The Signal – The Blog of Dr. Lexie

If you’re a brass player or more specifically a trumpet or trombone player, some teacher at some point has subjected you to the beautiful torture that is long tones. For those of you reading who are not of the musical persuasion, playing long tones is exactly what it sounds like- a brass player will play one note at a time, typically for the duration of a comfortable breath and then take a break before moving on to the next note. There are innumerable methods which brass players use to navigate this exercise, but in many cases the purpose of playing these is lost in the sauce. We don’t play long tones just to build endurance, tone, and train our ear; we play them to train our mind to do the job of being uncomfortable for extended periods of time while maintaining a beautiful sound doing so.

Long tones get a bad rap among some brass players. They’re often regarded as antiquated, too time consuming, or just “bad” for your face. I am more of the mindset that long tones are essential to our development as musicians, can be applied to nearly every discipline and are more about the mind-body connection than they are about the minutia of what note to play, when, and how. My training in long tones is based in the methodology of Bill Adam, famed trumpet professor of Indiana University, who is responsible for some of the most famous names in the trumpet world like Chris Botti and Jerry Hey. Within Mr. Adam’s teaching philosophy is contained some of the best psychological reprogramming tools I’ve experienced as a student and it was that part of long tone playing which has helped me overcome stage fright and manage my CPTSD using my trumpet as a medium.

Plenty of us have been scarred by a former teacher and/or encounters from a former life which have marred us psychologically. For me, I had an extremely uncertain childhood, experienced scarcity and violence from a young age and ended up with some gnarly CPTSD for the trouble. I started playing trumpet when I was 11, and it became my solace from the chaos. It was the one thing I was allowed to do nearly without question so long as I kept playing and was actively working on something. In retrospect, that is an odd line in the sand for my parents to draw but hey… I think it worked out pretty well!

It wasn’t until almost three decades later that I met Pat Harbison who acted as my Guru for induction into the Adam clan and I slowly began my journey to trumpet enlightenment. To this day, every Adam clan member has their own individual take and practice, not unlike religion or yoga and that’s part of what makes our collective experiences with the Adam methodology so meaningful and deeply encouraging! For me, the lead pipe and long tones portion of routine became not only a diagnostic tool for checking in with my face to see what she is up to for the day but also a chance to assess the volume and number of voices in my head pulling me in a thousand different directions.

It takes some time and repetition, as well as a mind set shift to really get out of long tones all the benefits I now know are possible. There are scads of folks who feel strongly that long tones just use up your endurance for the day, and if they’re done early enough and with intention I think the opposite is true. When you play long tones, you are answering the hum of the universe itself, you are practicing aligning upper harmonics to produce the most concentrated beautiful sound possible. For those brief moments of your day, it’s just you, your mind, and the universe having a little jam session. I hope every human and every musician gets to experience the peace that is possible through long tones!

Not to toot my own horn here, but I’m guessing if you found yourself here in the first place you might be a trumpet player. If you are and you’d like to do a meditation session via long tones, feel free to reach out via instagram or email me directly at lexie@lexiethetrumpeter.com. I’d be happy to help you find peace through long tones as I have! It’ll help your chops and your mind be more calm and ready for the challenging days ahead, whatever they may bring. ❤️