Bousquet Summer Practice
Routine
100 Days to Trumpet Mastery (or
at least close!)
Prerequisite: You must
have already learned all of the 36 Celebrated Etudes to the best of your
ability for this system to have its greatest rewards
One hundred days seems like a lot of time, and it is. These one hundred
days will pass whether you practice or not. Choose if you want to be better at
the end of those 100 days or the same as you are now. Thirty minutes per day is
probably the minimum that will produce results, and an hour should be the
maximum you spend. As you advance through the steps you will probably find you
need a little more time, but it will not double as you go into Step 2 or triple
in Step 3 because you know each etude better and will not have as many problem
spots to work on.
Strive for perfection within the time you allow yourself, but be willing
to accept flaws that will not go away. Playing the Bousquet studies over the
course of these 100 days will eliminate many, many of these problems.
Step 1 (Days 1-36) –
Practice each etude for one day –
work as hard as you can to overcome all challenges, particularly focusing
on:
A) playing every pitch and rhythm correctly, and observing
all articulations as marked
B) making every attack and slur clean and each note with good
tone quality
C) at the end of each etude, play a note that fits the piece
somewhere around high C – don’t
hurt yourselfl Approach it by scale, arpeggio, or octave.
Step 2 (Days
37-54) – start over and practice 2 etudes per day, trying to play them
even more accurately and cleaner than Step 1
Step 3 (Days 55-66) –
start over and play 3 etudes per day, even higher standards
Step 4 (Days 67-75) –
start over and play 4 etudes per day, even higher standards
Step 5 (Days
76-82) – start over and play
5 etudes per day, even higher standards (You’ll have to play 6 etudes one of
the days)
Step 6 (Days 83-88) –
start over and play 6 etudes per day, even higher standards
Step 7 (Days
89-93) – start over and play 7 etudes per day, even higher standards
(You’ll have to play 8 etudes one of the days)
Step
8 (Days 94-97) – start over
and play 9 etudes per day, even higher standards
Step
9 (Days 98-100) – start over and play 12 etudes per day, even higher
standards
Anyone for 18 per day? 36? You must have chops of steel!
