How To Play The Trumpet (with Pictures) - WikiHow

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1 Learn to read music. Reading music will expand your musical knowledge and make it much easier to learn songs. Find a good guide online or work with a teacher to develop music reading skills. Then practice what you’ve read by playing it on your trumpet.[22] X Research source
- There are many resources online that teach you how to read music.
- For more instruction, try taking lessons from a local music store or school.
2 Find easy songs to play. After you’ve learned individual notes and scales, the best way to progress is putting those notes together to play songs. Look online for some easy songs and melodies to practice playing different notes in order. Then move on to more difficult songs like jazz and blues pieces.[23] X Research source
- Some popular, easy tunes for trumpet are "Happy Birthday", "Ode to Joy", "Kum Ba Yah", and "Frère Jacques".
- Songs don’t need to have trumpet parts for you to play them. Since you know how to form different notes, you can easily translate music onto the trumpet if you know the notes for the song.
3 Practice screeching your notes. Screeching, or screaming, is an advanced technique where players jump several octaves in a single breath. Professional players usually use this technique in solos. Bring your playing to the next level by working on this technique.[24] X Research source
- For a screech, vibrate your lips very quickly and push out a lot of air. This drives very high notes from the trumpet.
- First try to drive these high-pitched sounds from the trumpet, then work on controlling them better.
4 Listen to great trumpet players for inspiration. As with any instrument, learn from the greats if you want to be a good trumpet player. Go back and listen to some of the best trumpet players in history to hear how they used the instrument. Luckily, most of this music is available on the internet for free, so tracking it down is easy.[25] X Research source
- Some of the greatest trumpet players are Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie. Listen to their recordings to hear examples of expert playing.
- Also learn about how these players practiced and played. You might pick up some habits that will improve your playing.
- Jazz has especially good trumpet playing. If you aren’t into it already, try listening to some classic jazz records for more great playing.