Cat No. JM41492
Price £8.99
Composer / arranger: Howard Snell
Categories: Books, Howard Snell Music

This is a book of "know how", of practical expertise, by a musician of almost 50 years of professional music making at the highest levels. Written to serve all musicians aspiring to the highest levels on their instruments. Solve specific problems in the short term, Maximise talent in the long term, Develop physical & mental skills, Strengthen performance security & attitudes.

Howard writes as a foreword in the book :

During my early years as a student, the teaching I received was restricted to comments such as ‘Do it like this’ or more often ‘Don’t do that!’ I heard very fine players do ‘it’ very well, but was given little real teaching guidance beyond ‘Do that again’ or ‘Slower, please!’ or ‘I’ll hear that again next week.’

What made players good or better or best was baffling. I was lucky as a child that a lot of performing experience came my way, not only on my own instrument but on the piano. I therefore had a decent foothold in the wider repertoire of music, not just that associated with the trumpet. I listened avidly to anything and everything on the radio from the symphonic repertoire across to big-band jazz. Equally important was my determination to learn at every opportunity.

When in the course of time I began to teach young people I did what I could in the usual way. However, midway through my working life I gave up my position as Principal Trumpet with the London Symphony Orchestra in order to conduct and subsequently to write music. I did decide however to continue as a teacher. The reason? I enjoyed it, and my students said that they valued what I did and how I did it.

It was then, as a non-player, that my approach to teaching quickly began to change: I began to focus totally on the student. I now recognised that the student’s primary motivation must come from his or her own vision of performance, and not from mine. In short, the student must teach himself: I would prompt the vision and help in its discovery and development. I would be the remover of obstacles, the provider of supporting knowledge and their sources for both instrumental and musical matters, and above all a source of encouragement. I found myself devising both general and precise solutions — algorithms, patterns, routines, call them what you will — to general and precise problems, solutions that, as a young player, I would have died for. I also found that there was a very great deal of practice and performance wisdom buried deep, in fragments, in musical literature. I found my teaching work spreading into conducting, the writing of music, to musicians from all instruments and latterly The Art of Teaching.
I produced a book The Trumpet, Its Practice and Performance, A Guide for Students that contained what I had learned from conducting, listening, playing, teaching and observing how the best musicians think. Its reception by players and teachers alike was excellent, and included the comment, time after time, that what I had written applied to all instruments, even to actors and singers.

With the passage of time and further reflection this new book is the result. If it is of practical use to young, developing musicians I will be delighted. If it stimulates enjoyment of music beyond the locality of the individual’s own instrument I will be even more pleased.

Some of the book will seem unorthodox, some of it may seem obscure on first reading - I have made very few concessions in the presentation of my ideas. I have never found that young people need patronising - but it gives as accurate a picture of my teaching of the skills of practice as I can.