on not posting for a while and small horns

Boy, we have been away, haven't we? Trust me when I say this was totally unplanned. Oh, what, I wasn't supposed to tell them that? Err... well, gentle reader, trust me, we had this planned all along.

So in honor of Summer Concert Season, and the inevitable boredom it brings with playing marches and cheesy Broadway medleys, Jon and I have broken out some... unusual horns. I'll leave him to discuss his, but for the moment, I'll discuss mine. You can almost see parts of it in the picture below!

This horn is colloquially referred to as the Dumpster Trombone, a name which fits since it describes how I acquired it. Its real name is Henry, named after Henry Fillmore, who wrote the first piece that I ever played on the horn. (This is, coincidentally, how my other trombone got the name Dmitri. Guess who!)

When I found Henry, he (it?! pronoun failure!) was tarnished all over. I didn't even know that was silver under there, since I thought it was all dirt. I polished it as best as I could, but the slide was in terrible condition. (It kind of reminded me of a horn I played at the RLMU, but that one stayed tarnished and didn't have a slide lock. Coincidentally, that horn went missing for a few years after I graduated... maybe someone threw it in a dumpster, too.)

Anyway, Henry sat in my closet for two years until Jon proposed that we try straight horns for this summer's concert season. I dragged Henry out and reminded myself of how terrible the slide was, and promptly took him to Volkwein's Music. The pros there fixed up my slide so that now it is infinitely more playable (even if it still has a slight hitch to it at times), and even buffed it up so it's nice and shiny.

This horn sounds incredible. It's a small bore, and so my volume has skyrocketed, but combine the volume with the silver and... mmm. The sound is so different from my Conn 88H-CL that I can't even compare them. I'm having trouble blending a little bit, and by far the biggest problem I have is with third and fourth position. The slide on this horn is long, and shaped differently from what I'm used to. The practical upshot of this is that I have no idea where third or fourth position really are at any given time. I have had to play around a lot with my intonation to figure out what was going on at all, and I just haven't had enough face time with the horn around other people without a tuner staring at me.

Then, today, I picked up my 88H-CL and played my warmup on it. Ahh... it felt like coming home. It's almost as if I relived the switch all over again.

On Chair assignments- part two

It’s coming up on summer again, which means it’s time for the annual reordering of the chairs. For reasons I’ll get into below, this isn’t going to amount to much. But having talked last week about some of the chair placement philosophies I’ve encountered in my checkered trombone career, this week I’m going to talk a bit about how they have adapted my personal philosophy on chair placement.

One of the big differences between what I ran into before the AWCB and after was that, with a few exceptions, almost every group I played in previously had been an academic ensemble with some sort of audition process. In the AWCB, we essentially take everybody that shows up, and as long as they follow the rules, they can stay and play. As I’ve mentioned before, we’re much more likely to kick somebody out for being a jerk than for being a bad player. This means that one of the primary considerations in assigning chairs is what people actually want to play, and what will make them happy. This goes back to those first experiences in the community orchestra. If I’m going to take somebody out of their comfort zone and make them play a part they’re not best at, I try to tell them as far in advance as possible so they have the opportunity to do the work necessary for them to succeed.

This has lead to some sticky chair placement situations in the past. We had, for a while, a guy who fancied himself a fantastic trombonist, but whose only real talent was playing loud. He couldn’t play fast, high, low, or quiet, and didn’t even play loud particularly well unless you like a really wide, spread, brassy sound. But he had attended a local music school, and claimed to have a degree from it, and essentially insisted on playing first because he felt he deserved it. We reached a bit of a compromise, in that I let him play first often enough to feel he was being respected, up until he blew a couple of prominent licks and the conductor uncharacteristically told me to not allow him to play first at all. He got insulted and left.

Summer provides its own set of issues, with vacations and distances that some people are not interested in driving for a concert. The most important things for these sorts of gigs are to remain flexible and make sure the parts are covered. For the most part, I try to keep stand partners together but spread parts out over the summer. This accomplishes three things: it maintains some stability, but gives everyone at least passing familiarity with the differences in parts, and makes things a little easier by ensuring that nobody is going to be playing first trombone for two hours.

For right now, a good part of the chair assignments take care of themselves. We have two players who like to play second, and one who likes to play third. I like to play first, whether I deserve it or not; I’m just more comfortable on the part, maybe because I’ve been playing it for so long. (I feel like I need to justify that, like I’m afraid to be perceived as the same as that guy in the third paragraph. I think pretty often that I need to check my ego and play another part for a while, but ego or not, I just like first parts!) The remaining folks, actually some of the best players in the section (including my co-blogger) are pretty easygoing about it, and will generally play whatever is needed. My personal preference, though, is to break up the better players so we have one on all three parts. This has been more of a concern in the past as the talent level has fluctuated, and we’ve had to try to shore up parts with extra players.

But for now, for the most part, it seems like everybody is happy where they are. I plan on asking one of our better players to move a little bit, and sort of reaffirm our seating now that it looks like we’re going back to a reasonably stable configuration for a while. But that’s not a bad thing, and it certainly makes my job easier!

On Chair assignments- part one

I mentioned a while back that I’m not really the section leader of the AWCB, and never officially have been. What I am, semi-officially, is in charge of chair assignments and making the little musical decisions when they affect the section, but not enough to catch the attention of the conductor, just the little things to unify our sound. I don’t have to do much, mainly because we’ve played together for a long while as a section and we’ve got enough solid musicians that for the most part, everybody knows what’s expected and what’s coming. But I have been thinking for a while about shuffling seating, which has gotten me to thinking about how that happens. In part one (this one right here!) I’ll share some of the systems I’ve seen over the years, and in part two next week, I’ll explain the thought process that we go through in the AWCB now.

Back when I was about 15, I started playing in a local community orchestra. Long story short, I had no idea what part I was playing at any point in my experience there. I was handed a first trombone folder when I got to the first rehearsal. Three rehearsals in, I was told there was a regular principal, and I should play second. Then the conductor told me to cover first for rehearsals, but practice second. Then at the dress rehearsal, the principal and second trombonist appeared for the first time, and were very angry that I had taken the music home to practice, and with one rehearsal, I was given the first bass trombone parts I had ever seen, and ridiculed for never having seen a pedal A before. This had a profound effect on my views on how to assign parts. (The whole story of that first year could be a good one for the “horror stories” tag!)

I think everybody has played in groups that audition for parts, like our local honors bands: the highest audition score sat first chair, and so on down the line, except when a bass trombonist did better than a tenor and screwed everything up. (Which was actually the case when I was in high school.) Around here, seating in the district bands was assigned entirely on the conductor’s recommendations, although moving up to regions required an audition. This lead to some “best trombonist[s] in the history of our school” getting seating precedence over trombonists who were not the best from their school, but would have been if they had been at the other school. In one group I played in while in high school, seating was assigned based on sitting next to the section leader for a couple of weeks. He then made a recommendation to the conductor, who assigned me a chair based on their need and the section leader’s assessment of my abilities. That group was extremely serious, though, and would move people around on a nearly weekly basis if somebody had a hard time with a part. I recall a trumpet solo being passed around right up to the dress rehearsal and being glad that I was never under consideration for a solo in that group, although I did have to play solos a couple of times in rehearsals when the conductor wasn’t happy with the way the section leader was playing that week.

In college, I auditioned for a band that did assignments a little differently. The highest audition score got first chair, just as expected. But the second highest audition score, or the highest bass trombone audition score, was first chair third trombone, and the third highest score was given first chair second trombone. The sections were then filled out from second chair first trombone down in order by score, with bass trombonists filling third part preferentially. The theory there was that it was important to have excellent musicians on all three parts, and the conductor felt that third trombone was often more important than second trombone, in that a real bass part was often distinct from first and second. (There is definitely an argument to be had about that philosophy, but either way, that’s the way things were done!) Seating preference was given to music majors, even though this was theoretically an open band for non-music majors with a stated goal of participation, rather than education. I heard that some seat shuffling was done based on people who couldn’t handle the amount of rehearsal and practice that was expected through the semester, which was a large part of why I declined to participate in the ensemble.

In assigning seats in the AWCB, I once again don’t have to do much. We’re a pretty easy going bunch, although we all seem to have our preferences and there are definitely some innate abilities that drive decisions. Next week, I will tell a little bit about how I picked over the techniques above and then ignored them to let the section more or less assemble itself!

on unusual doubling

Well, tomorrow is the annual Three Rivers Community Band Festival. Four bands from the area will perform, and then a "festival band" made up of volunteer musicians from all around the area -- and some from Ohio, too, like my friend Cari who is coming in to play bassoon!

I'm playing with the Festival Band for the second year in a row. Jon played last year, and was going to play this year but was sent to far away places by The Man. I, myself, will only be with the trombone section of the Festival Band for three of the four pieces on the program, and I'll be hanging out by the chimes and vibraphone for the fourth piece.

This isn't the first time I've switched instruments for one piece in a concert, and probably won't be the last. This is actually remarkably common for the AWCB -- three or four people rotate into the percussion section from wind sections depending on the percussion needs of the pieces being played. Two years ago, I played a pretty rockin' bass drum line on Danza Final. I learned to play percussion by pretty much learning on the fly in the University Band at the RLMU, thanks to some very patient sectionmates who frequently had to teach me things like "how to hold the tambourine". I played percussion in that band for three years (and somehow eventually attained section leadership, those fools), and sometimes I miss taking out my aggressions on a pair of crash cymbals.

At any rate, I've never really seen a band that had as much regular section-switching as the AWCB. I'm not sure if that's simply a function of my lack of experience with community bands in general and the practices associated, or if it's yet another way that the AWCB is unusual. At any rate, it gives me a chance to hit something (which may be quite welcome), and rest my trombone chops for a little while at least.

On being in a section

I have totally cribbed Lauren's titling style.

This has been floating around my head for a while. I don’t really have anything substantive to say about it, but I want to throw it out into the ether just to see what happens to it.

For a while a couple of years ago, I was the de facto section leader in the AWCB. I’ve never really had any sort of official post in the band, which makes me unique among the people who have been there as long as I have, at least as far as I know. At this point, I kind of run sectionals, but that’s unofficial, and mostly because the more qualified folks plain don’t want to do it. Or maybe they just want to stroke my ego a little bit so I’ll whine less, I’m not sure. But during the time that I was the de facto section leader, I boiled my expectations down to three rules:

1. Tell me what you’re going to do.
2. Do what you said you’re going to do.
3. Don’t be a jerk.
D. Do good, don’t suck.

In my time in the band, we’ve essentially kicked somebody out for violating rule 3, but that’s it. We’ve had some troubles here and there with the other two- and I’ve certainly had my share of violating all three- but I think, in general, they cover just about the whole range of things that can go wrong in a community band. The last “rule” is as much a section motto as a rule; I’m really not sure it belongs there, which is why it’s “D.” instead of “4.”. But it’s essentially the “break a leg” of the AWCB trombone section, as well as a one sentence embodiment of the other three rules, our own succinct summary of our ethic. I don’t remember where it came from, but I remember it coming up a lot around the time that I was playing a lot of gigs outside the AWCB with a trumpet player and our then bass trombonist, and I’m pretty sure that’s where it stuck to the trombone section mythos.

I’ve been in a number of leadership positions in a number of organizations, most of which had huge lists of work rules and ethics codes and all sorts of ridiculous things like that. I think we get along fine with our three. Or four.

On being harrassed into making a blog post

I must admit to two things to start out. One is that I'm having a hard time getting motivated to do... well, anything. The second is that I asked to be harassed to get things done. Gotta get back on the horse.

The AWCB is getting ready for the seventh annual Three Rivers Community Band Festival. I don't get to play due to work obligations, which is pretty much killing my trombonastical motivation. The program, as far as I know at this point, consists of the theme from the western Silverado, Equus by Eric Whitacre, and the March and Procession of Bacchus, which for reasons I can't quite understand is called Cortege in our edition. (Note: that was sarcasm.)

Silverado is a pretty standard Hollywood type score for the brass: we've got our block chord moments, and a couple of big broad melodies. There are some nice challenging parts for the trombones, and a fun horn lick at the beginning that lays really nicely on an Eb alto.

Equus is entirely my fault. Most of the people in the band at this point know that I'm a big fan of Eric Whitacre, which started with singing a couple of his pieces in a choir a while ago. Equus is a neat little minimalist lite thing- we're having some trouble with some meter changes, but it's coming along. It makes me pretty sad not to be able to perform this one, though.

The March and Procession isn't my favorite piece of music ever, and I won't miss playing it for a fun trivial reason: it's one of a very few pieces of music that I've played on violin, string bass, and all three trombone parts. I've got that one covered already.

But that's what I'll be missing. If there's anybody reading this from the Pittsburgh area that's not already going to this, have a look at the website, and let me know how it goes!

On Recurring Themes

Lauren’s discussion on boredom got me thinking.

I have a small handful of recurring problems trombone-wise. I mean, there are a lot of things I could do better, and a lot of things that I’m sure the better players and teachers in the section would fix if I gave them the opportunity. But when it comes down to it, there are maybe three or four big problem things that keep happening over and over again. The stupid, frustrating part of it is that the symptoms are always the same, and it always takes me a long time to pick up on them.

The easiest to pick up on is lack of practice time. That’s been a constant since I got out of high school and stopped playing five or six hours a day. But I usually know when I’ve had a run of bad practice time days, so it’s easy for me to figure that one out.

Another is a constant problem with my bottom lip. It will either roll out (I think this is simply a conditioning issue- see above) or I will start using an overbite, downstream set to try to compensate for a lack of conditioning (see above again) out of a misguided belief that it will help me in the high register. I think that goes back to the days when I would do a lot of uncontrolled, semi-conscious embouchure shifting to try to get an obnoxious high range. This one is harder to diagnose: I have to be pretty vigilant in the practice room to notice it, but I’m always looking out for it. It was actually my friend Andy in the trumpet section who pinned me down on it last time it got to be a real problem! It often comes down to an observant section mate pointing out that I sound kind of like a wet balloon; it tends to make my tone thin, squeaky, and vaguely nasal, even if it does temporarily add a third to the top end. It makes lip slurs next to impossible anywhere outside of maybe the third and fourth partial. And it hurts after a little while.

The last one (that I can remember right now) is one of those things that’s so fundamental to playing that it’s embarrassing to even admit. Every now and then, I’ll get nervous and just cut off the air, start pushing from my throat. This is one of those things that almost every brass player knows about, but probably sounds ludicrous to the non brass-player, but I’ll let it go on that and hope everybody understands. I’ve had this pop up lately. I’ve been a bit nervous coming back to the AWCB after a long layoff, bouncing my replacement out of his chair, and generally wanting to prove I belonged there for more than my quick wit. And well, there are some high parts for a change, and that’s what I do, or at least what I claim to do: play high. So I get to the high parts, want to prove I can play them, get nervous, cut off the air, can’t play the part, get mad, get more nervous, cut off the air more. I try to compensate for the lack of air with brute chop force, so I run out of lip a third of the way through rehearsal, where I should be good for two hours with no problems. Two members of the section actually said something to me about air Monday, for which I am grateful, if mortified.

So what does this have to do with boredom? Well, these are the things I think about when I’m doing the same exercise for the umpteenth time. And when I get bored and let my guard down is when they tend to recur. So having taken my lumps and been reminded, I’m back to being a little more conscientious with the horn. For a while at least.

The old crumb catcher

So. I decided to grow a beard. Because I can, more or less. It's kind of thin on the sides, but I've got a pretty decent goatee going, and the sideburns aren't too bad. I don't look quite like a 14-year-old trying to look mature. I know, I have one of those in the house!

But there are a couple of things that could be dealbreakers, and make me shave immediately. One is simply if it's annoying, and sometimes it is, but most of the time it's ok. A friend at work told me I needed to give it at least two weeks, and that turns out to be true: it became much less scratchy and irritating after about two weeks.

Another, the part that makes it relevant to this blog, would be that I would have to shave if having the beard somehow adversely affected my trombone playing. And well, it did at first, but I have found some ways around it. And last night I got some opinions from the other men in the AWCB, whose experiences mostly match mine!

The first thing I noticed as the soup strainer was growing in was that during that annoying period between a week and two weeks, playing was really uncomfortable. After that, it got back to downright tolerable, no better or worse than just plain playing. After a little while, though, I noticed that if the hair on my lip got too long, basically to the point that it would hang below my lip when I had a mouthpiece in playing position, it would mess with my attacks to the point that I couldn't play. Keeping it trimmed to somewhere between two and three weeks worth of length seems to be keeping that manageable. This is the first point of agreement with the men of the AWCB: with one exception, anybody who has had a mustache agrees that it must be carefully trimmed to make playing possible.

The second problem I had was that my low range all but vanished from Eb T2 on down: no trigger range, and no pedals at all. This seemed to be a function of keeping the corners of my mouth shaved, and the area just below my lower lip trimmed. Again, this seems to be a common complaint from trombonists around me, although it was a dealbreaker for at least one of them. He couldn't work around it, and gave up and shaved from frustration. I've noticed that with some more concentrated practice, I'm starting to get the lower range back; hopefully it will all be there with a little more work.

At the bottom line, it appears to be completely possible to continue to play at a reasonable level with some appropriately trimmed facial hair!

You only love me for my trombone parts.

A few years ago, I subbed for one of the local community symphonies. I did not enjoy the gig. It was a long, hard concert, that required me to play a lot of hard, high, music. I had to borrow a small bore horn to cheat my way to the endurance necessary to get through the concert. My performance was judged (unfavorably) by a single missed high note. I thought the orchestra, as far as an orchestra can have a personality, was haughty and condescending way beyond their collective ability to perform. And then they stiffed me on compensation on a technicality.

After that wonderful experience, I got a call from their personnel director asking me to audition for the principle trombone chair. I’m sure any rational person reading this is thinking that I would jump on the chance to ignore them, but no, being an irrational, borderline psychotic “pleaser” personality, I asked for the audition list. The first thing on the list was “Ride of the Valkyrie.”

That’s it.

Now, the trombonists in the audience (and those reading who were present for this debacle, or some portion of my rants on this debacle) know that there are no fewer than two possible excerpts from Ride that are often played at auditions. The measure numbers vary by edition, but the bottom line is, there’s a B-minor section and a B-major section, both of which are obnoxious on their own merit. I’ve seen the B-major section asked for on its own: it goes that half step higher to A-sharp, and varies in dynamic marking from forte all the way up to fortissimo. Makes you hit almost the entire compass of what is expected from an orchestral tenor trombonist, except for the whole playing at levels that don’t offend the cellos thing.

There are a lot of better trombonists, better musicians than myself making commentary on the excerpt on the internet, although darned if I can find all the ones I’ve read. (Could they possibly have been in actual bound printing?) I think at my level of playing, the keys to the B-major section (beyond not lousing up the key of B!) come in two aspects of the piece. One is to not play it the way Elmer Fudd sings it: he gets more of a quarter/two sixteenths feel, but the actual marking is a dotted eighth/sixteenth/full eighth. This actually came up in the AWCB a number of years back, and I actually said that to the section: “Don’t play this the way Elmer Fudd sings it!” The second is in leaving yourself enough top end to get louder at the end without letting your tone get brassier than you (or whoever you’re playing for) likes. There are actually three dynamics in there: a fortissimo at the beginning, which cuts back to forte, back to fortissimo, then a rinforzando of the fortissimo at the end. The way to approach that depends as much on the ensemble as the trombone section, but in an audition setting, it’s up to you to make sure you’re placing yourself in a range that allows enough dynamic contrast to fit the intended effect.

This rankles me a bit, I have to admit. I know that’s what we do, we sit on the back row and passive-aggressively wait for our opportunity to remind people that we’re there, and we can play. And the trombonists I know revel in this: we’re all fans, to some degree, of Mahler and Wagner and Bruckner. Find me a trombonist that really likes Harold in Italy, and I’ll find you a violist who really wants to saw away unheard at the peak of Bruckner 8. And when was the last time you heard somebody rant about the trombones’ delicate, sensitive entrance in the last of Strauss’ Four Last Songs or some such?

But anyway, I called the personnel director and asked, “Which Valkyrie excerpt do you want?” and received several seconds of awkward silence on the phone. Then he said, “Well, if you don’t know that, maybe you’re not the right fit for the orchestra.”

I had a lot of things run through my mind at that point, but most of them aren’t fit to reprint. What I actually did was agree with him, thank him for his time, and politely decline the next three times he called to ask me to audition.

on resolutions

So it's 2010 -- wow, when did that happen? And, coincidentally, it's also my day to post to the blog. And so, here you go, obligatory New Year's Trombonery Resolutions.

1.) Have F5 solid by the end of the year.
2.) Practice 25 hours a month.
3.) Get the quartet back together.

How do I plan to accomplish these things?

For the F5: I will keep going as I have been going. I've got a shaky D, which is a lot farther than I was last year at this time when I had a shaky Bb. I figure with upping the practice time and with already extending myself into the upper register, the F is a feasible goal.

For 25 hours a month: I plan to obtain a calendar and hang it in my dining room where I practice. Couple this with a Sharpie and I have a visible timekeeping system that will help me keep myself motivated. I figure I will give myself a mark for each half hour practiced each day, hopefully with two marks on most days.

For getting the quartet back together again: This really depends on the other four people. (Yes, we have a five-person trombone quartet, hush.) I really think the others enjoyed our rehearsals and we had an excellent thing going. Unfortunately some external unpleasantness forced us into hiding, but hopefully it will soon be time to get past that. I have an eye toward March, when spring starts again, and when Easter gigs may be a possibility.

So now it's your turn. What are your New Year's Resolutions, whether trombone related or not?

And this is why you work outside of your comfort zone

If Lauren went home in Lake Placid, I went to strange, scary new places. By the time Lauren and I got to the first Great American Community Band rehearsal, there were two spots open, a second trombone, and the last chair in the section. According to time honored tradition, placement was determined by rock paper scissors, which, as always, I lost: for the first time in my life, I would be playing bass trombone. Well, unless you count a couple read-throughs with trombone quartets, where we passed all the parts around and everybody had a turn. I have never considered myself to have a good low range. I've turned down a handful of gigs in the past couple of years because a bass trombone was called for, and I wasn't comfortable in that register.

But last summer, the AWCB played a few tunes where the firsts had some pedals and a little bit of work in the trigger register, and I got tired of flubbing the couple of notes in the Grondahl that get that low. So I started working harder in the trigger and pedal range, long tones, scales. I've been working on attacking, playing quarter note/quarter rest scales from Bb 2 down to the pedal, turning on pedal A, and back up. Paying attention to attacks, intonation, all the usual issues. It obviously helped a lot in the low register, but I think it also helped me center the middle and high ranges, and helped with support throughout my range.

So while I'm pretty sure I didn't make anybody forget Doug Yeo, I think I played the part that was given to me reasonably well. And while I'm not going to start searching ebay for a Holton TR 162 any time soon, if somebody's desperate for a third trombone, I might just take the gig.

on returning home

It's amazing how much one's ear can change in just a couple short years.

I flourished as a second trombonist for a long time. First just isn't my bag, although I have been sitting first in the AWCB since fall of 2007 (mostly because nobody else would do it, iirc). I dearly adore playing third trombone, although it frequently makes me sneeze (more on that later). Second, for me, is where it's at.

In Lake Placid, I sat second trombone for the first time in two years. It took me a good three hours of rehearsal to get my second trombonist ear back. It's hard to play those middle notes and be in tune. It sucks that half of your sustained notes are Gb (or, at least, for this particular gig, they were). I had forgotten where those notes even were, so used to being on the top of the chord or wailing away up in the "higher" range. There's so much more that you have to do as a second trombonist that I had become sorely out of practice with.

First: always listen to the firsts.
Second: always listen to the horns.
Third: always listen to the thirds.
Fourth: always listen to the guy next to you.
Fifth: figure out what the hell kind of chord it is you're playing and adjust, because chances are a little adjustment by you will make the sound "gorgeous" instead of "pretty good".
On and on and on...

Listen, listen, listen. I think I hadn't realized how much I had stopped listening.

And now I've come back, sitting first again in the AWCB, and I've forgotten all the things that a good first player needs to do. As my substitute stand partner would probably attest to if he had been around two years ago, I failed almost as badly at being a first player during rehearsal on Monday as I did when I started in 2007.

So what makes the list for a good first player? A second? A third?

on "ee"

My old friend from the OMEA Northeast Ohio Honors Orchestra, John Shanks, made the following comment on Facebook regarding my post a couple of weeks ago on "ta" versus "toe" :

A problem with "toe" is (and I have struggled with this) that if this isn't specifically taught as a "low" concept, it can really mess up the sound in the high register. The oral cavity should not be the same for C5 as it is for C2. Mine was, and it was making me engage the throat to reduce the size of the air column, and that added way too much complexity. "Tee" for C5 is much simpler than "toe".

tl;dr - articulation is separate from vowel sound which should vary according to range

 I've been really thinking about this and working with the concept in my practice sessions lately. Wouldn't you know it? All along, I think my tongue has been screwing up my high range. I have written before about my issues with my high range, and Jon has too, and one little comment on Facebook has really made a big difference. I started raising the back of my tongue when I ascend in my range, and not only is my sound clearer and sweeter up there, but the notes come out much more easily. I was even squealing away on an F5 today like I haven't spent months trying to find it.

Training myself to put my tongue in the "ee" position will be the hard part, but at least I'm on the way.

on language and trombonery

How did you learn to articulate? When I was first picking up the horn, I was taught "ta ta ta". When I got to college, my instructor beat "ta" out of my head and taught me "toe toe toe", and "low low low" for legato.

Obviously, the difference here is the vowel. /a/ and /o/ are both pronounced in the back of the mouth, but /a/ is lower than /o/. That is, your tongue is farther down in the back of your mouth when you say /a/ than when you say /o/. Try saying both "ta" and "toe" and stick your finger in your mouth and feel where your tongue is and the shape. The tongue kind of curves up in the back when you say /o/.

This seems counter-intuitive. Why would you want your tongue in the way of your airstream? However, the location and shape of the tongue has another effect. Try saying "ta ta ta", and put your hand on your chin. Your jaw moves, doesn't it? Now say "toe toe toe", and feel your chin again -- not so much movement, right? One thing you don't want when you play is a lot of jaw movement -- it moves the teeth, interferes with the placement of your lips, and can generally muck up your embouchure. By using "toe" instead, with less jaw movement, we learn not to move our jaw when we play just by thinking of a different syllable.

Try holding the horn with your left hand and articulating while feeling your jaw with your right hand. Think of saying different vowels when you tongue, and feel what happens.

I can't believe I almost did that again

We've all done this, right? I can't be the only one.

You run into somebody you used to know, a former best friend, and ex. Somebody who was once special. Somebody you loved at some point, and then at least thought you didn't love anymore, or maybe that they didn't love you anymore if they ever did. But all you want to do when you see them is throw your arms around them, give them a rib cracking hug, tell them how much you missed them. Thank them for the good times, forgive them for the bad times, beg them to never leave your life again. I never do it. I'm always afraid that the hurt was too much, or that there was some sort of imbalance in the way I remember them and the way they remember me. There is always something that paralyzes me, and I either do nothing, or stop way short of what I want to do.

And it brings me back to that whole note, the one that I wonder if I could use to tell somebody I love them. Somebody told me a while ago that when I play, it sounds like I love my horn for everything it's worth. That's pretty much right: I love playing. I love the sounds a trombone makes, I love being part of a section, or a band or an orchestra. I love parting the hair of the unfortunate sap sitting in front of me when we play the 1812 Overture, or having the best seat in the house for all but the first and last movements of Beethoven 9. I love listening to players better than me run the gamut of brass sounds in the chorale from Mahler 2.

All I have to do is play one note.

Just one whole note and I'm back.

Ok, I can do this.

on stretching

I've been recently thinking about my state as "a trombonist who was once a very good player" and my continuing quest to get back to the state of being a good, solid player. It's a hard road, but one thing I've been considering is: what was it that I used to do when I was a very good player that I don't do now?

One thing I've realized that I've stopped doing is stretching. Why stretch? Playing a musical instrument is a physical exercise. For the trombonist, we're moving our arms, wrists, shoulders. We're holding up something heavy using only half of one hand. We're breathing, stretching our lungs and midsections. Stretching not only prepares the body for playing, but also gets the blood flowing and readies the mind to focus.

I've decided to start stretching again as much as I can before I play, whether it be concerts, rehearsals, or individual practice. My sequence is simple:

1.) Raise both arms above your head and inhale as deeply as you can, then lower your arms and let the breath out slowly. Do this five times. This stretches your breathing muscles so you can take deeper, faster breaths.

2.) Put your hands on your hips and turn your torso to the left until you feel the stretch, then to the right. Don't move the legs while doing this. This stretches your middle back and, for me, my shoulder area a little bit.

3.) Extend the right arm and then rotate at the shoulder, making a big circle with your hand. Go clockwise first five times, then counterclockwise five times. Repeat with the left arm. This is for the shoulders and upper arms to get you ready for holding the horn.

4.) Extend both arms straight in front of you, palms facing flat away from you. Using your left hand, bend your right hand back toward your body slightly to stretch the wrist and palm. Repeat using your right hand to stretch your left hand. This readies the wrist and elbows.

5.) Lean your head on your right shoulder, then roll your head forward and around until it's leaning on your left shoulder. Roll it back and around until it's back on the right shoulder. This stretches the neck, helping with breathing.

Sometimes I do some other stretches if I have time, but these are the major five. Start with these and build up a stretching routine that works for you -- to be physically ready to play the moment you pick up the horn, not ten or fifteen minutes into your playing.

On the history of the trombone

I wanted to share a link that I got from Brad Edwards's blog -- a timeline of the history of the trombone, put together by Will Kimball. Here's the link!

My favorite part of the whole timeline (I've only read through the 16th century so far!) is what is possibly the earliest incident of trombonists causing trouble.

1467—Siena, Italy: A trombone vacancy in the palace wind band is filled by Frenchman Petro Tristano da Valenza. He begins with a monthly salary of L. 8, but receives a raise to L. 12 within months. Upon ...the first anniversary of his appointment, he is promised another raise, this one to L. 16, on the condition that he acquire and wear the required uniform worn by the other band members. He apparently refuses to do this, as he is replaced a few months later (D’Accone, Civic Muse 538).

I have to wonder what it is that he was wearing instead. Speculations?

This is not a post about hockey.

So here it is, after an amazing long three months that have seen my personal world absolutely turned upside down and inside out, with some of the highest highs and lowest lows I can remember in my three plus decades on our collective dustball: my Beloved Penguins begin their first title defense since 1992 against the Currently Inconsequential Columbus Bluejackets in somnolescent preseason action. This is where I hope I have indoctrinated Lauren correctly, and infected her with the Pens Bug, and she doesn't somehow realize there's a team from Columbus and switch sides; I don't think I could handle losing her to another hockey team. Er... I mean, our relationship's complicated enough with the RLMU/PTC thing, the Cleveland(ish)/Pittsburgh thing, the Conn/Bach thing... eh... well, maybe that's it for significant differences? Scary.

But I'm lying about the Conn/Bach thing anyway. This mystifies me. For the non-trombonists (::cricket::) reading the blog (::cricket cricket::) there are two major warhorse models of trombone for the orchestral tenor trombonist: the Conn 88, and the Bach 42. If you're playing jazz, there seem to be a lot more acceptable choices. (Although people still rant about the King 2B, but that's another post by somebody who knows more about it than I do.) But for a long time, and certainly for anybody looking to drop less than $4500 on a trombone, those are the major choices. And people get uptight about the differences between the two!

I mean, really. It's like Coke or Pepsi, or being able to roll your tongue - I'm sure there's some genetic component to it, something that just can't be helped. Or maybe it's just random chance that's induced by whatever teacher you happened to have when somebody talked you into paying real money for a decent trombone.

Why fight about it when there are more important things going on in the world, like hockey? And the random chance of being indoctrinated into the fandom of the best hockey team EVAR through the luck of happening into some of the best hockey of the last ten years, and having the home team take home the big prize!

But that's completely different, right?

Jon actually talks about trombonery

So I don't think I'm a very good trombone player. I point this out because I all the time say things like "I don't think I'm a very good trombonist" and people act like I'm fishing for compliments or something, but no, it's simply true that I don't think I'm very good trombone player. So when we started this blog, I made some vague commitment to providing a post every Tuesday, and talking about trombonery among other things. But because I think I'm a lousy trombone player, I have been a little reluctant to actually say anything practical about trombone playing. So it took a little coercion, but here we go: it's my first discussion on how I work on trying to become a non-sucky trombonist!

One of the downsides of being your own worst critic is it's hard to narrow down stuff to work on when you're practicing- everything sounds bad! So every now and then I go and take a lesson with somebody smarter than me, and we concoct a practice regime that prioritizes some of the things I have trouble with. The last time I did this, the two problems that we focused on were range and dynamic contrast. For now, I'm just going to go through range, and just on high range, or we'd be here a while.

Back a long while ago, I had a really solid high range, brought about by lots of fights with obnoxious trumpet players. As it turns out, I squeaked out a lot of high notes through some massive embouchure shifts, which is ok as long as you don't have to shift rapidly through shifts. I started running into serious trouble playing some of the standard trombone literature- for example, I couldn't make the leap from E (right above middle C) to C# (an octave and a half step) above middle C in the Guilmant Morceau Symphonique, had a hard time with the jumps in the Grondahl concerto from Db in the staff through Bb and Db up to the high Bb, and Couldn't make any of the runs in the David Concertion. I simply couldn't make the transitions that fast. I had similar problems in the lower register- but we decided to focus on the high range, since I was closer to having a decent high range than low range. There definitely seems to be an argument made that you need to work in both directions, but once again, I'm ignoring that for the sake of brevity.

So the practice routine we came up with involved two major points. The first was holding the embouchure in place- no shift at all! This is accomplished by working on intervals. When I started, I did half steps: F-F#-F, slowly and in time, holding the second note as a long tone, then up to F#-G-F#, and up as high as possible. After half steps, I would do the long intervals, up to octaves. I've heard of people doing this exercise up to two or three octaves, but I've never had to play over those sorts of intervals, so I skipped it This exercise is to explicitly link the various ranges together, to get to the point where the different intervals can be played with the embouchure in the same setup.

The next exercise is pretty standard: all it is is rising fifths, F-G-A-Bb-C-Bb-A-G-F, again holding the high note and the last notes, and again going up in half steps. This is supposed to help with both flexibility and, again, linking the whole range.

The last part exercise is probably the toughest, although it could be tough because I do it last. This one is a slow gliss from sixth position up to first, starting usually on high F (a fourth above middle C!) and glissing up to high Bb in first position, and repeating several times. After that, start on G, A, and so on, still starting in sixth, playing as high as you can and while maintaining control of the embouchure and the notes coming out the other end. The point here is to feel the way the embouchure changes over that range, now that it's been established and linked to the lower range and a single set.

There are some other things I do, like playing Rochut exercise in tenor clef, that I think help significantly, but the exercises above are the basis of working my range up. When I do them, I actually end up pretty pleased with the high range- things like the Morceau or the Grondahl are not a problem, although I've still got some (a lot) of double tonguing work to do for something like the David. But it's a start, and something that I've got some positive results with!

I'm talking to him right now!

Riffing on Lauren's post from last week...

Back when we started this blog, we settled on a schedule: better to get readership, according to one of Lauren's seasoned blogger friends. I was supposed to post on Tuesday, the better to record shenanigans from weekly band rehearsals.

For those not paying attention, it's now Thursday, and here I am doing a major re-write of this week's post, because I've been having a lot of conversations with my little hater. On many topics, one of which is this post.

I should say, I've never thought of him as a hater. Or as a "he" particularly, although I guess anything living in my head is at least mostly male. I've always viewed him as more like a trickster, your Anansi or Brer Rabbit or Loki type, who makes me do stupid things the stupidest way possible and then laughs at me. Like this week he's been saying "nobody reads the blog, and nobody cares about your opinion!" Which is almost certainly true, but completely ignores the point of doing the blog in the first place.

Futility seems to be his major weapon. (Or her, the tricksters always seem to be whatever gender gets the job done, right?) And the best part is he talks with the same voice as the rational side of my brain. So I'll start off with something that would be tough to argue, like, "This player is better than me." Which is often debatable, but at least an easy argument to make. But then it goes to "so there's no point in working hard if you're going to be second best regardless." Which is completely wrong: for starters, I have to work pretty hard right now to be fourth best, but I don't play to be the best, I play to make music, have a way to express myself, and to connect with other people. All of those goals become easier to achieve with the quality of musicians you play with, and you don't get to be the fourth best trombonist in an Award-Winning Community Band by resting on your laurels!

Which brings me to another of the defenses against the Hater, or the Inner Loki. (I'm feeling particularly Danish this week, for no apparent reason, so I'm going with the Norse theme.) I mentioned last week listening to musicians that inspire me- well, I'm in a section full of them right now, and I want to be able to hang, to contribute, and to not let them down. That's a pretty strong motivation for me; an Inner Baldur, knocking back the spears, to continue the Norse theme. And as long as that view keeps winning (which it does most days) I'll keep practicing.

Now if I could actually get blog posts out on time, we'd be set!