem. Sometimes we want to attend somebody who had overuse syndrome making him training the trumpet. That that makes no sense. Right, right. So we need to rest and then see the symptoms. But what are the symptoms or of overuse? Sometimes we don't know the symptoms. But we have an specific symptoms of overuse that we can't recognize. And if we don't know what are the symptoms, we are not knowing how when to stop teaching or when to stop practicing. Okay, and the last lawyer is the skin, and that's the easier, but is the forgotten lawyer of the biomechanics. Right, right. It's not just put a little bit of how you say uh chapstick. We need to find the chapstick that doesn't inflammate our skin. I I always uh speak about one case that I attended. Uh I was attending one guy in in Spain that was three months or four months trying to play because the sound had this sound of you know of air and voluntary, not Jet Baker sound, because he was imitating. He wanted to play classical music and he he played with this sound, yeah. Fussy, how you say this sound?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:30

Buzzier, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

And we tried to to do buzzing. Uh the but the way that I buzz is this if you want to try it instead of I don't like this kind of buzzing because I have no resistance of the trumpet. I prefer to do it here. I use the singing through the trumpet. I I'm going to share with you a little bit of this strategy.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:59

I used many different strategies that worked for different students in the past, and anything was looking like working. One day I asked him, Are you taking any medicine? And he, because he he had a lot of um how you say this acne.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:23

And he appeared to my lesson to my studio three months after the first lesson and without acne. And this day I asked him, Are you taking medicine for the acne? Yes, the last three months. You know what happened with this medicine? Dry the lips. So the problem started when he started to take medicine for acne. And one of the uh secondary effects do you Have this word in English? When you take medicine side effects, one one of the side effects was drying the skin, obviously the skin. And he never had a problem. Trumpet problem. He had a skin situation, a skin context that made him play uh bad. The problem was not the methodology, the problem was not him, the problem was not his preparation, the problem was the medicine that he was taking. This is a good example of how the healthy of my skin can be affected. And obviously, the result will be affected.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:47

It's an interesting way of thinking about it. And I I value this too. Um I've it's so funny you're talking about this. Before we got on, I was trying to film a YouTube video where I was talking about if you're having a bad day on the trumpet. That are I the way I talk about it is there are three different things that you could questions you could ask before you decide if there's actually a problem on the trumpet. But my filters were one, am I fatigued? Right. You would say it is like as the muscular, like, do I just need to rest? Is there not actually a problem? And if I just rest and try it again, it would be okay. The second filter for me would be it's good to hear your filters because it could add more. But second filter is, is it too fast? Like if I went slower, could I be successful and I just can't coordinate at the faster tempo yet? And then number three, is this a new thing I've been working with? And I just need a little more time for my body to learn it or to get used to it. But on either side of it, I I'm sure I would be curious for your take if if you feel uh differently or you have more to add. But I find them to be very helpful because you can separate what's a problem that I need to deal with and what's not a problem I need to deal with. What's a or what's a problem I need to deal with that's not trumpet-related? Like you said, it do I need to go to a doctor? Do I need to stop taking my medication? Do I need to rest? Do I need to get the picture in my head clearer? Like those are things that you can do that wouldn't just require hours of playing the trumpet and it can save people and help them be more efficient. I don't know if you see it similarly, but uh it sounds kind of like that that filter, I think, is a very valuable thing to have when navigating practice that doesn't feel good.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:37

Yeah, and and because the 98% of the professional trumpet players had learning difficulties. Yeah, it means that it's going to happen to you. A lot of, and it's not happening, it's not going to happen once in your life, it's going to happen many different times. So every single day is a new decision of how to organize your practice. And in sports, it's very common to have a coach. Right. Even if you are a great, probably when you are the more the the better player you are, the more you need a coach, a better coach. So not because you if you became a the greatest soccer player, you are not going to say, okay, I don't need physiotherapist, I don't need uh um muscle coach, I don't need no. At this point, you need more than ever coaches and the most specialized coaches. So in Trumpet is different. When I when I'm going, I'm I get better and better and better, I forget that I still need people help all the time. So the the the thing that I'm seeing here now, when I'm teaching or I'm helping, or I don't I don't know what word I have to use. Professional players that can play much better than me, I am I'm attending now big names of the trumpet and other brass instruments. It's okay. The thing is how to organize the practice. Sometimes, or probably I could say ever, the the the most important thing to start is to meditate for four minutes, five minutes. The way that I start with professional players. Simple, very simple, not anything religious, anything you know, uh some simple meditations to face the different situations that they are going to happen. Accept, understand. And with this small change, all the practice changes. So the thing is we need to understand how to help people to play better from two different sides from the learning difficult from the hardest learning difficulties or problems, and from the professional players that are playing every single day. Because sometimes it happened to me, I focused too much on the learning difficulties, and I forget, I forgot that these people wanted to play every single day in orchestras and gigs, you know? So resolved. Okay, I've resolved f F major, and the the sound of of the articulation is nice, yeah, but I have to apply this to play real music. This is the idea. So is is that appliable to the stage? I'm I'm going to play it, I'm going to use these new abilities in the stage today. No, because I have no gigs, because I was too focused on resolving my problems. So this is another thing that I'm doing now. If the people, if the person can play, because I attended and I'm attending now uh focal dystonia cases. Do you know focal dystonia?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:37

Yeah, yeah. I would love for you to talk more about it, but I do know what it is.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:40

Yeah, it is this is the hardest situation of a learning difficulty, in my opinion. Okay, uh, and if if they cannot play, I I don't force the situation. But if you can play, for example, for many people, uh I'm attending Focal Distonia, not a lot of cases, because for me it's very hard to do it now. I I did it in the past and it's very difficult. It takes a lot of energy and a lot of emotions arrived arrives to me when I do this, and I need to be healthy to help others. You know, when you are in the plane and and they they say, put your own, how how is that?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:25

Put your own oxygen max mask on before helping others, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:29

This is very important when you are a professor. You need to be healthy to help others. And I'm attending some cases that some of them cannot play. Okay, if you cannot play, I don't I will not force you. But if you can play something very simple, I will never put all the attention on the difficulties. In my lesson, you will play and you will enjoy your playing. Because when we face learning difficulties, we waste a lot of time on the difficulties, and we are not using our time to enjoy the trumpet playing. Make it sense for you? Oh yeah. So, okay, you cannot uh play triple tonguing, but you can play a slur. Okay, let's play legato music. Okay, you you're not you cannot play and if you you start to it happened to me. Okay, don't worry. We are going to work about this 30% of the of the time. The other 30% is going to use to create your imaginary sound, and the other 30 40% of the time is going to play music that you can play. You cannot focus too much. Okay, you cannot play this, but you can play it. Because it's legato and you can enjoy it. And don't play it thinking that if it was articulated, you couldn't do it. Yeah. Play it and enjoy it because it is music that you can play. Okay, you cannot play the trumpet, but you can play the piano. Okay, part of the attention that I'm going to give to your trumpet playing will be asking you to play the piano during my lesson. The thing that I saw in the hardest learning difficulties cases is that they lost the connection with the music.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:46

So keep the connection with the music alive. This is the most important advice that I can give to anyone that is facing learning difficulties or problems with the with the trumpet. Okay, you cannot play the trumpet, it's okay. Learn to play the saxophone. And for some of them, they feel very bad when I when I ask this kind of things. Because it looks that I'm saying that they are not going to resolve the trumpet problem, the trumpet, the trumpet learning difficulty. But the thing is, if they can connect with the music again, playing the piano, it's going to be much easier to read the inner hearing for the trumpet. Because sometimes the inner hearing is completely blocked for the trumpet.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:35

It's almost like it's a muscle or something, and you don't want to lose, you don't want to like, you want to keep strengthening that muscle even if it's not on the trumpet for a moment.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:44

Yeah. And this is the cognitive ability to project the action that we are going to do. I wanted to speak something because you told me that we have all the time that I want, and I I want to explain something. You can cut it after that.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:02

No, we're not cutting anything. This is all too good.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:04

But this is this can be something interesting. We say a lot that we are like sport players. Have you ever heard about this? Like athletes, yeah. We we like to speak about this, but we have no coaches when we are good players. So we say that we are like athletes, but our behavior, social behavior are not like athletes. When at least has a competition, they don't drink. When at least has to train, they don't eat too much. So we like to speak about how sports and music are very similar. But if we really want to speak about this, we need to do it with understanding the science behind the sports. If you see a game, uh 50 years old game, a soccer game or basketball game, and you see the game this weekend, you can you can see many differences in this the same sport. The worst team of the uh NBA uh 50 years ago, no, the worst team of the this season MBA will win, would win to the best to the winner of the 50 years ago NBA. Why? Because they applied the science to the sports. And the players 50 years ago were drunk one year one day before to the game, and now it's not possible. Yeah, for example, or the the science, we they had a lot of experiments to understand how the accuracy of shotting uh can be developed to the players. If we see a game of 50 years old game, we can see some players that could have like 25, 30 percent on the three points line. And now mostly the most of the players can have 60, 70 percent or 90 percent. How it happened. The human being has improved a lot in the last 50 years. No, the thing that what happened was science in sports. So we need to start to apply science and common sense to the sports. If they are if if they have uh uh if they are feeling bad, they are not going to go to the training, they are not going to play the game. So if you feel very bad and you go to play the gig, you are not applying the common sense. Yeah, yeah. So if we want to speak about how sports and music are similar or are very the same, mostly the same, we need to really think as they had as they did. Yeah, and another thing that is important is okay, we can compare sports and music, but we need to know something. Sports has the imaginary movement, the biomechanics that is a movement, and the result that it's going to be another movement. Okay, but in music, biomechanics is a movement also. I'm blowing, this is a movement. I'm moving my my fingers, this is a movement. Okay, but the imaginary process is a sound, and the result the result is going to be another sound. Okay, so sports are a little bit easier because the imaginary action is a movement. The thing that I'm going to do is a movement, and the result is going to be another movement. It's very easy to transfer the imagination to the biomechanics and the biomechanics to the result. In music, it's a little bit more difficult because we need to imagine a sound that is going to be created by a movement and the result is going to be another sound. So the importance of hearing is much we need to be more conscious about the imaginary process than the athletes. Because for the athletes it's easily transferable, is that word correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's easily transferable to see you imagine the traject the trajectory, the movement of the ball, yeah, and you can see the ball moving when you do your biomechanics. But in in the trumpet, specifically in the trumpet, you cannot see anything. So you can see the 50% of the movements that you are doing. So it's very important to be clear about this. Yes, you we can apply the science, we can compare sports and music, but we need to be clear that the process is different. The sports use cinematic, do you have this word cinematical energy? Cinematic energy? Uh kinetic. Kinetic. Oh, kinetic, yeah, yeah, yeah. Kinetic, I'm sorry. Kinetic energy, you know? So our imagination is kinetic, or biomechanics is kinetic, and the result is kinetic. That in our case, sound is an energy and is the same. Okay, light is an energy, kinetics are energy, sound is an energy. So we need to imagine the sound, or kinetics will create another energy. We are we transform the kinetics or movement on energy sound. I'm not sure if my English is enough to explain.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:14

I'm gonna try to summarize it because I think it's an incredible point. Like you're saying there are a lot of parallels between sports and music, and like we could set aside how sports, like when they have uh the the level is so high that it requires a certain like today, the level is so high, and we can see that the level has changed over the years because they pay attention to science, and the there's just the competitive advantage that's involved will make them I want coaches, so I have the best strategies, and I'm gonna take care of myself in terms of diet and rest and making sure that you know, my I'll do mental training, like they're doing all of the things so that they can uh produce at the level that they need to produce, and that we should, as musicians, take some of that as seriously as they're taking it. That's part of what I heard you say. But then the other part of it is that everything in sports is a is a movement. So like I visualize throwing a ball that I and then I throw the ball, that's a movement. I visualize a moving ball, and then the ball is moving, and then someone catches it, that's a movement. But with us, we have to transfer the movement of the biomechanics of creating the sound, but the the conceptualizing of the sound is what's guiding the biomechanics. So we can't divorce ourselves from the practicing of and the taking seriously of being able to imagine your sound and having that be as much, or probably you would say more of the of our focus in terms of like what are we aiming at? Because it needs to guide the biomechanics, and there's a transition in there that's not the same thing. And so, in a way, it's easier, more easily transferable in sports to visualize a certain thing happening because the visualization for us is not a movement. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:10

You improve a lot of my message. So, can you see how I'm not speaking about biomechanics, but we were the steps before to attend the biomechanics. So I'm I'm pretty sure if my English was enough, and with your help and with your explanation, it's going to help to many people. This these two ideas of take care of your muscle, your skin, this is going to help to many people. And I'm very simple trick. If you have a dry lips, you can use that's that's I'm not joking, yeah. You can use olive oil during your practice. Before to attend anyone, before to do any other strategy, I ask them to put a little bit of olive oil or any oil, organic oil, to your to your lips during your playing, because I can be sure that your lips are not dry, it's not comfortable, but it's useful to diagnose as you as you said before, if the problem is on the skin. If you improve a lot just with this, your problems were not on your flexibility. Obviously, your flexibility with uh dry lips is going to be very difficult. So, this trick now, for example. So I I I I lost my point, but the thing is it before to start to practicing, we need to be sure that we can hit it and that our biomechanics are healthy. And then we can apply different strategies. I I I want to show one of them that uh many people is using now, and I'm I'm I have recorded some videos, and people who is using this strategy, as Kaleb uh you named before, he recorded one video about this, found the strategy very useful. Okay, and it's a mix between the inner hearing and a specific uh exercise. Yeah, it's very simple. It's just sing through the trumpet. We have heard how important this is singing to play the trumpet. And we used to say that singing and playing is the same, is not the same. Okay, are different things, but we can use some parts of the singing to play the trumpet. The first uh strategy after being sure or working on the inner hearing and being sure or working about the skin health, the first step, trumpet step, instead of Attending the embossure, changing the way that they are blowing, changing the way that they are breathing, is just singing to the trumpet. For example, I'm dealing with flexibility. I'm now like this is not my playing, okay? I'm trying to show one case of flexibility difficulty. Okay. This kind of difficulties. Okay, first of all, before to speak, before to explain, before to change, I ask, sing it through the trumpet. Why this strategy likes me a lot? Because if you cannot hear it, you cannot sing it. So it shows me easily if you can hear it, and then people start to do this or two or two. No. What I'm speaking is this. If they move a lot, they used to do this. Yeah? So singing, because if you your body recognize your mouthpiece in your lips, will reproduce all the automatisms that you have when you play. So it's a very interesting strategy because you can solve some problems that you want to solve playing just singing. So I can ask, okay, can you sing it keeping the same pressure on the lips? Can you try to imitate yourself? It's not that easy, but it starts to change little by little. But I didn't explain the tone movement, I didn't explain the throat movement, I didn't explain anything. I gave you a reference and I made you just copy yourself. So I use as less teaching, I use as less words as I can. And this exercise helped me a lot to evaluate where the problem is. And sometimes just singing through the trumpet, the problem gets solved.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:33

How do you do it? How do you do it in the upper register? Like if someone can't sing, eventually they can't sing that high.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:42

I use falsetto depending on the voice. I use falsetto or I change the octave. When I sing the piccolo, I always sing in the lower octave. Okay. For example. And for women or people with very high voices, I do this the opposite. I make instead of because this is a problem with the kids. Kids usually cannot sing, cannot play high notes because they they sing.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:17

But they sing So then how do they get higher than that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:22

Okay, but no, because this is the same note that I'm playing, because it's a soprano instrument. So the the the kid's voice fits with the with the right range, fits with the trumpet range. So for them it's very easy to hear the trumpet in the same range. And I the first thing that I do with kids is change the range. And I I teach them, okay, you cannot sing this note. You are right. This is the note that you are playing. But because we want to play higher, you are not going to be able to sing it higher. And I change the brain connection between the notes, and I start to sing and they sing for them, you know?

SPEAKER_07 1:32:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:07

Usually they when they sing they play. And I say, no, no, we need to connect your lower range, your lower vocal range with your medium range in the trumpet. This is going to solve many problems for people who cannot play high notes. Usually, we for you are for me, probably this could be the same.

SPEAKER_07 1:32:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:37

But this is not the same. This is this is the same note. Okay. Many people have connected this with because really they are they are right. Is that is the correct connection. But to play the trumpet, we need to connect a lower one octave down vocal range to the to the real range of the trumpet. That makes sense. I'm not sure if I just I'm not sure if I just play in this.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:09

No, it makes, I mean, I can reap, I can repeat it to see, but uh basically um like essentially taking the actual note you would sing and moving it down, and Octave does two things. One, it like reframes the main thing it does is it reframes like the notes so that you have the capacity to actually be able to vocalize the upper register in a way where your ear can visualize it and connect with it. That's like the main thing. But it also uh I guess that's like the main, that's like the main big thing, it seems like is just having so you can vocalize and have access to the upper register versus if you already start really high where the note actually is, you don't have much room above that. So it's hard, then you lose the ability to sing and like visualize or or hear the notes in your head.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:01

And because singing and visualizing, or I prefer hitting the notes instead of visualizing, because uh the the real ability is to create an imaginary sound. Okay, this is the reason I'm I don't want to correct you. I'm I'm sorry. I don't know. This is why we're here. Okay, I'm just explaining why I use I prefer to the the word hearing instead of visualizing. Yeah, yeah, um because this relation is very close between hearing and singing. We can improve our hearing abilities when I sing a lot, obviously. And but I need to sing in an octave that makes me possible to imagine the sound, right? You say it perfect. I'm explaining your explanation. Okay, so the thing is if I want to play high, I can sing, but I all I can also connect. Yeah, did you see the fingering? That's important because sometimes when when we sing low, we we do so we are connecting with the lower range. Okay, yeah, yeah. I'm more comfortable because I'm thinking that I'm singing in the lower in the medium range.

SPEAKER_07 1:35:40

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:42

So if I want to play and I feel a little bit forced or blocked, sometimes the first solution is going to be because this high C will feel closer to my medium.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:11

Yeah, it's an interesting way of doing it. Like it makes sense to me because it's all based on like what the image in your head is. So if the image in your head is it's in this middle comfortable register and you are able to connect it, it makes sense how then your body would respond that way, where you're not gonna tense up because you think it's high, because you're visualizing or hearing that it's more in that register that's comfortable for you. It's interesting. I had that's a really interesting way of thinking about it for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:44

You can try it, and at the end, you have to choose. I prefer you cannot play, you cannot sing the lower range with kids because when you change this, they cannot sing the lower notes. But I say, okay, imagine that you are singing if this the same for the kids is this, but uh descendant it's oh you cannot sing it, of course. So I I I always say to them, don't worry, I prefer you cannot sing the lower notes, but you can sing the higher notes. And in fact, when with kids and with learning difficulties, I never start in the lower register, because the setting that that it creates for the lips is not okay. This is another point, this is a very important point. Our brain has the ability of uh self-regulate self-regulates the learning, okay, by connecting the inner hearing projection to the results. But this self-regulated is not uh created to be uh efficient, it's just uh created to be effective, to have effect, to have results. So during this process, you can adopt many different uh bad habits. And what I'm doing to solve this is not speaking about this because I don't like to speak during the lessons. I adjust the difficulties to them, but it means that the difficulties have to be and that can be something weird at the beginning. The difficulties have to be bigger enough to not allow you to create bad habits. For example, instead of teaching kids to play the simple tonguing very slow at the beginning, the first exercises with simple tonguing for the kids are fast. Why? Because you if you self your brain is going to self-regulate the tonguing, okay? But if you if I give you this exercise, I'm allowing your system to have to automatize tension in your tongue. But if the difficulty that I'm asking to your system is this, probably it's going to take more time to you to do it, but the system will not be able to create tension during the process. Because if the system has tension, cannot reach the goal that you have. Do you understand me? So sometimes the difficulties are too low, and the system cannot regulate with efficiency. So I apply this to the high performance training, but I apply this with the with the learning difficulties. For example, instead of teaching, I have a book uh to teach this singing through the trumpet, I'm going to send you the link if you want to share it. And instead of being this kind of flexibility, I skip one harmonic. And the reason is because skipping one harmonic obligates the system to be more effective, more efficient. And when it self-regulates the biomechanics, it's going to be more efficient and it's going to be useful. Because if not, sometimes we are solving one problem and creating another one. Have you ever seen this? Yeah, the student solved the flexibility problem but created a tonguing problem because solving the flexibility, the the tongue, uh the tongue adopted a lot of tense. Attention. You know, yeah, yeah. So I I I prefer to use very difficult difficult exercises. And probably the last thing that we can speak today about um is uh another trick to to organize your practice. Sometimes for some players, it's very nice to have uh this five minutes of breathing exercises, five minutes of you know, and this uh checklist is nice. You you if you have this learning style, keep doing that. Speaking about uh endur endurance, yeah, endurance um to to be able to play more and more hours. How do you do that? Oh, endurance, yeah. Endurance, yeah. Okay, many people want to do very strange exercises, like holding something in in the middle of the lips. Have you ever seen this? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm not saying that it's bad, you can do it, but you need to know a lot about muscles if you want to do it safe. You you are not going to go to the gym and do like random exercises. No? So I will not recommend to do random exercises with any of these devices. This is the first thing. So this is a very simple trick to get more endurance when you play. It's very simple, play very, very long exercises in the middle range. Okay. For example, instead of playing. If you can see I organize the flexibility in a different pardon, I will I could explain why. But I'm playing a short exercise and more chromatically, okay? Basically. It's much preferable if you want to get more endurance. Play the exercise to the end of the breath. Probably the first try, the first part is going to be much better than the last part. Why? Because you are used to just play short phrases. And what's the problem when you play real music? What are the problem? The big phrases, the long phrases, or the shorter?

SPEAKER_02 1:44:41

Yeah, the long ones, obviously.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:43

And how many times we play longer phrases when we practice? Usually not the most.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:49

I mean, especially not in exercises like that, right? Maybe you might play an attude and that goes longer, but on something like this, yeah, they usually are all pretty short.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:59

Okay, so the way that I would study this would be or the low octave, okay?

SPEAKER_00 1:45:14

But longer. And then try to keep it with high quality vocalizing during the long exercise. It's very difficult. And what will happen when I play real music? If I lose my vocalizing, I'm going to use more lips and more lip action, and I will get uh obviously more time. Yeah. Okay, so I prefer to play and create variations or whatever that creates a long exercise, a very long exercise. This trick is going to give you a lot of endurance, and you don't need to do strange or rare uh things with your lips to create. So this is very important because many players ask to me how to get more endurance. Because when I my first 15 minutes are very good, and then I cannot play with quality. Have you ever heard about this? Sure. So playing playing long exercises. In my opinion, we have two options to get more endurance. First one is have more muscles, have more strength, have better balances in our play. And second, uh, I want to give you an example. Example, if you have one uh the double strength, you will play instead of 15 minutes, you will play 30 minutes. Yeah, but we have you we can play today 60 minutes. How? If you create more muscles, but if you use the 50% of the energy, right? Okay, if you use the 50% of the energy, you will be able to play double time. And this is not easy, obviously, not today. I was joking about the day, yeah. But if I if if I would be able today to use the 50% of the energy, today I will play 30 minutes. And if I would be able to develop the double of my muscles today, I would play uh 60 minutes in total. So I think that every single day practice should be to create better balances in my playing, not just here. We have muscles in the whole body. We used to think too much here in my face, right? The first is here in my brain. My face will respond to the sound that I'm hearing, or will not respond, and we'll have to invent this if I'm not hearing. But uh we have uh to me, the embossure is here, but is here, but is here, but is here, that is here in my emotions. I have emotions about my embosher too. So when we are changing the embosure, we think here too much, right? And when we change the embossure, we should start here. We should start with the emotions. I spoke at the beginning about this, and be clear that it's not a problem. Changing the embosher is not because you are a bad human being, right? You have another human problem, you have learning difficulties in the Trump. But after this, understand that embosure starts in the imaginary sound. You know the pedagogy of Sikovich. And Sikovich learned about with uh Arnold Jacobs, imaginary sound. 50-60 years ago we know uh uh we knew about this. And they didn't didn't have uh the information they have some scientific information, but they have the most important information that you can have your own experience. And I'm I I never met him. But I'm completely sure that these discoverings were done in their own practice.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:47

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:47

Yeah, and they should notice that when he could uh hear a better sound, he could play better. So some some discoveries. That I can I can read in the last papers in internet that you can get access of because are open in the internet to read it are very, very similar to the Arnold Jacobs discoverings 60 years ago. Yeah, that's cool. And some of the discoveries of Jacobs, I'm not sure that they apply to the sports, but in the 90s and 25 years ago, the science in sports had a lot of money. Our problem is we we have no interest in real science. Some not with you and me. The conservatories and universities world have not too much interest on real science, applied science to the performance practice. And if they have interest, they have no money. In sports, they have a lot of money to understand the brain, to understand the emotions. We have thousands of papers, but these papers have the 20% of the information than the uh sports uh players have during a game. So because the the the teams the different teams in the that research about this doesn't share the information. They sell the information to the to the players or to the teams. And but when when you read these kind of papers based on imaginary movements on sports, on the result, on not paying attention to the sensations, you can read the discoverings of Arnold Jacobs. This is that's impressive. And it's just because he paid attention to the process. I'm not uh uh Jacobs fan. Uh I'm just saying that we have this information. We have books, brass pedagogy books speaking about this. It's very famous. This book of the inner game of tennis. Have you ever heard? Okay. So we just need to apply this information.

SPEAKER_07 1:52:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:34

What I'm saying is not new, could sound like new, but I'm not and I discovered some of those things without knowing Jacob's theories. I I didn't know the Jacobs theories, but we arrived to the same point. But it helped me a lot to read the books of Jacobs, to read this the inner game of tennis, because it improved a lot my thoughts about this. And I don't know, I I think that uh the key to attend difficulties or to attend to be coach of of high performance players, it's going to be a job in the next years. And it's being it's being it's going to be difficult because social media, we have a lot of information, and you can hear a lot of things, and many people repeating something that heard from another. And and that's okay. It's nice to quote how you say citations.

SPEAKER_07 1:53:44

Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:45

Yeah, uh, it's nice because sometimes I I can hear some of my explanation. I don't want to sound selfish. How you say this? They want to sound egotistical. Yeah, I I don't want to sound like this, but I can sometimes I I I hear some of those things, and it's nice to to get citated, but that's not the the the the main point. The main point is the scientists that uh help it to improve the sports, they really know what they were doing. We need to to to uh to go with people that really knows what they are doing. That's very important because sometimes uh uh students arrive at me with emotional problems. I cannot play this game of being doctor, you know. I cannot say that I'm a psychologist. I always say, okay, I cannot if if you want to speak and you need to speak with me with me, okay, I can hear you. But these probably are not problems related with the trumpet. These problems are related with your uh the things that you live live in the past. I can hear it. I prefer not hear it because sometimes to me it's difficult to manage these situations.

SPEAKER_07 1:55:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:16

So what I did was create a team, and I found I I was very lucky to find uh three psychologists that helped me to attend people who have uh emotional difficulties because I cannot do it. I I cannot play this role because it's it's lying to people, you know. So I'm PhD and I'm a doctor, but I'm not a medical doctor. I cannot play the role of diagnosing situations because I can do mistakes and sometimes these mistakes, I can make mistakes, I'm sorry, and and sometimes these mistakes can affect the people. So it's very difficult, my friend, to to find the balance between uh being professor, being trumpet player, being, you know, uh being uh a specialist of this. I lost you.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:15

Yeah, yeah, no, I'm here. Yeah, I'm here.

SPEAKER_07 1:56:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:22

I mean this has been this has been amazing. Um you have shared so much. Is it okay if we like if we sort of like put a pause here and maybe come back? There's just so much to dig through uh and I and so much for me to think through. I mean, you have said some things that we you know this is not my interview, so we'll we will do this, but you have said some things that have gotten me thinking about the way that I go about coaching and the way that I go about helping evaluate people's uh ways that they're going and doing things, and a lot a lot of it lines up with things I've been learning because it is like the science that is out there, but you've framed it in a musical way that has uh it's it's very intriguing to me to think about how to apply some of these things. So I really appreciate you being so willing to just kind of share your approach and your your methodology of how you go about and like what motivates you kind of underneath it. I really appreciate it. I feel like it's gonna be of for at least for me, I can say it'll be a very valuable. Um, the information is very valuable. And I know for people who are stuck in practice sessions, just having some ways to think about how to navigate it, I think is also gonna be very valuable as well. So I just I I thank you so much for being so generous uh with me and us today.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:47

Thank you. I'm very happy. I would like to have a better English to explain myself a little bit better, but I hope it's enough. And I will be here for if you need something, I will try to to help. And it's the the we cannot adopt any other uh behavior that is not sharing the information. Because um we need we need to to as a community we need to grow up, and and this is is is going to happen when we uh really do the things with passion, with uh with uh good um emotions, but also we need to improve the way that we discover things and the way that we communicate. And I I did many mistakes in my life teaching is I commit you can can you use this word commit mistake or not? Commit mistakes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:03

Yeah, make mistakes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:05

And um I'm uh still learning every day how to improve. And I think that if I can share this and somebody can use it, it's going to do less mistakes, probably. Yeah, because it's not needed to do repeat the mistakes again and again, generation and generation. Makes no sense. So uh thank you for having me here. Thank you for having this channel to share your ideas, the ideas of of other colleagues with with that generous uh style that you have, and thank you for hitting me and for for helping me to explain my own ideas.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:58

Well, I was gonna ask too if there's if people, if there's anyone listening and they're really connecting with what you're saying, or maybe they were hoping to have something clarified. Is there a way somebody could get a hold of you that that you would feel comfortable with?

SPEAKER_00 2:00:13

Yeah, I I I have my Instagram account that usually is easy. I have a Facebook account too. They can connect, contact with me, and I can give you my my email that is Jordi Albert, my name, at geordialbert.com. You can find in my webpage some information. I'm not putting too much attention to my webpage, but you can contact using my webpage also.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:41

Yeah, so I mean, obviously, Jordi is a huge wealth of knowledge, and so um if it seems like he obviously wants to help and and share these ideas and things. So I know I assume you're also very busy, it sounds like so. Hopefully, within some sort of reason, I think you know he's there if you uh want to reach out and tell him how much you enjoyed this conversation. Uh, I also want to thank Brandon Yocum for his work on mastering this episode of the podcast. You can check out Brandon at Epiphany Recording Studio.com. And most of all, I would like to thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it, and we will see you in the next one.