commakozzi

Well, here's the thing, the warm-up I had been using was making me feel nice and cozy for the day, but I'd find that I wasn't prepared to play in the upper register at all. This group I'm playing with forced me to recognize that, because we'll do a practice and then performance in the same day (within hours of each other). I feel like I'm having a hard time in the upper register (B above staff to E) during the practice, but toward the end I'm feeling pretty comfortable. Then the performance is great and I feel great up there. Of course, there's a window for this which is approximately 1-1/2 hours of playing for me after I've gotten comfortable. However, after the third day of using the Stamp warm-up I had to go straight to a performance. I did nothing else besides the warm-up and some mouthpiece buzzing in my car just to get my lips moving more. I felt wonderful during the performance that day! Yeah, I will give it several weeks to really determine if the Stamps were the cause, but it's almost too coincidental for me to not believe that they were. They do make me a little uncomfortable, but I feel like they are forcing me to stretch myself out more than I'm used to.