Helps to have a reason.....

Ok, so I haven't posted in forever. I'm no longer playing in a group, so I'm just not motivated to practice much, which leads me to believe, and I think most people will agree, that it really helps to have a reason to play. Just playing on your own, for yourself, just to keep your chops up, isn't a giant motivator. I have been tooting on a trumpet lately to see if I can even get an embouchure in any kind of shape to cover a part and have been making steady progress. French horn seemed much easier, though the mouthpiece was maybe a little smaller.

At any rate, if you find yourself having trouble getting the horn on the lips, find a group to play in and you'll find yourself playing more outside of rehearsal just to keep your lips in shape. The same principle applies to almost everything.... if you're not signed up for a race, you won't run as much. If you don't speak to anyone else in a language, you won't practice and eventual lose all the progress you've made.

Gold Mouthpiece?

The Ancient Egyptians believed gold to be divine and indestructible. In modern folklore, it is the prized possession of every dragon. In its purest form, gold means truth and honesty, but also greed, control, shallow needs and extravagance. In both the real world and in countless works of fiction, things are made of gold or plated with gold or colored golden to make them even more special and awesome than they would be otherwise. When it comes to mouthpieces, the physical different between the way silver or gold feels against your face is very slight - gold is a little slipperier (meaning it doesn't adhere to your skin as readily) and is thermally a little different, but psychologically and spiritually, it's like a motivational speaker sitting on your face!

When my gold plated Christian Lindberg sits on my face, I can feel the warrior within me fighting to make my playing more awesome and fearsome. I can hear the Valkyries riding and Valhalla calling!! I can also tell that everyone wants to be me.... especially the trumpet players....

David

If you're not familiar with the David Concertino, you should give it a look. It's chosen as an audition piece for countless music schools and competitions, probably because it showcases many aspects of a trombone player's abilities. I realize that it's beyond some player's abilities, but it's a great piece and is a good gauge to use to tell where you are and what you should work on. Just chip away at it - play and perfect the parts you can play and gradually add the parts that you have trouble with as you get better. Then, when it's time to play it for an audition, it'll be ready and you'll know that you're able to play the things you need to have under your belt for whatever it is you're auditioning for.

Some things this piece includes:

High notes
Low notes
Dotted eighth & sixteenth vs. triplets
Dynamite variations
Articulation variations
Lip trill

Buzzing

Some trombonists discourage any kind of buzzing without the horn (Christian Lindberg) stating that there's no substitute for playing with the actual horn on your face. Others advocate using a BURP system, piece of hose or simply just the mouthpiece by itself (Joseph Alessi), which is strange, because the BURP doodad fits on your horn. Why not just play the instrument? The only other option is to just buzz your lips without anything, which is something I've been experimenting with for the last several months.

I needed to be able to last through 2 hour brass band rehearsals and concerts but didn't really have time to practice for hours to build up endurance. I read a book by the Tastee Bros. who strengthen their embouchure in order to play high by setting their chops and holding it for as long as they can whenever they can. This should improve endurance too, but why not buzz the lips as well? I began buzzing in the car and during the walk to and from my parking spot and other odd times, doing scales and tunes, buzzing along with songs on the radio and whatnot, and I found that while not as good as practicing with the horn, endurance and control improved a great deal.

I would suggest starting out by buzzing with the mouthpiece to see if you can get a pretty close approximation without. I'm not sure it matters if your embouchure is exactly the same with or without the mouthpiece as long as the same muscles are engaged. Then, as with any weight training, which this kind of is only on a smaller scale, practice until muscle failure if you can to get the most benefit. Rest a few minutes and then continue.

If you're like me, then maybe you'll build some muscle and endurance along with some control. This exercise seemed to also lessen the need for specific mouthpiece placement, allowing me to experiment more with the axis of the air stream.

Trombone Player's Lung??!?!?

If you're like me, you don't really clean your horn much. I know there are a bunch of trombonists who are all into giving their trombone's a 'bath' and make a big deal out of it, but really, is it necessary? Well yeah, evidently it is....  I was searching around the web for trombone related stuff when I came across this article: http://journal.publications.chestnet.org/article.aspx?articleid=1045010 which describes an illness a professional trombonist experienced over a fairly long period of time which was caused by numerous bacteria and molds and what not that were living inside his horn and which he'd been inhaling during playing. Every time he took a breath while playing, all this crap was getting sucked out of his horn and into his lungs and causing a persistent, dry cough. When he cleaned his horn, it went away.... go figure. I guess I'll be looking to swab the damn thing out and disinfect it on a regular basis now.

Conn DIRECTOR anyone?

So my nephew's Bach trombone needed some work and I offered to let him use my old one, a Conn Director that's almost 50 years old as a loaner until he got his back. I wasn't sure it was even playable since it's been hanging on a nail in the wall in the workshop in our basement for years, the case having disintegrated long ago, but I got it down and cleaned up the slide, lubed it and stuck an old 12C mouthpiece in to give a toot. Pleasantly surprised at how sweet it plays, I would even use this horn as a back up. I think my dad paid $38 for it back in the day. Or else I'm just that fantastic that I can make something like that sound good..... Yeah, riiiiight!

Tips

A couple of Tips of the Day...

1. If your slide doesn't have a spring in the first position bumper, learn to play first position out about a quarter of an inch or so so that you have wiggle room to tune notes in first.
2. Learn to play in Bb. Even if you don't play in a brass band where all the parts seem to be in either Bb or Eb, it's good practice because you can use a lot of trumpet literature for reading. Get the trumpet addition of Arban's. An easy way to think of it is to just play in tenor clef, adding 2 flats to the key signature.

Yeah, I guess that's a couple.....