screamingmorris

I have finally realized that the ear is just as important as the embouchure in playing trumpet.
And the difference in our ability to hear separates those who *can* become professional musicians from those who *can’t*.

I am 51 years old, returned to playing trumpet after a 30 year hiatus away from trumpet, and my embouchure is better now than at any other time in my life.
For example, I am playing scales up to G above High C.
Although I would have* loved* to be a professional trumpet player playing high register ballads, I am now aware of a shortcoming that would have prevented such a goal no matter how much I might have developed my embouchure, no matter how many years I might have attended music school.

I could have developed the world’s strongest embouchure.
I could have developed my technique and my understanding of music theory.
But nothing could solve the problem that I am virtually tone deaf.

I have a beautiful singing voice with a sense of relative pitch.
If you give me a starting note and a song to sing, chances are I will be able to sing a very nice version of that song, no matter what the starting note is, because my sense of relative pitch tells me where to go from there.
But I will have absolutely no idea what those notes are that I am singing.
I have no idea whether I am singing a C or an F.
I only know that my second note is the proper distance from my first note.

So when I want to play MacArthur Park starting on B below High C, I must actually play the scale up to that B so that I will know that I am starting on the right note.

No amount of training in music school could ever adequately overcome that shortcoming of being tone-deaf in the sense of having absolute pitch.
I hear professional musicians say that Bill Chase was usually flat on his High A’s.
I don’t have the ability to know that those are even A’s at all unless someone tells me they are, or I get out my little Casio keyboard and start playing the scale looking for the note that sounds like the one Bill Chase is playing (my relative pitch *does* tell me when the two notes match).

So much about being a professional musician involves things that can be learned.
Even the ear can be trained to a great degree.
But many of us are born with inferior ears that could never be adequate no matter how much we might try to train them.
There is no cure for being tone deaf.
There is no trumpet career for those who are tone deaf.

- vintage morris : looks bad, plays bad, sentimental value, make offer