Lesson Preparation
It is important that students warm up (at least 15 minutes) before their lesson.
Please also be sure the instrument is properly oiled so we don’t lose time getting the instrument to work properly.
Students should have a three-ring binder devoted to the material they will use in their studies and are expected to bring it to their lessons.
Practice makes perfect
Try to practice at least 30 minutes each day on average.
The Practice Evaluation is used to keep track of daily practice and specify weekly assignments. Students should have a blank one available for every lesson. These are double sided PDFs, so if you print double-sided, one page will work for two weeks of lessons.
Each column represents a practice session. The following represents the rows on the sheet.
Mouthpiece Etudes: 2 minutes. We want dialog, sirens, and long tones. Try to sustain very high notes.
Harmonic series: Instructions are on the Harmonic Series Etudes page.
Thrills of Trills: There are two music systems per page, each with 6 staves of music. Practice one system each day (six exercises). The actual notes played are not important. The finger combinations are the purpose.
Scaleworks: There are 12 major scales, each with 22 exercises. Look at the Scaleworks Plan.
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- Each row represents one of the sets of exercises for a particular scale.
- Each column represents one of the exercises for each scale.
- Each cell represents a scale/exercise pair.
- Practice at least two scale/exercise pairs each day.
- Try to play these faster and faster over the summer. Ideally, try to get to mm. ♩ = 288 for exercises 1-4 and mm. ♩ = 144 for the rest of them. However, don’t play any faster than you can play them perfectly.
NB: mm means metronome marking. mm ♩ = 144 means to fit 144 ♩ in one minute of time. If ♩ = 60, each ♩ is one second long.
Lesson Cancellations and Makeups
Policy of the New Mexico School of Music, mainly pertaining to in-person lessons.
Student Cancellations (SC) – Students may cancel one lesson per semester during the school year and will receive a makeup lesson. A 24-hour advance notice of a cancellation is normally required, however no one wants to teach a sick student so we do accept cancellations on the same day in the case of illness.
Teacher Cancellations (TC) – Teachers must make up all lessons that they cancel. This can be done by extending the length of several lessons, or scheduling a separate makeup lesson.
Scheduling Makeups – For in-person lessons, we will coordinate makeups with the NMSM or arrange a convenient online lesson. For lessons typically taught online, we will arrange an online lesson according to our schedules.
Useful links
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Recital Program Nov 22, 2024
Brass studio recital at NMSM - perf66Event
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Performance Event Form
Submit this form to let me know what concerts and performances you have done.
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Zoom Audio
How to set up Zoom for audio on the iPad, iPhone, and Android for musical instruments.
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Download BPM for Mac OS
Advanced metronome and music studies
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Inspiring trombone performance
Inspiring student trombone performance
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Gunhild Carling plays 3 trumpets
Happy New year!!!!!! Gunhild Carling plays three trumpets at the same time
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Inspiring Ode to Joy video
Inspiring flash performance of Ode to Joy