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Growing Old Gracefully with the Trumpet: a Guide for the Comeback Player by Donald K. Roeder

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Growing Old Gracefully with the Trumpet: a Guide for the Comeback Player by Donald K. Roeder Reprints from the International Trumpet Guild ® Journal to promote communications among trumpet players around the world and to improve the artistic level of performance, teaching, and literature associated with the trumpet GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY WITH THE TRU MPE T: A GUIDE FOR THE COMEBACK PLAYER BY DONALD K. ROEDER June 2015 • Page 14 The International Trumpet Guild ® (ITG) is the copyright owner of all data contained in this file. ITG gives the individual end-user the right to: • Download and retain an electronic copy of this file on a single workstation that you own • Transmit an unaltered copy of this file to any single individual end-user, so long as no fee, whether direct or indirect is charged • Print a single copy of pages of this file • Quote fair use passages of this file in not-for-profit research papers as long as the ITGJ, date, and page number are cited as the source. The International Trumpet Guild ® prohibits the following without prior writ ten permission: • Duplication or distribution of this file, the data contained herein, or printed copies made from this file for profit or for a charge, whether direct or indirect • Transmission of this file or the data contained herein to more than one individual end-user • Distribution of this file or the data contained herein in any form to more than one end user (as in the form of a chain letter) • Printing or distribution of more than a single copy of the pages of this file • Alteration of this file or the data contained herein • Placement of this file on any web site, server, or any other database or device that allows for the accessing or copying of this file or the data contained herein by any third party, including such a device intended to be used wholly within an institution. http://www.trumpetguild.org Please retain this cover sheet with printed document. GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY WITH THE TRU MPE T: A GUIDE FOR THE COMEBACK PLAYER BY DONALD K. ROEDER he ITG Non-Professional/Comeback Player this article is the first to appear. The International Trum - Com mittee, led by Dan Hallock, has requested pet Guild is pleased to find new ways to serve its members that ITG members submit articles geared spe - and is grateful for the service of people like Dan and his cifically toward this demographic. Proposed articles are committee. vetted by The NPP Committee before publication, and I have been asked to discuss issues that I consider to be At the top of this list should be attention to the respiratory important to a non-professional / “comeback” trumpet player. system and breathing. Never forget that the muscles that con - In the past, I have served on this ITG committee that repre - trol our breathing need to be kept in shape as well other mus - sents a significant and ever-growing segment of the trumpet- cles. This includes all those muscles that make up what is com - playing community. This article is based, in part, on that back - monly called “the core”—or what many of us call “the dia - ground, my presentation at the ITG conference in Harrisburg phragm.” Learn to fill the lungs with air, and learn how to use in 2009 , and my experience in returning to play the trumpet that air most efficiently and effectively. The term “dia phragm,” forty-plus years ago. My hiatus of seventeen years was a result when applied to playing the trumpet, is a misnomer. While the of training for my life’s work as a thoracic surgeon in medical diaphragm does contain some muscle, it is fairly weak and school and serving for twelve years in the Medical Corps of the inconsequential. It is really the abdominal musculature that United States Navy. controls our ability to regulate and When I returned to playing the “The making of music is also a bit use the air we inhale. trumpet, I found that there were Learn how to get air in quickly many similarities to the practice of of a resuscitative effort. We take and out slowly in a well-regulated medicine, especially with regard to fashion. The human body is built to my specialty of surgery. Not only dead notes written by someone do the opposite, inhaling being an does learning both skill sets involve else on a page and give them life active process, and exhaling more of the apprentice system, but they also a passive one. As brass players, we do require one to learn a series of basic by making music out of them.” the opposite, making inhaling an fundamentals, how to apply them in almost passive maneuver, while mak - a systematic and precise fashion, and how to use them in such ing exhaling a prolonged and very active process involving a way that the end result is not only a technical success, but an much muscular activity. When doing this, we significantly artistic triumph as well. increase both intra-pulmonary and intra-thoracic pressure, Additionally, and maybe in a larger sense, the making of because we are exhaling against an area of partial obstruction music is also a bit of a resuscitative effort. We take dead notes to airflow, the mouthpiece throat. This leads to a number of written by someone else on a page and give them life by mak - potential difficulties. ing music out of them. Particularly as we get older, yearly checkups, including chest x-rays, EKG s, etc., are extremely important. One’s heart and General Health Issues lungs are at the forefront of one’s ability to play the instrument. Health issues fall into two broad categories: general condi - Be sure that they are in optimal condition! tioning issues and issues related to the aging process. There is If you smoke, stop! If you don’t smoke, don’t start! While this a great deal of crossover between these two categories. In the should be “enough said,” I should add that smoking is more former are factors that are, to some degree, controllable and in than just a very personal type of air pollution; it carries with it the latter, factors that tend to occur despite our best efforts to major risks of lung malignancies and emphysema, among avoid them. other pulmonary problems. It is also a major cause of tongue, Playing the trumpet—or, for that matter, mouth, and throat cancers, especially playing any wind instrument—is a very “Playing the trumpet is one of among pipe and cigar smokers and physical form of exercise, re quiring per - those who use “smokeless” tobacco sonal attention to overall well-being and the most un-physiologic chal - products. optimal conditioning. It involves more lenges to which the human Playing the trumpet is one of the than simple muscular training of the face most un-physiologic challenges to and core. While good physical condition - body can be subjected.” which the human body can be sub - ing is relative to one’s needs and expecta - jected. We trumpet players exhale tions, it is important that one be involved in a structured pro - forcibly through a very small aperture (the mouthpiece throat). gram of both aerobic and strength training. Personally, I try to This is sometimes called a “partial Valsalva maneuver.” This set work out at a local health club at least three times per week. of circumstances subjects our cardiovascular and respiratory 14 ITG Journal / June 2015 © 2015 International Trumpet Guild systems to elevated intra-thoracic and intra-pulmonary pres - limit the ability to exhale as producing high compliance. That sures that are potentially dangerous. They may cause all man - may confuse some—and, in a way, it has always seemed some - ner of difficulties that include, among others, the potential for what curiously backward to me—but that is the way it is. collapse of a lung (known as “pneumothorax”) and the poten - There are potential problems on either side of this equation. tial for decreased venous return to the right side of the heart, Low compliance results from two main factors: first, fibrosis of resulting in a temporary decrease in cardiac output. This latter the lungs, which limits the ability to inhale because of difficulty is the reason that trumpet players occasionally expe - increased stiffness of the lung tissue itself; and second, loss of rience light-headedness when playing and why some have even flexibility in the chest wall. High compliance is what is seen in experienced loss of consciousness while doing so. To some emphysema and asthma, where air can be easily inhaled, but extent, we learn (without even thinking about it) by practicing either temporary or permanent constriction or spasm of small - how to avoid this. Occasionally, though, it still happens. Stay - er airways greatly limits the ability to exhale it. Thus, in the ing in optimal physical condition can help us avoid this prob - simplest terms, there are three factors at work here: chest wall lem to some extent. issues; lung stiffness issues (each of which limit our ability to Although most instances of lung collapse are purely spon - inhale, both deeply and quickly); and emphysema (also known taneous and not caused by any outside influence, I have by the acronym COPD , Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Dis - personally seen at least two individuals who have experi - ease), which limits one’s ability to exhale. enced a collapsed lung while playing the instrument, and I It should come as no shock that, over time, we lose the flex - have heard from several ITG members of other cases as well. ibility we once took for granted when we were younger.
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