Playing Multiple Brass Instruments
As a lifelong trumpet player, I didn’t start taking low brass seriously until 2022. I messed around on trombone a lot during high school, but I had never played in an ensemble on any brass instrument besides trumpet until 2023. Ever since I got more serious about playing low brass, there have been a few things I’ve learned about playing multiple instruments that I would deem rather important to be aware of for those considering doing the same thing. I definitely think you can extrapolate these principles to other instruments - whether you’re doing multiple woodwinds, brass and woodwinds, etc. - but keep in mind that my firsthand experience is only in brass instruments.
Basic Principles
Each instrument you add on will multiply your problems.
You will need to experiment a lot to find your ideal mouthpiece for each instrument.
Compartmentalize your practice as much as you possibly can.
If you can remember these three things, then it should be relatively clear what you’ll need to do in order to get better at multiple instruments. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, because it definitely won’t, but the process itself won’t be complex. Just because something is hard doesn’t necessarily mean it’s complicated. I’ll break down each of these guidelines below:
Each instrument you add on will multiply your problems. - As most brass players are all too familiar with, there are many times where you will have bad playing days/weeks/months/[hopefully not] years. These sometimes happen because you were tired from heavy playing the day before, but sometimes these happen for no discernible reason whatsoever. When you add another/multiple instrument(s), the bad days will only increase, and the severity of them will be worse. I told someone once that you should think of the problems you have on your primary instrument and then multiply that by 100. I’m being a little facetious when I say that, but the point is that you should expect more problems to pop up with your playing on all instruments.
There are days where I’m playing horribly on all of my instruments, days where I’m playing great on every instrument except for the one that I need to perform on, days where I’m only playing low notes well and nothing else, and so on and so forth. Those problems just come with the territory of playing multiple instruments. As you get better, they’ll happen less and less, but expect them to happen a lot in the beginning stages of playing multiple instruments. The sooner you accept that, the better off you’ll be.
You will need to experiment a lot to find your ideal mouthpiece for each instrument. - As someone who plays on a fairly big mouthpiece for trumpet (Bach 1C) and a mouthpiece that, as far as I’m aware, isn’t considered that small for lead playing (Bach 3C), when buying mouthpieces for other instruments, I had assumed that I would prefer big mouthpieces for them. After buying some rather large stuff, such as a Bach 3G for Large Bore Tenor Trombone and a Bach 1G for Bass Trombone, I quickly found out that I don’t like big mouthpieces on every single instrument. For Large Bore Tenor Trombone, I currently play on a Bach 5G, and for Bass Trombone, my favorite is a Bach 2G. I say this because I tried a decent amount of mouthpieces before I settled on those two, and I’ve had to go through the same process for other instruments as well.
If there’s one easy way to summarize everything I’m saying, it would be this: there appears to be NO CORRELATION between what mouthpieces I prefer for each instrument. I think it would be wise for anyone else to make that assumption about themselves; be prepared to try a lot of mouthpieces to find what you like. Don’t be surprised if you’re “shooting in the dark” when trying to find an ideal mouthpiece for an instrument that’s new to you.
Compartmentalize your practice on each instrument as much as you possibly can. - This is probably the most counterintuitive - and most important - piece of advice that I can give. You should separate the practice/playing you do on each instrument for as long as you possibly can. To give a clear example:
Let’s say you have a week of free time that you would like to dedicate to practicing, and you want to get better at trumpet and trombone. It is FAR better to spend several days IN A ROW practicing one instrument and then switch at the halfway point than it is to switch instruments each day. If you play trumpet on day 1, trombone on day 2, trumpet on day 3, etc., you’ll be in a worse spot than if you play trumpet for several days and then trombone for the rest. I would say that this rings true no matter how long the period of time in question is; if you have an entire month and you can afford to, spend the 1st half of the month on one instrument and the 2nd half on the other. The more you switch, the worse it’ll be.
Something I like to compare this to is multitasking. Years ago, when *multitasking was at the forefront of public discussion, a common statement that people who studied it would say was “The more you practice multitasking, the worse you get at it”. If you want to be good at multitasking, you need to get good at the individual tasks. When you see people who can switch between brass instruments [relatively] effortlessly, I firmly believe it’s because they’re good at both instruments from individual practice on each one, and not because they tried to practice switching between them. I spent a lot of time in the beginning switching between instruments on a daily basis, and that largely worked against me; compartmentalize the time spent on each instrument as much as possible.
There are 2 things that people will bring up when I mention this:
1. “I like to switch between the instruments, though.”
2. “What if I have to regularly switch between each instrument?”
For the 1st point, this is where you’ll have to make some tough decisions. I don’t have to worry about this because I feel relatively motivated to stay on one instrument and get the practicing that I need to get done, but for many people, I completely understand the conflict. Remember the phrase “Two things can be true at once”. It’s probably true that you like switching between the instruments; it makes practicing a bit more fun and helps you keep your motivation up; however, that doesn’t change the fact that - controlling for all other variables - it’s still better for you to only practice one. You have to make a choice: do you want to switch to keep your motivation up, or do you want to stay on the same instrument to increase the quality of your practice time? Efficiency in your practice is important, but so is motivation. If what you’re doing is not going to last because you’ll end up quitting due to getting burnt out/losing interest, then it’s worth it to accept a reduced level of improvement to keep your morale up. The name of the game is sustainability.
An analogy I like to use for this: I have some friends who work as personal trainers. A very common question they get asked by clients is “What’s the best exercise I can do?” A common response they give is “The best exercise you can do is the exercise that you WILL do.” A lot of people will tell those who are starting their fitness journey to “Make it fun for yourself.” The reason for that is fairly simple, but to be Captain Obvious: you want to make fitness fun for yourself so that you don’t end up quitting. The same goes for practicing music. I’m all for pushing yourself to be as efficient as possible, but for many people, they just won’t have the discipline to go that far. You need to accept your limits and then decide what the best course of action is from there. It’s a highly personalized process, and if regularly switching between instruments helps you stay motivated, then do it, but don’t deny the truth to yourself [or others] about how staying on the same instrument is better IF you can force yourself to.
For the 2nd point, let’s use the common situation of someone playing trumpet in jazz band and french horn in their wind ensemble class. If this describes or is analogous to your situation, the best thing for you to do is to just focus on your personal practice time. If you need to practice french horn for awhile, then any time you’re practicing on your own, only play french horn. You’ll still have to play trumpet everyday, which isn’t ideal, but don’t spend any of your personal practice time on trumpet. Let’s say you do that for a week; if you need to practice stuff on trumpet and everything seems fine regarding your french horn playing, switch over to only playing trumpet during your personal practice time.
I regularly do this whenever I have an audition or a rather difficult concert coming up. If I’m playing multiple brass instruments for different ensembles, but I have a bass trombone audition, I’ll only practice bass trombone. I’m still playing those other instruments, but only during rehearsals. Again, this isn’t ideal if improvement is your primary concern; this is just making the best of your current situation.
Playing several instruments at the same time isn’t for the faint of heart - especially if you want to be good at them - but you can make the process a bit easier by following the above guidelines. There’s not much useful counsel out there for playing multiple brass instruments because not that many people are successfully doing it, so keep in mind that you’re sailing in uncharted waters. However, if you’re able to pull it off, speaking from personal experience, it can be a very fulfilling pursuit.
*I’m aware that many people like to point out the word “multitasking” is a misnomer. You’re not doing two tasks at the same time; you’re switching between them very quickly.
