There are many common trumpet mistakes that everybody makes as a beginner. They may hold you back from progress and even become a reason to doubt whether you’re good enough to become a musician. In this article, you can find common challenges that you face as a trumpet player and learn tips on getting over them.
Challenge # 1: Playing High Notes
There is the common misconception that in order to play high notes trumpeters need to tighten their lips or squeeze them together. The truth is that this technique leads to squashing a tone, reducing the size of your aperture, and creating much pressure.
In order to play high notes on the trumpet, you need to make your lips vibrate faster. Tightening lips can really work but only for a couple of notes. In most cases, it limits your potential in range as with each higher note you’ll get more and more squashed tone.
Air is really a crucial factor to push your lips faster and get higher notes without tightening your lips. To make your lips move faster, you need to make air move faster.
How to achieve that? There are two ways:
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Air support. It’s all about your ability to control the pressure of your air and the speed with which it comes out from your head. To push air out of your lungs you need to train diaphragmatic breathing. By using this technique, you will be able to increase the speed of the air and reach higher notes. Just take your trumpet, play a low C and then move to the next note without tightening your lips but pushing the air from your diaphragm.
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Tongue. It’s responsible for the velocity and shape of your air. What you should focus on is the back of your tongue. When playing try to push the air from your diaphragm while also controlling the speed of your air with the syllables ah and ee. Moving from ah to ee you’ll notice how your lips vibration increases in speed helping you play higher without overblowing.
Tip from KGUmusic: To control your habit of pressing a mouthpiece tightly to your lips and avoid injuries, you can incorporate useful tools such as trumpet optimizers. Using them you can always see when you apply overpressure and adjust your technique.
Challenge #2: Endurance and Range
Problems with endurance and range may happen because you have some issues with your embouchure. Some trumpets play a little bit off to one side of the lips, others play more on their top or bottom lip. Every dental structure is different, however you should center your mouthpiece as much as possible. And what’s more important, its inside rim should be placed around the pink part — the vermilion of your lip. You can control the instrument if you have control over this fleshy part.
The common problem is that while beginning correctly trumpet players may overadjusting their lips once they bring the mouthpiece to them. When doing it you may tuck the lips around the rim of the mouthpiece which leads to squashing that fleshy part with the inside rim. This prevents you from having enough control over orbicularis oris muscles (circular muscle that surrounds the opening of the mouth) and thus your endurance and range suffer.
Stand in front of the mirror, bring the mouthpiece to your lips and see whether you are not overadjusting them.
Tip from KGUmusic: You can work on your embouchure by using trumpet embouchure trainers, designed to provide you with better control of airflow, enhance your lip function, and strengthen muscles responsible for sound.
Challenge #3: Lack of Efficiency in Practicing
You may have other things to do in addition to your trumpet lessons. You may even have your main work and just start learning how to play an instrument during free hours. The goal is to get as much done as possible in a short period. The key to your efficiency is in combining practice exercises together. It all depends on your own routine. For instance, you can go through your chromatic scale, while also incorporating tonguing exercises.
Challenge # 4: Practicing Accurately and Correctly
When practicing a trumpet you learn your muscles to operate quickly and accurately, while also setting a connection between them and your brain. Once you’ve achieved that goal you may look like you play music effortlessly regardless of tempo. Practicing accurately and correctly helps you build good habits. You learn to incorporate correct technique in your playing. The same is for incorrect technique: when you repeat wrong actions they also become part of your playing. To avoid this issue you shouldn’t practice faster than you can.
First you should start with the speed that allows you to play the passage or a piece as accurately as possible to let your brain and muscles develop the necessary connection. When beginning with the slower tempo you can achieve the accuracy of performance more quickly than when beginning with fast tempo.
Many beginners play easier parts fast while slowing down at more challenging ones. By doing this you can also build a wrong habit. To prevent yourself from doing that, play with a metronome. It will help you stay at the same tempo through different parts of the passage. Start with a low one and once you see that you play accurately, increase the tempo.
Challenge # 5: Correct Breathing
Air is crucial for creating lip buzzing and getting correctly played notes in the upper register. You also need enough breath to avoid quick fatigue. Incorrect breathing also affects endurance as you use your facial muscles to compensate for the lack of air.
As a beginner you need to learn not only focus on correct breathing but also build it as a habit. Once you learn to take full air into your lungs you will be able to play your trumpet for a longer time. Once your lungs are fully inflated they want to push that air out and this is where you can take advantage of it.
Trumpet players should learn to use their abdominal muscles and lungs with control. This allows them to do less work with facial muscles. When learning a music piece, make breath marks for yourself. This allows you to know places where you really need to take a good breath. Take a couple of bits before playing your trumpet and take a full breath. As you play you can breath at whole, quarter or eight-note rests
Challenge # 6: Finger Technique
When the musicians blow the trumpet, their fingers push and release valves to create all kinds of music patterns. Quick and precise finger movements are essential for playing different notes. What beginners typically deal with is sluggish and inaccurate note changes, which spoils sound and turns beautiful melodies into a mess.
Take a look at your right hand. Many musicians correct their hand position by bringing it into “holding a beer position”. When holding a trumpet your right hand should take the exact position if it were holding a bottle of beer. You should place your thumb against the first valve casing. Ensure you don’t hook it under the lead pipe. All muscles responsible for the movement of your fingers are shared in the hand and forearm. You should remove your little finger from the ring to let other fingers move with less tension.
Ensure your valve changes are strong regardless of the tempo. To let your muscles remember how to move correctly, always lift your fingers high and slap them down. You can notice the pop sound as you do that. Slapping matters as it makes a difference in how you sound. To train yourself slap valve technique just start with playing a chromatic scale. Begin with a low C and move through seven different notes down to low F#. Before playing, always take a good full breath. Then return to the low C.
Tip from KGUmusic: To have better tactile sensations and improved ergonomics for playing for a longer period without feeling exhausted you can try custom finger buttons on your horn.
Challenge # 7: Relaxed Playing
Typically trumpet players tend to squeeze all muscles in their bodies when they need to play high notes. They expect those moments and worry so much to make them sound like they want that it leads to excessive tension. Once the musicians bring the trumpet to their mouth and start blowing something terrible comes out from the bell. You can prevent it from happening like that only by staying relaxed, especially when playing in the upper register.
Musicians usually feel relaxed until they anticipate physical demands for playing higher notes. Tension leads to cutting off the air and spoiling the vibration of your lips making performance a real nightmare. Try to practice relaxed playing in the low register first. When moving to intense things on the trumpet, ensure you don’t put weight on the fleshy part of your lips. Put your energy on your abdominal muscles to help you push air out of your lungs, while having your orbicularis oris muscles in the right place to keep the air stream quick. The middle of your lips should stay relaxed, so they can vibrate freely as you move to higher notes.
Conclusion
Mastering a trumpet requires patience and time. As many other beginners you are likely to face challenges like issues with playing in a high register, lack of endurance, slow finger movement, tension in your body, incorrect breathing, and more. The good news is that any of these issues can be resolved — you just need time to let your muscles and body build the right connection.
We’ve already mentioned some helpful gear — you can find even more in our category of skill development tools. Check them out now to get more satisfaction from your practices.
Recently we’ve shared an article about Top 10 Must-Have Accessories for Trumpet Players in 2025. Feel free to get some inspiration from it.