Incase you guys are wondering how my routine is going, here is what's up. I've been practicing for 2-6 hours a day. At first I started to do 1 hour long sessions with long breaks but now I'm only doing 30 minute long sessions. My whole objective is to keep my lips fresh for the entire day so that I can play more that way. Before, I was wasting my chops by the 2nd practice session. Anyways, I've been doing my daily warm up and lip slurs. It usually takes me about 30 minutes to do my warm up and then I usually spend a good 2-4 hours on the lip slurs. As you can probably imagine my flexibily has gotten real real good. I'm probably lip slurring better then when I was doing the Claude Gordon routine or maybe at the same level. I'm not quite sure but everyday I've been seeing constant improvement. Today during the warm up I mouthpiece buzzed a double Ab and then I hit a high F# on the trumpet. But since too me range isn't really that important I'm more concerned about trying to get as flexible as Mr. Blount. I still have a lot of work to do. I feel like as if I'm in a constant competition with my self. Everyday I push my self to do better then yesterday. I think this is something new that I wasn't doing before. Anyways, after I'm done my lip slurs I do the etude that was assigned to me. I can play that pretty good, but not as strong as I would like to play it. The etude is pretty high for me. Actually it's right within my range. The etude stays up in the upper register the entire time. The purpose of it is to get me use to playing up in that register and just not hit the note but to be able to play the note. It's a very interesting but logical approach, but hey! it works! After I'm done the etude I usually pull out a song and play it or sometimes I do some sight reading.

Ok guys.. Today I attended my first private lesson ever with Mr. John Blunt. The guy is a monster of a player. After him playing for 6 hours he was still nailing some (if not) the fattest double C's that I've ever heard in my life. Basically he wanted to hear what he was working with and then I showed him some of the books I had. After that we started to work out of the "First Trumpeter" book. He had me doing a lot of lip buzzing. Basically if the I can get a clear buzz then I'm doing things right. He told me to move my chin more and to do a lot of lip slurs. Actually to be specific he told me that if I did 500 sets of lip slurs a day that still wouldn't be enough. So I'm just going to try to become a moster at doing lip slurs. Besides that we talked about some other stuff like compression of the air and stuff like that. It was a good lesson and I can't wait to go back.

Thanks everyone for all the support and advice. Everything went well. When I got to the stadium my nerves calmed down. While I was waiting to play I did a couple of poses for the camera man. And when they called me to play I had a quick little prayer and then just took a deep breath and played from the heart. I don't really remember how it went but from what other people told me I did pretty good. After I played I must have said "thank you" a million times. There were about 2000 people I would guess in the stadium (the stadium was packed). My 3rd grade music teacher just happended to be at the game and heard me play and he was suprise to see me and hear me. And then after the game this kid came up to me and he also ended up being a trumpet player. I told him about the importance of practice. So hopefully I was able to inspire him.. Over all it was real fun and now I think i'm ready for the major leagues... maybe the orioles??? j/p

Not much has been happenin lately. I've been doing a lot of playing a long with Chet Baker and I'm also all of the sudden interested in learning how to sing... Wednesday I have a gig at the ironbirds/cal ripken stadium. I was called to go play the national anthem for the baseball game. I really hope that I don't mess that up. And this friday I'm going to my first private teacher ever. I chose to go with John Blount. I really hope that my playing improves because I'm tired of sucking so much. He told me to bring all my books so I hope I learn how to use some of those books that I own. I'm really looking forward to this week. Marching band starts out august 4th. So that also has me pumped up.