Trumpet lesson with Noel Langley

Noel is one of London's top session trumpeters, and is also professor of trumpet at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. I believe he is currently playing lead trumpet in The Producers in the West End.

This was the first time I have met with Noel for a one-on-one lesson. We focused on the fundamentals, particularly a good warm-up, including mouthpiece buzzing and long tones. He also talked about being disciplined with one's practice routine - sitting down to practice at the same time every day, also trying to keep the environment in one's practice room as conducive as possible, e.g. keep the clutter down to a minimum!

Something that is curious to me is that Noel's philosophy of how we physically play the trumpet seems to differ somewhat from that of my previous teacher, Charles Lewis Jr., at Berklee. I.e. specifically, what you do (or don't do) with your airstream, tongue and lips in order to change pitch, and what you do (or don't do) to change volume. Both Noel and Charlie are such accomplished players, it would seem strange for me to start debating with them. Maybe they actually do play in quite distinct ways, or maybe they just have different ways of expressing the same thing. Or maybe (probably) I totally misunderstood one or other or both! Oh well, without perfecting the Vulcan mind-meld technique, perhaps I'll never know.

One thing both these guys certainly have in common is their encouragement and care for the student. I really appreciated Noel giving me some extra time as it was our first meeting to get to know what I've done and what I'm up to these days, and what I hope to achieve. Looking forward to hopefully meeting with him again next month.