I've mentioned before that I'm not one to chase after the newest and best gear, but I do get easily distracted by new concepts that I read about. Recently Dr. Murray's continued words finally clicked for me that the breath and flow must be in place or else we are chasing after the wrong thing. For example, we might need to adjust our bottom lip to get maximum vibration, but if we work on it without a full breath in place, then we never put this "new habit" that we are trying to establish into a workable context.
Long story short, a full breath for me is not quite a habit yet. However, I remember Tim Hudson mentioning that working on breathing is still something he has to continually check up on. So I'm having to be overly intentional now, but I will still have to be aware of this throughout my career. Hopefully it will take less time every morning to "re-build the house," or as Luis E. Loubriel says in Back to Basics for Trumpeters, "start each day going through each step of what makes the instrument work." I'm trusting that this work on a full breath will become such a natural part of what I do, that any other aspects of my playing that I work on will make sense in this context.
Time to Keep Exploring,
Adam C White
