Trumpet sheet music for beginners

Trumpet sheet music for beginners includes method books and easy song collections for your first months of playing the trumpet, cornet or flugelhorn. Czech method books form the core of the selection, teaching you how to produce a tone, read music and work through your first technical exercises. For everyday practice, there are English-language collections from Hal Leonard with pop songs, tunes from Disney films and familiar pieces. You'll find trumpet sheet music here for children at music school as well as adults taking up the instrument.

A trumpet method book or a song collection – which should you buy first?

A method book guides beginners step by step, starting with articulation, breathing and the first notes. Škola hry na trubku I by Krčma and Vaigl is a textbook for the first two years of music school, and its pieces have piano accompaniment. Jaroslav Kolář's practical method has been published since 1960, and the first book also introduces the basics of music theory.

Song collections don't follow this kind of teaching method. Titles such as First 50 Songs You Should Play on the Trumpet or 50 Pop Songs for Kids for Trumpet are a reward after the first lessons: pieces the student knows and wants to play. They make sense alongside a method book rather than as a replacement for one.

Can you use a trumpet method book for cornet and flugelhorn too?

The B♭ trumpet, cornet and flugelhorn use the same fingerings on their three piston valves and read the same notation. That's why Kolář's method names all three instruments in its title, and you can work through the first exercises on any of them. Their main difference is tone colour: the flugelhorn sounds mellower, while the trumpet sounds brighter.

How does a recorded accompaniment help you practise at home?

The book Instrumental Play-Along Trumpet: Disney Greats has a recorded full-band accompaniment for each piece, which you can play online using the code in the book. The player lets you slow down the tempo and repeat a passage in a loop, so you can learn the piece slowly first and then play along with the band. You'll find more sheet music for the first years of learning other instruments in the Sheet music for beginners category.