Any Trumpet Players?

noahsan · #1 02-12-2010, 10:02 PM

In my quest in learning standard musical notation, one of my friends suggested that learning on a different instrument, such as a trumpet, is a good way to learn musical notation. Anybody agree? I think it would be fun to noodle around on a trumpet, even though it would not be my main focus, it stills sounds like a lot of fun to play around with a new instrument. Is this a bad idea? Anyone else on here play trumpet as well? Suggestions? Thanks!

bkdavidson · #2 02-12-2010, 10:57 PM

I played trumpet for two years before I played guitar, and continued all the way through college. I've known so many guitarists who also played trumpet, and in my 5+ years of teaching lessons for a living have had countless students that play trumpet in band. I've never understood what the correlation is. Anyway, playing another instrument will help with recognizing notes on the staff, since other instruments don't have tablature. Playing trumpet before guitar did help me, since I was teaching myself. What I did is buy the book for whatever I wanted to learn (at that time, all the Metallica I could get my hands on) and watch the notes and the TAB. I already knew, for instance, that the 4th space was E, so I could look at the TAB and see where the notes were on the guitar. Having said that, if you've been playing just guitar for a while, you'd probably be better off getting something like the Mel Bay or William Leavitt books. I think learning another instrument just to improve your reading on guitar would be very inefficent. If you were coming from a different instrument already, it would be a different story.

pierre richard · #3 02-13-2010, 01:13 AM

If you want to learn to play the guitar...study notation that applies to the guitar....their are many good sites that will help you get there...I posted some 15 - 20 elsewhere in this forum...

For the love of music and wanting to arrange for bigger bands..over the years I have learned to play 20 instruments and it really improved my arranging but the time spent on those other instruments was not time spent on the guitar...

Time on the instrument is time on the instrument you want to master...if not just play well..we all aspire to be wes montgomery/joe pass/tal farlow or any other well known jazz guitarists you care to follow...but time on the guitar is what you need to progress..

pierre