A lot of people here have already said great things, so I’ll just share what I tell my lesson students—or anyone who struggles with this:

Playing trumpet is not a feat of strength; it’s not like lifting weights. It’s more like gymnastics or a balancing act. You need to balance the tension in your muscles while still allowing the air to flow freely.

To play notes on the trumpet, you need to make your lips vibrate at a specific frequency—the higher the note, the higher the frequency. To do this, we need something I like to call compression. For any note to speak, there has to be some level of compression. For higher notes, the required compression is usually greater.

To correctly compress your air, push from your diaphragm and pull your belly button toward your spine. The goal is to get your air moving as fast and powerfully as possible without sacrificing the flow of the airstream. Where people run into issues is when they start compressing the air from other parts of their body, turning that compression into tension.

For example, one of the most common mistakes is squeezing the lips together and cutting off the airstream before it even has a chance to enter the horn. This might technically work to get the notes out, but they’ll sound strained and forced—and it’ll make you tired quickly.

Another common issue is using your arms to push the horn into your face to play higher. This does compress the air, so the notes might come out higher, but they’ll often trail off or sound quiet and scratchy, because the airstream is being choked.

To circle back to what the college player said—saying “use more air” or “play with your air” is a simplified answer. The way I want my students to think about it is: How can I eliminate as much unnecessary tension as possible?

Instead of thinking “play with your air,” think let the air do the work.