Bousquet Summer Practice Routine

100 Days to Trumpet Mastery (or at least close!)

Prerequisite: You must have already learned all of the 36 Celebrated Etudes to the best of your ability for this system to have its greatest rewards

One hundred days seems like a lot of time, and it is. These one hundred days will pass whether you practice or not. Choose if you want to be better at the end of those 100 days or the same as you are now. Thirty minutes per day is probably the minimum that will produce results, and an hour should be the maximum you spend. As you advance through the steps you will probably find you need a little more time, but it will not double as you go into Step 2 or triple in Step 3 because you know each etude better and will not have as many problem spots to work on.

Strive for perfection within the time you allow yourself, but be willing to accept flaws that will not go away. Playing the Bousquet studies over the course of these 100 days will eliminate many, many of these problems.

Step 1 (Days 1-36) –  Practice each etude for one day –  work as hard as you can to overcome all challenges, particularly focusing on:
A) playing every pitch and rhythm correctly, and observing all articulations as marked
B) making every attack and slur clean and each note with good tone quality
C) at the end of each etude, play a note that fits the piece somewhere around high C –  don’t hurt yourselfl Approach it by scale, arpeggio, or octave.

Step 2  (Days 37-54) – start over and practice 2 etudes per day, trying to play them even more accurately and cleaner than Step 1

Step 3 (Days 55-66) –  start over and play 3 etudes per day, even higher standards

Step 4 (Days 67-75) –  start over and play 4 etudes per day, even higher standards

Step 5  (Days 76-82) –  start over and play 5 etudes per day, even higher standards (You’ll have to play 6 etudes one of the days)

Step 6 (Days 83-88) –  start over and play 6 etudes per day, even higher standards

Step 7  (Days 89-93) – start over and play 7 etudes per day, even higher standards (You’ll have to play 8 etudes one of the days)

Step 8 (Days 94-97) –  start over and play 9 etudes per day, even higher standards

Step 9 (Days 98-100) – start over and play 12 etudes per day, even higher standards

Anyone for 18 per day? 36? You must have chops of steel!