Getting Started With Standard Of Excellence Trumpet Book 1
I've worked through this book with more students than I care to count, mostly at the middle school level where it's basically the default curriculum. It's not fancy, it's not groundbreaking, and it gets the job done if you use it correctly. The most common mistake I see teachers and parents make is treating it like a complete method on its own. It isn't. The book itself has 65 lessons spread across five sections. The first section covers basic posture, breath support, and producing a sound on the trumpet. Section two moves into reading music and the three valve combinations you'll use most. The later sections add new notes, long tones, lip slurs, and etudes. The exercises are practical but repetitive by design. That repetition is the point. One thing the book doesn't address well is what to do when a student can't produce a sound on their first try. This is extremely common, especially with kids who've never held brass before. The Kjos book suggests buzzing into the mouthpiece, which works for some kids but leaves others frustrated and staring at a mute piece of tubing. My workaround was to have them hum "ha" into the mouthpiece while I gently place it on their lips. The vocalization tends to relax the embouchure enough for a buzz to happen naturally. Once they hear a sound, they get it. Before that, it's just guessing.
Standard Of Excellence 1 Trumpet Review And How To Actually Use It
The metronome clicks are useful but the timing in the practice routines is unrealistic for most beginners. The book says 10 to 15 minutes of practice per day. That's fine on paper. In practice, a fifth grader who just learned to play three notes is going to max out at about eight minutes before their lips give up. Pushing past that point causes tension and bad habits faster than anything else. The etudes in this book are where most students hit their first wall. Exercise 18 in section three, the one that introduces the D note on the first finger, catches people out because the finger changes don't match the hand position they're used to from recorder or keyboard. I found that having students tap the rhythm on their knees before playing it cuts practice time significantly. If they've already physically felt the rhythm, reading it on the page becomes secondary. There's a counter-intuitive thing about the long tone exercises that most beginners miss. The book tells you to hold notes for a count of four and that's correct, but the real work isn't in sustaining the pitch. It's in keeping the air moving at a steady rate while the note decays naturally at the end. Most students hold their breath or push too hard at the end to keep volume up. The tone gets thin and sharp. What actually sounds good is letting the note fade out while the air keeps going. That takes practice separate from the method book, which is worth noting.
The valve oil recommendations in the book are outdated. The original Kjos editions suggest using three drops per valve per week. Modern valves with better tolerances need less frequent oiling. I check mine once every two weeks in normal room conditions. If the valves feel sluggish or slow to return, that's the signal. Over-oiling creates a gummy residue that attracts dust and slows things down further. A couple drops on each valve, work it in by pressing all three valves at once, let it sit for thirty seconds, then wipe the excess off with a clean cloth. Takes about forty-five seconds total. One genuine limitation of this book is that it doesn't cover alternate fingerings until much later, if at all in Book 1. For a beginner that doesn't matter, but it's worth knowing upfront. If a student is progressing quickly and hitting the high register, they'll eventually need to know about fork fingering and other alternatives. That content comes in Book 2 and beyond. The book also doesn't address ear training at all. Students learn to play by looking at the page and matching their embouchure. Building intonation awareness has to come from elsewhere, usually through matching pitches with a piano or tuning fork, which the book mentions but never assigns. For anyone downloading or purchasing this, make sure you have the 2017 revised edition if possible. The earlier versions had a misprint in Exercise 34 where the G note was notated with the wrong accidental in measure 4. It's a small error but enough to confuse a student who's still developing note recognition. The revised edition corrected it. Whether this counts as a download or a physical book depends on your publisher's current distribution, but the ISBN for the student book is 978-1-61184-286-4 and the accompanying piano duet book is 978-1-61184-287-1.
The biggest edge case I encountered involved a student with a naturally tighter upper lip who couldn't reach the high C in the final etude. The book assumes a standard range progression that doesn't account for individual anatomy. I had this student work on lip slurs descending from high G down to middle C for two weeks before attempting the etude again. The high C came into range after that focused work. Other students with similar tight-lip profiles needed the same approach. It's not in the method, but it's worth knowing if you're working through this book with a class that includes kids with varying physical backgrounds.
