Jaap Klijnstra

Commentary & Essays · Critical review

Samen leren samenspelen: A Critical Review

Motor learning, auditory models and the beginner’s learning environment

Jaap Klijnstra · Working paper · October 2026 · English translation

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Foreword

A beginning trumpet player must learn a complex motor skill. There is nothing exceptional about that in itself. Singing, speaking, writing and cycling are also complex motor skills. In each, the nervous system learns to organise many interdependent movements into one functional action.

For many instrumental teachers, this is an unfamiliar way of looking at a teaching method. Traditional brass pedagogy has grown largely out of teaching practice: demonstrating, explaining, breathing, posture, mouth position, tongue use, buzzing, singing, technical exercises, scales and pieces. Many teachers were themselves trained in this tradition. Consequently, this approach feels less like one possible pedagogical choice than the normal way brass is taught.

Motor learning asks a different question. Rather than starting with what the student must do with their body, it asks what the student must learn to be able to do. The answer is simple: play the trumpet.

This also changes how a method should be assessed. The question is not merely whether a book is clear, the exercises become gradually harder, the illustrations are attractive, the accompaniments sound enjoyable or teachers find it convenient. The decisive question is whether the method offers an optimal learning environment for learning to play the trumpet well.

This review examines that question for the trumpet/flugelhorn volumes of Samen leren samenspelen. The method consists of two substantial books and a digital environment containing demonstrations, accompaniment tracks and supplementary material. Part 1 has approximately 72 pages and twenty lessons; part 2 has approximately seventy pages and fifteen lessons. The written difficulty increases gradually. The production is professional, and the digital accompaniments may sound attractive on first hearing. Precisely for that reason, product quality must be distinguished from the quality of the learning environment.

A method can look beautiful, work conveniently for a teacher and contain enjoyable accompaniments while still giving the student less favourable conditions for learning the actual skill. That distinction is central to this review.

1. What must a beginning trumpet player learn?

During normal trumpet playing, the lips function as a valve driven by the resonating air column in the instrument. The valve opens and closes, regulating airflow into the instrument. Lip movement and pressure fluctuations in the instrument continually influence each other. Trumpet playing is therefore a coupled system of player and instrument, rather than an action of the lips alone.

Beginners do not need to know this physics to learn to play. They need to learn to use the system. That distinction matters. Explaining which body parts are involved in a skill is different from learning to perform it. We can cycle without consciously regulating individual muscles during every revolution. We can speak without consciously calculating the position of tongue, jaw and larynx for every vowel.

Experienced trumpet players likewise do not control their playing by consciously working through a list of bodily variables during every note. Extensive playing develops increasingly reliable control. Players know the sound they want to produce, perform the action, hear the result and use the difference between intention and result to adjust later attempts.

Beginners still have to build this system. What they hear, where they direct their attention and which actions they repeat hundreds and thousands of times therefore matter.

2. Sound concept, performance and comparison

A useful simple description of the learning process is: MODEL → PLAY → LISTEN → COMPARE → ADJUST.

By sound concept, we mean the stored representation of the intended sound. That representation must first develop. An external example—a teacher, a good player beside the student or a recording—provides information for it.

For example, students hear a well-played G, then play it themselves. They hear their own result and compare it with the sound they expected and intended. The next attempt is adjusted. This cycle occurs very frequently, rather than just once. The quality of the information at its beginning therefore helps determine how well the comparison at its end can be made.

For teachers brought up mainly with bodily instructions, this is an important distinction. The primary question is not how much students know about their breathing, abdomen, lips or tongue. It is whether they have a clear target sound and can perceive their own performance well enough to approach it.

3. Why beginners need good examples

A child learning to speak illustrates why good auditory examples matter. The child does not first learn the anatomy of speech or receive a diagram of tongue positions, jaw angles and air pressure. The child hears language. Many examples gradually produce a more accurate representation of the sounds they attempt to make.

Imagine a child learning a language from material in which the example voice is rarely heard. When present, the voice is always very loud and heavily covered by drums, bass and keyboard. In a few isolated examples it is heard alone, but with a clear echo. In most exercises, the example voice is absent altogether and only accompaniment is heard.

We would immediately recognise the missing element: insufficient clean, clear speech examples for developing accurate pronunciation.

A beginning trumpet player faces the same basic problem. Notation indicates the intended pitch and rhythm, but not how a good trumpet tone sounds. A fingering does not provide that sound either. Accompaniment can supply pulse, harmony and atmosphere, but cannot replace the instrumental example.

Experienced trumpet players can recognise a masked trumpet tone because they already know thousands of good trumpet tones. Beginners have much less experience with which to fill in missing auditory information. They particularly need a clean, representative example.

4. What Samen leren samenspelen offers

The method presents itself as a complete method for instrumental lessons and wind classes. According to its own description, the instrumental strand chiefly addresses instrument technique, while the wind class focuses more on general musical content and ensemble playing. The website supplies demonstration and accompaniment tracks, supplementary playing material and instructional videos.

The method is substantial and available for a broad range of instruments. Trumpet/flugelhorn part 1 contains approximately twenty lessons across about 72 pages. Part 2 contains approximately fifteen lessons across about seventy pages. Difficulty increases gradually. Part 2 introduces multiple parts, different voices, dynamics, articulation and longer pieces.

The editions examined have no contents page. This makes the complete learning sequence harder for teachers and students to survey, although it is not the method’s main problem.

5. An apparently attractive method

Samen leren samenspelen is professionally and attractively produced. The pages are carefully presented, the illustrations are aimed at children, and the accompaniments can give students the feeling of playing with a band or ensemble. Teachers understandably experience it as rich, convenient teaching material.

That is not the criterion used here, however. The question is what students need to learn trumpet playing as quickly and reliably as possible.

Motor learning changes the criterion. Rather than asking whether the book is attractive, there is abundant material, the accompaniment sounds enjoyable and the teacher can work with it easily, we must ask what information students receive, what task they actually practise, what feedback they receive and how much of their available learning time consists of relevant repetitions of trumpet playing.

An attractive illustration does not teach a trumpet tone. A clear page does not teach a trumpet tone. A well-produced bass part does not teach a trumpet tone. An enjoyable drum track does not teach a trumpet tone. These elements may provide enjoyment and musical context, but serve a different function from developing a sound concept and a reliable motor programme.

6. The absence of a usable trumpet model

This is the most serious problem emerging from the material examined.

An ordinary, clearly audible trumpet tone is absent from the audio material examined. Most play-along tracks contain no trumpet model at all. In demonstrations with accompaniment, the trumpet plays forte and is strongly masked by the accompaniment. The few demonstrations with trumpet alone are also played forte and contain a clearly audible echo.

Nowhere in the material examined does the student simply hear a good, ordinary trumpet tone—for example at mp or mf, recorded clearly and dry, without accompaniment masking its timbre. For beginners still developing their internal sound model, this is a fundamental shortcoming.

Students hear plenty of music, but little of the information most needed for their own tone development: this is how a good trumpet tone sounds; how it begins; how it develops; how it sounds at an ordinary dynamic; and how it ends.

Students can make a purposeful comparison only when both sides are available: how should it sound, and how do I sound? If the first side is insufficiently developed, the second question becomes harder to answer.

7. The demonstration recordings

Demonstrations serve a different purpose from accompaniment. Accompaniment may provide pulse, harmony, form, style and enjoyment. A demonstration must additionally let students hear what they are attempting to produce.

In the complete demonstrations examined, the trumpet plays forte and is strongly masked by the accompaniment. Students hear that a trumpet is present, but timbre, onset, note duration and finer dynamic information are less clearly perceptible than a beginner needs.

The few trumpet-only demonstrations do not resolve this problem. They too are forte and have a clear echo. Echo changes the direct sound and makes the example less suitable as a clean timbral reference.

In part 2, track 15.3, the masking is so strong that the trumpet is submerged in the accompaniment. This is especially problematic in a demonstration: the signal intended to serve as the model is not given acoustic priority.

8. Accompaniment without a trumpet model

In part 2, approximately one piece per lesson is available as a demonstration with trumpet; the remaining material consists of accompaniment without a trumpet model. This approach also occurs frequently in part 1.

For advanced players, this can work very well. Once they know their part and have a stable sound concept, a rhythm section can provide an attractive environment for independent playing.

Beginners are in a different situation. They must simultaneously read notes, execute fingerings, produce tone, organise timing, listen to themselves and maintain their place in the music. If the accompaniment does not demonstrate their part, they must reconstruct the melodic information from notation and memory.

The accompaniment then primarily provides harmonic and metrical context. That is valuable, but it is not an auditory model.

9. The strong backbeat

Several tracks examined have a very strong backbeat on beats 2 and 4. This was observed in part 1 tracks 19.2, 19.3 and 19.4, and in Blues for All in part 2.

A backbeat is musically normal in many pop, blues and reggae styles. The objection is therefore not to accenting beats 2 and 4. The question is why these accents must be so dominant in the mix for beginners.

Experienced players hear the complete bar and experience beats 2 and 4 as groove. Beginners still trying to maintain their position within the bar may chiefly hear the two most prominent events: beat 2 and beat 4. Beat 1, the principal orientation point for the bar’s structure, is not necessarily the most prominent auditory anchor.

When the same student is simultaneously learning a new fingering, rhythm or note, the accompaniment adds another interpretive task. Arrangements can be musically enjoyable while being less suitable as an initial learning environment.

10. Cognitive load

Beginning trumpet players have automated very little. Things demanding almost no conscious attention from an experienced teacher may be separate tasks for a student.

When students must consciously monitor breathing, abdominal movement, posture or other body parts while playing, some of their available attention goes to bodily control. That portion of cognitive capacity is then unavailable for the primary learning task: imagining the intended sound, playing, listening to the result and comparing it with that sound concept.

The same applies to a complex musical environment. Processing notation, valves, rhythm, tone production, accompaniment and strong backbeats simultaneously divides available cognitive capacity among more tasks.

This is an important distinction from traditional brass pedagogy, which often assumes that more information about what the body should do is helpful. Motor learning first asks whether students need to control that bodily function consciously to learn the task. If they do not, the instruction adds another task.

11. Bodily instructions, breathing language and posture

Part 1 contains several explicit bodily instructions. These include references to breathing out and prescriptions for posture, including sitting upright without leaning against the backrest.

For healthy students, breathing out is not a new motor skill. They have done it throughout their lives. Instructing it as a separate conscious action during trumpet playing makes an automatic process subject to conscious control.

The same applies to general posture rules when no functional problem is present. Many experienced orchestral players regularly lean against a backrest. The relevant question is whether a student’s posture actually obstructs playing, rather than whether they adopt a prescribed pose.

An effective teacher corrects a bodily aspect when a concrete problem limits performance. Bodily information then becomes a targeted intervention instead of a permanent list of things students must monitor while playing.

12. Buzzing as a different motor-acoustic task

Buzzing has a clear place in part 1. Students buzz without the instrument and on the mouthpiece, make sirens, and in lesson 19 perform a passage first on trumpet and then on the mouthpiece alone.

Teachers trained in traditional brass pedagogy may find this entirely self-evident. Motor learning, however, first asks which task students ultimately want to learn.

What do students want to learn? To play the trumpet.

What should the motor programme be built around? Trumpet playing.

What should the sound concept be connected with? The trumpet’s sound and response.

Where should repetitions take place? On the instrument.

Buzzing adds a different motor-acoustic task. The lips work without the normal acoustic load and feedback of the complete instrument. Students must subsequently translate that experience back into trumpet playing. Even if buzzing itself has not been shown to cause harm, it is still necessary to demonstrate why this detour is better than spending the same time directly on the instrument.

The physical reason is concrete. During normal playing, the lips function as a valve driven by the resonating air column in the instrument. Buzzing without the complete instrument lacks that normal acoustic coupling. The task is therefore not simply “trumpet playing without a trumpet”.

The same applies to the siren. If the aim is to imagine rising and falling pitch, singing can support that aim directly. If the aim is to learn to produce higher and lower notes on trumpet, playing the trumpet is the most specific exercise.

13. Singing and clapping

Singing and clapping should be assessed differently from buzzing. They can be functional aids. Singing can strengthen the melodic representation; clapping can temporarily simplify a rhythmic problem.

Teachers must nevertheless keep asking which problem is being solved. If students already hear and understand a rhythm, there is no self-evident reason to begin with a separate clapping exercise. If a melody is already clear, singing need not be a compulsory intermediate step.

Every preparatory activity takes time. For amateur students with limited practice hours, how much of the available time is actually spent on the instrument matters.

14. Task specificity: learning by playing the trumpet

The most specific practice for trumpet playing is trumpet playing. That sounds simple, but has far-reaching consequences for designing a beginner’s method.

If students must learn to begin a note, let them hear a good onset and perform it on trumpet. If they must learn a phrase, let them hear the phrase and play it on their trumpet. If they must learn a new note, let them hear it and immediately find it on the instrument.

If performance is not yet successful, the first question should not automatically be which additional bodily instruction to introduce. The task can first be simplified, the model presented more clearly or the student given another relevant attempt.

This keeps the learning cycle short: hear, play, listen, compare, adjust, play again.

15. The first learning period is not neutral

The initial learning period matters because this is when the motor programme and sound concept develop. Students do not begin with a fully developed system needing only refinement.

Every repetition provides information and strengthens particular solutions. Playing extensively without a good sound model also practises playing without an accurate external reference. A continually forte example provides a one-sided reference. Having to hear one’s own tone against loud accompaniment makes accurate self-perception harder.

Directing substantial attention towards abdomen, breathing, posture or other bodily variables likewise becomes part of the learned strategy. How the first dozens of lessons are organised therefore matters.

16. Slower learning and its costs

The principal consequence of a suboptimal learning environment is not that students learn nothing. They probably will progress. The relevant comparison is what the same students could have learned in the same time under better conditions.

Students who hear many clear models, practise directly on their instrument, hear their own result well and complete short cycles of attempt and comparison receive substantial task-specific information per hour.

Students who spend part of that same time buzzing, monitoring their bodies and performing preparatory tasks, then play with accompaniment in which their part is absent, receive less direct information about the target skill per hour.

The difference may seem small in an individual exercise. A method, however, spans dozens of lessons, and students practise for months or years. Small losses in relevant practice time and informational value can accumulate.

This particularly matters for amateur players. They generally do not have several hours of daily study with which to compensate for inefficient learning. Half an hour should therefore contain as many good, relevant repetitions as possible.

17. Motivation and possible dropout

Learning speed is not solely a technical issue. Students experience whether practice produces results: tone improves, melodies become easier, ensemble playing becomes simpler and the instrument increasingly does what they want.

That experienced progress contributes to a sense of competence. If the same effort produces less audible progress, the relationship between effort and reward becomes less favourable.

A plausible chain follows: a less effective learning environment → slower development → less experienced progress → a weaker sense of competence → less motivation → greater vulnerability to dropout.

This review does not claim that Samen leren samenspelen has been shown to cause dropout. Specific longitudinal data would be required. It does, however, show why learning efficiency matters for retention. For children choosing among music, sport, social activities and digital media, practice must provide sufficient audible returns to remain attractive.

Apparently attractive accompaniment may support short-term motivation. Sustained motivation also involves feeling that one is genuinely improving. An optimal method should therefore combine attractive music with a highly efficient learning environment.

18. What a better digital learning environment would offer

The method’s digital infrastructure provides an opportunity to support learning much better. Each new exercise could have a sequence of tracks that gradually reduces support.

The first track is a model: a good trumpet player performs the part at an ordinary dynamic, recorded clearly and dry, without masking accompaniment.

The second lets students play with that model. The example remains clearly audible, allowing continual comparison of timing, pitch, articulation and sound.

The third adds a light musical context. The trumpet remains audible while bass, harmony or a simple pulse is added.

The fourth is the full play-along. Here the model trumpet may disappear and the accompaniment may become musically richer. Independent performance is now the aim.

The progression becomes: MODEL → PLAY WITH THE MODEL → MODEL + CONTEXT → FULL ACCOMPANIMENT.

This does not make accompaniment less enjoyable. It places it at the point where it is pedagogically most useful.

19. How the same method could be fundamentally improved

The written musical material need not be completely replaced. Much of the improvement could come from organising the learning environment around that same material differently.

20. Conclusion

Samen leren samenspelen is an apparently attractive, professionally produced method. The books are carefully presented, their progression is clear and there is abundant digital material. These qualities explain why teachers may find it convenient and complete.

The central question here, however, is whether the method offers beginning trumpet players an optimal learning environment, rather than how attractive teachers find the package.

Based on the material examined, the answer is no.

The principal shortcoming is the auditory model. An ordinary, clearly recorded trumpet tone is absent. Most play-along tracks contain no trumpet. In demonstrations with accompaniment, the forte trumpet is strongly masked. The few isolated trumpet demonstrations are also forte and have an audible echo. Beginners therefore receive little clean, representative material from which to build a sound concept.

Part 1 also demands attention and time for buzzing, breathing and bodily instructions, and other preparatory activities. From a motor-learning perspective, each such intermediate step requires a demonstration of why it helps students acquire the target skill better or faster than direct practice on the instrument.

The fundamental alternative is simple: let students hear plenty of good trumpet playing and play plenty of trumpet themselves. Ensure that they can hear their own result. Let them compare. Initially make the task simple enough for that comparison to be possible. Then add accompaniment and musical complexity as ability develops.

The method thus shifts from a collection of instructions and activities surrounding trumpet playing to a learning environment systematically designed for learning to play the trumpet.

For beginners, that distinction is substantial. The first hundreds of hours in which sound concept, performance and listening ability develop are valuable learning time. A teaching method should use that time as effectively as possible.

Appendix: concrete observations from the material examined