We’re finally near the end. Looking back now, it’s been a pretty long process with a lot of learning involved. My mentor has been with me the entire way and has helped me develop this new skill. Learning the trumpet has been a blast so far. I’ve enjoyed almost every step of this journey learning new songs, and just simply playing music. In fact, I’ve started to think about what I was going to do with this new skill in the future. There are a lot of new songs that I want to play, so maybe I might learn those for fun in the near future. I just really hope that I don’t end up dropping this skill entirely as it’s taken quite some time to develop and has simply been very enjoyable. Music is something that I really enjoy and value, so learning this new skill has helped me enjoy it even more.
Since the last blog post, I don’t think anything drastic has changed. I’m still playing every chance I get, and I haven’t gotten any new high notes quite yet. However, if I had to pinpoint one improvement, I would say that it’s the sound of the trumpet. My mentor has mentioned this to me as well, but I really think that the sound that I’m able to produce is now a lot louder, and more clear. My embouchure has developed to a point where I’m able to produce a nicer, sound without having to strain my muscles too much at all. I’ve also started to develop some articulation with my mentor as this is an important part learning new pieces. For example, I’ve learned how to produce a pretty solid staccato for some of the pieces I’m currently learning.
Overall, I think my meeting with my mentor are going pretty well. We tend to discuss a lot of casual things like events that have happened during our weeks, or exciting news we have heard. But after our friendly banter, we always get into the learning portion for a solid hour or so. I still wish that I could meet with him face to face so that he could listen to my playing more clearly, but that’s still not an option we currently have. However, I don’t seem to be facing any other problems with our meetings online. There’s not too much lag, or glitches, and he’s still about to see my face well enough to be able to give me pointers about my embouchure. So, I think it’s not too bad just yet.
In terms of my presentation for my In Depth night, I’m thinking of making a video of me playing the piece that I was teasing about in my last blog post. I’m still not going to give you a name or a title, but there is a clip of the piece below. I’ve made a backtrack for the piece a while back, so I’m simply going to edit my playing over the backtrack for the video. I may make a compilation for the recordings as well, but I’m afraid it might come out too long. But I’m sure future me can take care of the editing for that.
Here are the recordings from the past two weeks. The first one is a piece that I’ve just been learning in my free time, while the second is the sneak peek at my final video.
Again, I would like to thank my mentor for giving up his time to mentor me, and for being a wonderful teacher all around. I really couldn’t have done this without his help. I appreciate all of the support, and kindness that he has shown me, and I hope I can show him that it was all worth it in the end. And I guess this is the last casual blog post before the real thing, so I guess I’ll say some of my final remarks here. It really has been an enjoyable journey, and I had a ton of fun doing this through half of the year. This is probably the most fun I’ve had with any project and I really hope that I can have the same amount of fun next year as well. Once again, thank you to my mentor, Mr. Kwong for all of your hard work, and thank you for reading my blog posts.
Signing out,
~MJ
Plus Ultra, Go Further Beyond.