Biography

Billy Edwall is a musician based in San Diego, CA. Billy has been called one of the busiest working trumpet players in San Diego for the number of dates he plays each year. He is mostly known for his lead playing and unwavering endurance, and thus manages to keep a full-time working schedule as a trumpet player throughout the year via teaching privately and an abundance of gig opportunities.

Billy became interested in the trumpet at age 9, after seeing the saxophone played on The Simpsons by Lisa, and thinking it was so cool that she could pick up her "trumpet" any time and make her own music. So he asked his parents for a trumpet, and, well, that's what he got! Billy attended San Diego State University where he recieved an undergraduate degree in Trumpet Performance, and a master's degree in Jazz Studies.

Billy has the opportunity of playing trumpet for a variety of settings around San Diego and LA, including the world famous San Diego Zoo Chameleons Brass Band and Jingle Brass, the Sea World Sea Street Band and Christmas Brass, the Legoland Brass Band, the BOOMF! Brass Band, the Gaslamp Quarter Jazz Orchestra, a number of musical theatres such as San Diego Musical Theatre, his own dixieland band, Dapper Dixie, the Manny Cepeda Orchestra, military functions, and weddings, amongst other miscellaneous corporate events. Billy can be seen at the the San Diego Zoo any day during the summer as he performs over 100 days in row, 7 days a week, as the lead trumpet for the Chameleons.

When Billy isn't playing or teaching, he enjoys spending time with his wife and son, writing new tunes to multitrack (you can see some of these on the media page), playing plenty of video games, and working on home improvement.

One of his favorite things to do, however, is talk gear and technique. He hopes to be able to transfer the knowledge of everything he's learned so far in his deep exploration of the trumpet to his students, and is inspired when they achieve a foundational understanding of a new technique, making a big leap forward in their own playing.

A Short Story

What sparked my interest in proper trumpet technique?

Around 2017, I started having major chop problems. No matter what I did, I couldn't make my embouchure feel good or right. I started having more bad days than good days. I grew up with a sort of raw talent for the trumpet, and never had a need to change anything. I would puff my cheeks out in the upper register (ala Dizzy), and always got good results doing so. As I developed my range more, and started getting in to the double register, my cheeks couldn't take the intense pressure any more.

Well, long story short, my cheeks were essentially starting to tear, painfully, on the inside. I could look in the mirror and puff my cheeks out, and the left side would be filled with air all the way up to my eye. I decided this was simply not sustainable, and if I kept going how I was, I was bound to do permanent damage, potentially to the point of not being able to play trumpet anymore.

This was when I changed everything. I started looking in to every possible avenue of proper technique. I picked the brains of my colleagues, my old teachers, my current teachers, reached out for lessons from new teachers, and watched plenty of youtube videos from well-known players at the top of their game. I started listening very intently to what my favorite trumpet players were actually doing when they played. I began to hear the techniques they were using in their playing and started to implement them in to my own.

I spent countless hours in meditative thought about the physics of what's actually going on when you change from note to note, up and down, and practicing the feelings of those physics in action on the trumpet. I practice these things every single day, because that's what makes the trumpet work (for me). Because of all this, my playing has become far more consistent from day to day, everything is easier, nothing hurts, and there aren't really any truly bad days any more.

(lol...)

Cheeks puffed

Extra mouthpiece, safety first..