I hate practicing. Infact i never practice that is the "P" word. I had a teacher once in college that told me about "not practicing." How by never practicing you can grow to be a great player and love your instrument. are you ready for the secret?

Dont practice, PLAY. Playing your horn is fun cool and all that stuff practicing is tedious and rough. when you play your horn and you sound good cause you play all the time it is like wow this rocks. if you are always practicing your horn it gets booring and well just no fun.

I play my horn at least 1 hr each day befor i go to a rehersal or gig, i usually end up with close to 3 hours a day with my horn inmy face and playing total. I recomend after school or what ever go home take your horn out and play for at least 20 minits. see how long you can hold a note for and try to strech that time out longer and longer(long tone exercizes see) make it a game. do the lipslurs but be a little gofie with them for instance start in 6th position c lip up one partial but also slide the slide in one posistion to fifth then up another partial and posistion ajust for intonation and with in a couple weeks you will have range and tone.

any way the point is dont PRACTICE, Play

Just make sure when you "play" instead of "practice" that you don`t just run through something once and say, yeah, I`m ready. That`s pretty much the worst thing we can do. We need that attention to detail that you only get from rehearsing something over and over again, listening to examples, and trying different methods with it.

Just remember one thing. There is always someone out there that is willing to work harder and practice more than you. And the second we say, yeah, I`m good enough to not practice any more, is the second we start loosing gigs. There are lots of things we can do to make practicing fun. Play stuff you like in between the stuff you don`t like, call "practicing" something else, work with other people, whatever. It`s just something we do, and something we should enjoy.

I guess my point is, whatever you do, PLAY YOUR HORN. Love playing it, play it often. Play it when you are practicing, play it when you are performing, play it when you are rehearsing. If whenever you touch your horn you play it, you will always improve.

An old band director from college once said, "Play every note, in performance, practice, and rehearsal, like it is the last note you will ever play in your life." Words to live by.

Interesting. It`s a music forum, yet the sensor bot won`t let us say "r.e.h.e.a.r.s.e." because it says I wrote "a.r.s.e." It says it must be changed. Hmmm.... Interesting.