Something else I did over the summer holidays was to have a cornet lesson. Not too exciting really, but this was something I’d been meaning to do for some time with a guy by the name of Roddy Lewis. Rod is from South Wales but happened to be coming by as he was flying in to Stansted from Sweden, so I took the opportunity to have him pop and give me a 5 hour lesson.

The first thing to note about Rod is that he is an extreme high register specialist and is lead trumpet of his own Maynard Ferguson tribute band. Now I didn’t take the lesson because I wanted to play in the extreme high register but I did want to learn how to use my embouchure and air properly to make it easier to play in the registers that I use when playing for the band.

Almost immediately the first thing Rod picked up on was the fact that I wasn’t breathing in properly to start playing, instead of taking a full breath through the mouth I was taking a quick snatch of air through the nose. Changing this and the timing of the breath has made significant improvements in my playing. There’s still a fair amount of work for me to do to correct some other aspects of my playing but I couldn’t believe the difference this small change made. As Rod himself said, small changes on their own may not amount to much but taken together with many other small changes big improvements can be made. Now I’ve just got to find the time to fit his practice routine in.

Any brass players out there considering a lesson with Roddy should definitely do it, you won’t regret it. If you’ve never come across Roddy before he’s worth checking out but don’t be put off by his style, he is a really nice bloke. His lessons may seem expensive but a 5 hour lesson is comparable to 5 weeks of 1 hour lessons with any other teacher.