Frequency Bone

I have been very lucky to have great teachers, and the one that has always made me think most deeply is Norman Bolter. His own blog, Frequency Bone, is a wonderful resource for anybody who truly seeks to be a better, more fully integrated musician. His most recent post touched me deeply. 

How to Feel Miserable as an Artist

David Gibson on Stage Fright

My friend David Gibson is a tremendous jazz trombonist and composer, and he's also a very thoughtful and well-spoken guy. He wrote the following in response to a question on the Trombone Forum:
---------------
Stage fright is a bi-product of letting your brain reside in the past or the future.

When your brain is in the past, you're judging your actions that can't be undone...and you're probably judging them harshly.

When your brain is in the future, you're imagining events that haven't yet happened and worrying in anticipation of the worst possible outcome.

The trick is to have your brain in the present. When you let your mind run wild in the past or future, that is usually when you stumble or stammer. Practice having your thoughts focused on the present by focusing on simple and mundane tasks like walking or breathing. Give every breath or step your full attention. You'll begin to notice when the past and future creep into your mind and you can practice your focus. That focus pushes out all of the unneccesary thoughts and replaces them with thoughts related to the present...which is the only moment over which you have ANY control. You can't change the past...and the only way to affect the future is through your actions in the present. So, take care of that present...the future depends on it.

Good luck.

DG
---------------

I often give the advice to fill your mind with musical thoughts in order to combat nerves. This is an even more fundamental approach. Bravo Dave!

There's nothing relaxing about drowning

The title of this post comes from a former student, who said this as we were discussing breathing for playing a large brass instrument. It's so easy to get into the mindset that we have to take the biggest breath in the world as fast as possible all of the time, much like gasping for air after you've been underwater. This is dangerous and can lead to much bigger problems.

Which is why I do breathing exercises every day, in order to cultivate a relaxed flow of air in both directions. Here they are.

Some Tips from the Masters

First of all, “When you blow, think of blowing directly into the hole of your mouthpiece.” – Phil Teele. It's the last point in his long tone routine book. So simple, so effective. So easy to do something other than that.

“Blow through the notes, not at them.” – Joe Alessi, attributed to his father, Joe Alessi Sr. Ditto.

Charlie Vernon talks about focusing on the sensation of air passing across your lips in both directions. Sorry, no catchy aphorism for this one, but just as effective an idea.

Finally, do breathing exercises as part of your daily routine. In fact, do them before you play every single day and you will see a difference very soon.

There is a great book and set of videos by Sam Pilafian and Pat Sheridan called The Breathing Gym. These guys know what they're doing. They have worked with David Vining, who has also written an excellent book called...The Breathing Book. I also like the simple exercises in Charlie Vernon's book.

 

A Daily Breathing Routine

Here is a routine that I often do. These are much better taught in person, but I'll do my best. This routine essentially comes from a student of Sam Pilafian.

Start with some simple stretches, particularly focusing on your upper body and maybe your neck. I won't go into the ones I do here, but any simple set of dynamic or yoga stretches will be good. Then set a metronome at 60 and do the following series of exercises.

1. The Dozen Sips

Take a dozen little sips of air, either to triplets or 16ths, and then let the air fall out of your body over the next four beats. Repeat 3-5 times (or whatever feels good to you). This exercise is to explore your total capacity in a relaxed manner.

2. One Beat In, One Beat Out

Move air across your lips – don't worry about where the air is going inside your body – for the entire duration of the beat, without pausing at either end. Strive for an open “HO” sound in both directions. Do this at least eight times, or until you start to feel dizzy (the dizziness will go away after a few days).

I suggest using some sort of visualization that gets you thinking outside your body, so try sucking in your hand from down by your side and blowing it back out, or looking at a point across the room and imagine sucking in and then filling back up all the air in the room between you and that point. Or come up with your own creative visualization. This exercise is great with a breathing tube.

3. Six In, Six Out

Like the first exercise, only over a longer period of time. Move air across your lips for the entire duration without a pause at the top or bottom – easier said than done. If it doesn't happen the first couple of times, don't worry, just keep doing the exercise.

For this one, I use the following visualization: start with your arms down at your sides. Slowly lift them as you inhale, imagining filling up the circle your arms are describing and measuring the flow so that beat three occurs when your arms are parallel to the floor - at this point you are half full of air. At count six they are over your head and you can start your way down, with half empty at count three again. Repeat three times. Sam also does this exercise with seven and eight counts, three times each, or once each 6+6, 7+7, 8+8, 9+9 and 10+10.

4. Three In, Six Out

This one is different. Inhale for three beats, sucking in your hand from your side. Then, over the next six beats, let the air fall out of your body. Don't measure or control the flow, just let gravity do the work. And when gravity is done and you would have to push to get more air out, stop and rest for the remainder of the six beats. You might stop at beat two or three – that's fine. Leave your hand in front of your mouth for the exhale, and you will feel the air flow. If it's bumpy, your sound will be bumpy – if it's a cool steady stream, so will your sound be. But don't try to control it. This is just feedback.

Keep repeating the exercise, focusing on the sensation of air moving across your lips, and the motion will become more relaxed. To promote a relaxed exhale, it can actually be very effective to introduce a tension-and-release action into this exercise, so I often do a variation where I create resistance at the lips during the inhale (purse them together and suck air through the tiny opening) and then let the air fall out just as before.

This whole exercise is also good with a breathing tube, and the tension-release action can be done by constricting the end of the tube with your hand. Sam extends this to four & eight and five & 10 beats. I don't find those to be any more helpful, but extending the length of all these exercises is worth trying to see how it benefits you.

Incidentally, this kind of unforced, gravity-doing-the-work air makes for a surprisingly big sound. On trombone, it tends to be a big, warm mf that's great for a vocal style of playing. And this exercise increases your awareness of your particular standing air point in your lungs – the point at which your diaphragm goes into action for a normal inhale when you're not aware of your breathing at all.

5. Three Out, One In

This is the most like most of the playing we do. Imagine a 4/4 bar with a rest on the fourth beat. Take a big breath on the rest, and then completely empty your lungs over the next three beats. Repeat several times. Use a dynamic visualization that gets you thinking beyond your body.

That's my routine. I do it, or some variation on it, or the Vernon routine, every single day.

More Arban's

So you've done the 25 minute tool-sharpening routine, and you think to yourself, "That's all? I want more!" Of course, you could put away Arban's and practice something else, but you could also do the following building/stretching/strengthening routine.

As I write this it's September 8th, so I would continue by going on to the next section...I play etude number 8, and then (rather than play #18 - I'll do that on the 18th) turn some pages and play the next number 8, and so on until I get through the book or run out of time (or chops, as you'll see).

At this point, in addition to solidifying my approach to the middle range I want to expand to the high and low ranges as well. I find regular attention to extreme ranges to be a very important way to keep myself ready to play whatever comes my way. And I have to always be sure to balance them, so that my low range and high range are produced such that I am always supple and able to move in and out of them.

What I usually do is continue in tenor clef, playing (from the trombone book) two octaves down, then one octave down, then as written, and then doing the next one in the reverse order. For the longer interval studies and other etudes that cycle through all the keys, I will usually cycle through the octaves for each key change rather than play one or two entire pages at a time. This has me covering a very wide range, and it can start to feel pretty rough. But if I spend 30-45 minutes doing this, the next day feels awesome. If I'm not in great shape such that it seems I will only be straining to play that high and that low, I will instead play in bass clef as written and down an octave, maybe ending with one or two etudes in three octaves of tenor clef.

This routine was inspired by Charlie Vernon. Charlie told me that when he decided to really go after playing tenor trombone after years as a bass trombone player almost exclusively, he played the entire Arban's book from beginning to end. He would play an etude 8vb, as written, and then 8va, and put a check mark on it for a visual representation of that accomplishment! Then he would play the next one 8va, as written, and 8vb, and so on. It took him a few months of a few minutes a day, but he said that by the time he got to the Characteristic Studies he could play things that he'd never been able to before, or at least not easily. I've started doing this a couple of times, but felt that I was a bit better off playing from different sections of the book rather than going from beginning to end.

I don't do this kind of routine right before a concert, or even before I need to put in some serious time practicing music. I tend to put this kind of practicing at the end of my day, and I find that it's like putting money in the bank for the next day and days to come. The simpler middle register routine from the beginning of the book can be a great way to warm up before a performance, but this is really too strenuous for that.

Enjoy! And remember, this is one of the things we practice that are actually much more physically difficult than playing music. We do these things so that our bodies can be free to carry out whatever music our minds can imagine.

Keeping the tools sharp

Every serious trumpet or trombone player owns an Arban's book, and many even practice out of it on a regular basis. Below is a simple routine, using just the first two sections of the book, that you can do in about 25 minutes to keep in touch with the most fundamental priorities of playing.

I owe a great debt for this routine to my good friend and valued colleague Joe Foley, with whom I'm privileged to play in the Rhode Island Philharmonic and elsewhere. Joe is quite possibly the most consistently accurate trumpet player I've ever known, with a complete command of the physical demands of making music on the trumpet. He's a great teacher, and he uses his version of this routine in his own playing and with his students, particularly at times when balance needs to built - for example when an embouchure adjustment has been made or a new instrument or mouthpiece has been purchased - or restored, such as after a period of unusual playing demands. But even when your playing is going along well, this is a very productive way to spend 25 minutes.

Joe's basic concept is the simple starting point: use the digit at the end of today's date, and play every etude in the first two sections of Arban's (about the first 40 pages, depending on the edition) that ends in that same digit. I write this on September 1st, so I would play numbers 1, 11, 21, etc., and then start over in the second section and play the same numbers. Tomorrow I would play 2, 12, 22, etc. This same calendar scheduling can be applied to any set of etudes or exercises; I often do the same with Brad Edwards' Lip Slurs, Kopprasch, even Bordogni/Rochut. I imagine the same principle will apply well to Brad's new book. The beauty of this is that it takes a certain element of choice out of your hands, so that you don't skip things that you don't do well...yet.

As with any practice material, HOW you play is even more important than WHAT you play, and I have some very specific suggestions on HOW to play the short, seemingly simple etudes in the first two sections of Arban's.

As an aside, for this basic routine I read in tenor clef and transpose down an octave. I believe that this is the true middle register of the bass trombone, where we spend most of our time in most ensembles. I often play Bordogni/Rochut this way as well. 

I own both the Carl Fischer edition of Arban's edited by Simone Mantia and the Encore Music Alessi/Bowman version. I highly recommend the Alessi/Bowman version, because their commentary is tremendously valuable. If you simply follow their guidelines diligently and carefully you absolutely can't go wrong. I have some slightly different variations, however, and here they are:

Section 1: First Studies

Etudes 1-8 - Here I play at a very mezzo dynamic and follow Mr. Alessi's advice of TONE CLONING. I am always striving in these to follow the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid! Anything that looks or sounds complicated, with unnecessary motion or turbulence in the sound anywhere, is almost definitely too complicated. The best brass players do the simplest things perfectly, cleanly, and simply, and here is your opportunity to practice the absolute simplest things every day.

Etudes 9 and 10 - I play these about mp, slurred as directed by Mr. Alessi. The KISS principle is extremely important here.

Etudes 11-15 - Now I diverge a bit from Mr. Alessi and Mr. Bowman. I play these rather loudly, about poco f, and I play them with legato air but marcato tongue. It's very important that you do not stop the sound! This requires moving the slide exactly in rhythm with the tongue, quickly and efficiently moving from one position to the next without bouncing or adjusting. It also requires keeping a consistent shape to the sound as you make articulations, helping to cultivate independence of the embouchure formation and articulation motion.

Etudes 16-25 - In both editions of Charlie Vernon's The Singing Trombone, he includes number 16, with the following instruction: "Do this exercise first without the tongue, smearing between each note (except where natural slurs occur)...The slower, the softer, the smoother, the BETTER!" That's how I do these. This is tiring if done right, so I always take a 2 or 3 minute break after this one.

Another aside: although many band directors and teachers make an absolute rule against tapping your foot while playing, many, if not most, of the great brass players I know often tap their feet when practicing. Charlie is a great example; his feet are going all the time, as a coordinating point for all the necessary physical motions to converge on. Things have to change in our bodies to get from one note to another, and everything is better if they change in a perfectly coordinated manner. Tapping your foot can be an extremely helpful way of timing in everything else that has to happen. 

Etudes 26-40 - Here I make a couple of choices, depending on how I'm feeling. If I'm tight I might play one like 16-25, but faster and about mf, in order to counterbalance what I've just done. More often I play one of them like 11-15 (which I might have missed, depending on the day). Sometimes I instead put space between notes, focusing on consistent shape to the end of a note that is released and clear, consistent articulations after the spaces.

Etudes 41-45 I play fast, often double-tongue. Sometimes I play fairly soft and light, sometimes I work on playing fast and loud, but I'm always paying close attention to clear, consistent articulations.

Etude 46 is my favorite thing in the entire Arban's book, and I generally play it legato, at about mp. I am paying very close attention to pitch here, making sure every arpeggio sounds just right in its key, and again, I am striving for the simplest, most consistent transitions between notes. I am also listening intently to the tone quality, striving to keep it consistently rich, full and unforced.

Etudes 47-50 I generally play staccato but not at all pecky, striving for consistent articulations and note shapes.


Studies on Syncopation

Etudes 1-12 - These are excellent, and I use them to practice consistent articulations when combined with contrasting note lengths. Short notes before long notes are very short, and long notes go all the way to the next short note, with a very brief space, if any at all. The challenge is to make every articulation equally pointed and clear, regardless of how much space precedes it.

Studies on Dotted Eighth and Sixteenth Notes

Etudes 13-18 - One of my earliest and most influential teachers was Per Brevig, who insisted on the ability to play dotted rhythms with a perfect internal subdivision. I play these rather slowly, about 88, and don't let my 16th notes (later 32nds) be either triplety or snapped too close to the next note. I also make sure that there is no hint of ta-da to the articulation. These can be valid musical choices, but you have to have the ability to play the same articulation, regardless of the rhythmic figure.

Articulation and Style 

Etudes 19-27 - Now we're getting into some music, and it's time to play musical phrases with great style, incorporating all the consistency of articulation and tone production we've been cultivating. Dr. Bowman and Mr. Alessi give great advice here. One bad habit to guard against often shows up right away in #19, with articulations that sound like Ta Ta-da-Da ta. Again, there are times when this is a good choice of articulation, but for this purpose we want to make sure we can play five identical articulations in the context of a musically shaped phrase. Ta Ta-ta-Ta Ta.

Etudes 28-31 are a good opportunity to give your musical imagination some permission to play, varying articulations as you hear the phrases. I often play #31 mostly legato, but you should make your own choices.


Etude 32 is great for practicing making the melody heard even while you have other, less important, notes to play around it.

Etudes 33-37 - I usually double-tongue the 16th notes, and if I am in good shape I play fairly fast in order to challenge the speed of my tongue.


Etude 38 I play very much like 13-18, but usually faster.

That's it! The first few times you do this it might take longer because you feel compelled to practice the difficulties that come up, but I recommend not dwelling too long on them. Do your best and move on. You don't have to solve every problem today. You will come back to the same issues tomorrow with a slightly different combination of notes, and you will see real and noticeable improvement, probably in less time than you thought you would. Remember, many of the fundamental skills we practice are actually quite a bit more difficult than most of the music we perform - which is why we do them!

Brass Playing Haiku

If your tongue has to
Start and stop every note,
You have a problem.

Circular breathing
Is extremely impressive.
Good for you! Now what?

Breathing exercise:
When will there be enough air?
I might pass out now.
(Karna Millen deserves credit for this one)

Blind trumpet player
At Berklee plays great.
BU Juries no problem.

Smart student Courtney
Said yesterday: "There's nothing
Relaxing about drowning."

Anybody remember the 20th century?

The Bard Festival is a great annual event, doing tremendous service to the larger musical community by bringing attention to a single composer, giving a fantastic survey of his (or her...at some point) work and its context. Reading the review of this year's festival, featuring Jean Sibelius, in The New York Times, I was reminded of a thought that has occurred to me several times over the last couple of years - sometimes in the form of a late-night rant over fine single-malt scotch, complete with my fist pounding on the table (by the way, anybody who would like to see me get past my normal even keel should give me scotch and get me talking about orchestra programming or baseball television rights). 

Orchestras are often accused of ignoring today's composers, slipping into irrelevance by losing touch with contemporary music, but it seems to me that the problem with orchestra programming starts before that. I don't have any documentary evidence to back up this assertion, but my distinct sense is that when I was in school and then beginning my career as a professional orchestral musician, the orchestras I played in performed a wider range of music by a wider range of composers - particularly from the 20th century - than they do now. I can't remember the last time I saw a Vaughan Williams symphony programmed anywhere, and anybody who thinks Vaughan Williams is just "The Lark Ascending" and pastoral English folk song settings should take a listen to his fourth symphony.

The Bard Festival does a wonderful job of highlighting the less well-known works of well-known composers, and it should be an example to orchestras all over the world. When was the last time you heard a Sibelius symphony other than 2 or 5? When was the last time you heard a Shostakovich symphony other than 5, 10, or just maybe 7? Anything by Elgar other than the Cello Concerto or the Enigma Variations? Prokofiev wrote 7 symphonies and a number of other spectacularly exciting orchestral works besides the music to Romeo and Juliet. There was a time when the fantastic string concertos of William Walton were in the regular rotations of soloists and orchestras, and I even see much less Bartok and Hindemith than I used to.

Among American composers, Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland have remained in the repertoire, but for a very narrow representation of their output. I have been lucky to play a couple of marvelous symphonies by Roy Harris, and every time I hear a symphonic work by his American contemporaries such as Walter Piston and Howard Hanson, I am impressed with the boldness and muscularity of the mid-20th century American symphonic style.

I don't think any of this music is neglected because it's not up to the quality of Tchaikovsky and Brahms; there is a tremendous amount of exciting music that people should have the opportunity to hear, and it's left off of orchestra seasons simply because it represents a risk. I contend that this kind of risk avoidance has contributed significantly to the perceived irrelevance of orchestras in the United States. Furthermore, we seem to think orchestral audiences are so resistant to anything they don't know that their attention span for new music can't extend beyond about 12 minutes. Maybe the breadth of a full-scale symphonic form should be reserved for the most highly accomplished composers, but very few new symphonies are presented, in favor of overtures and other shorter works.

Kudos to the Boston Symphony for programming John Harbison's fifth symphony again (I was fortunate to play the premiere), along with the premiere of his sixth. Kudos to Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony for their ongoing American Mavericks series. Kudos to the LA Phil for its ongoing relationship with John Adams and the New York Philharmonic for making big, important news by programming such ambitious works as Ligeti's Le Grande Macabre and Stockhausen's Gruppen. Kudos to the David Alan Miller and the Albany (NY) Symphony - where I am privileged to play often - for continually putting new music in front of their audience and playing it with such conviction and excitement.

It's time for more of the smaller orchestras to get on board and be just as relevant to the larger musical culture and their own communities - not by pandering or guessing what will keep the audiences coming in the door based on surveys and focus groups, but by taking leadership roles in our ongoing cultural conversation.

A creative way to practice intonation

Here's something I wrote just now in response to a topic on the Trombone Forum.

Somebody wrote:

One other problem I found while practicing my tuning: I can hear the note in my head before I play it. But when playing it, I will adjust to what I'm playing instead the other way. How could I improve that?

I want to play what I hear in my head, and don't play what my horn wants.

There's no substitute for simply spending hours doing it. Insist on the pitch in your head 100% of the time.

Here's a suggestion for a creative and effective way to practice the awareness of your own pitch intentions:

- Go into a fairly small practice room, as acoustically neutral as you can find, and bring with you your trombone and a blindfold.

- Practice slow scales and arpeggios with the blindfold on (I find that simply closing your eyes is not enough, as it occupies part of your attention to keep your eyes closed).

- Play in a good internal rhythmic framework (I recommend tapping your foot).

- Listen carefully that when you change from one pitch to another you do so exactly in time, and that the new pitch matches the one inside your head without taking any time to adjust. This will not happen right away, but stick with it.


Tuners, metronomes and recording devices are all good tools, but only if we use them to help focus and train our brains. Trial and error usually works...eventually, but I always try to speed up the process by paying attention to the thought process behind the intention, and use the external tools to serve that purpose.

Thoughts on Auditions

"strive to EX-press not IM-press" – Buddy Baker

The best advice I can give to anybody getting ready to take an audition is to fill your mind with musical thoughts.

First, be sure the tempo of everything you play, and start the inner metronome going at that tempo as soon as possible after you've finished playing what comes before. At the start of the audition, of course, fill your mind with the pulse of the first tempo even before you walk into the room. A steady pulse is a great kind of focusing thought.

Have a reason for everything you play. Know something about every piece - have a visual or psychological image. For example, when I play The Ride, I imagine the monsters flying in attack formation. At the B section of the B Major (F#, G#, E, G#, B...), where the dynamic is marked louder, I imagine a second squadron joining the first.

Know the high point of the phrase and show the listener what that is. Know the softest and loudest thing you will play in the audition.

If you're going to monitor anything physical during the audition, try making it your breath (if you are a wind player). The only downside of monitoring your breath is that sometimes nerves make the breath wobbly, and thinking about it only makes it more wobbly. It can be extremely helpful to find useful visualizations for the most delicate physical activities you have to carry out. For soft playing on a wind instrument, I like to imagine the air rolling slowly down a gentle slope; I control the angle of the slope with the embouchure. Sometimes finding a way to think about your body's activities without thinking directly about your body is the best way to get around the unwanted nervous reactions.


Some other thoughts:

Show how much you love the music you are playing and maybe how much you love your instrument. Demonstrate your joy!

As you get closer and closer to the audition, think more and more about great phrases and less and less about perfect notes.

Tell, don't ask. Don't play anything, ever, wondering how it will come out. Direct it, tell it, be in charge of what comes out, sing it in your brain. If it doesn't come out the bell the way you imagine, that's something to work out practice methods to improve. But keep your imagination in charge, not your body.

All of this needs to be practiced. You can't just turn on these thought processes for the first time when you walk in the audition room. Practicing is for your brain just as much as it is for your body.

And for that matter, follow JayFriedman's advice: dedicate a portion of a practice session every day to getting it right the first time. At some point you will want to play for somebody else, but you don't need to have somebody else in the room to practice the mindset of commitment to the moment. Evaluate what went well and what didn't (a recording device is essential for this), and then figure out how to do detailed practice on the things that didn't.

More About Practicing

“Always start with what you CAN do.” – Norman Bolter. Whatever you want to achieve, you have to start with what you can do today and work towards it patiently and deliberately. The two most important words in this sentence are CAN and START.

“The highest reward from your working is not what you get for it but what you become by it.” – Sydney Harris. Keep the ultimate goals in mind: being a wonderful, expressive musician.

Be creative. Invent routines and methods for yourself to address specific problems. Hammering away at something hoping it will get better is probably the slowest way to improve. It’s better than not practicing at all, but not by much.

Be productive. Don’t just put in hours because you think you should; find ways to use your time productively. If you only have a few minutes, figure out what you can accomplish in that time. If some aspect of your playing is going so poorly one day that even trying to fix it will be frustrating, work on something else and vow to come back to that aspect the next day. Practicing slowly is always productive.

Monitor your body for relaxation, economy and ease of motion and tone production.

“I want it to be EASY!” – SamPilafian

Tell, don’t ask. Don’t play anything, ever, wondering how it will come out. Direct it, tell it, sing it in your brain, be in charge of the sound. If it doesn't come out the way you imagine, that's something to work out practice methods to improve. But your mind is ultimately much more powerful than your body, so keep the mind in charge of the body, not the other way around.

Practice for your mind at least as much as your body. Find the most productive thought processes that help you in the moment of performance, and practice those as you prepare for the performance or audition.

Practice performing. Devote some of your regular practice time to performing. Commit to the moment, play as if there’s an audience, and don’t stop for anything. Using a recording device is one excellent way of doing this. Evaluate afterwards to determine what specific technical aspects and overall musical ideas you want to do better, and then practice those things very specifically. But make sure to practice the commitment to the moment you will need for performance.

Your three best teachers are: 1. a constant, flowing airstream; 2. a constant, flowing, subdivided internal pulse; and 3. your imagination.

Think more about great phrases and less about perfect notes – particularly as you get closer to the audition or performance.

5 Modes of Practicing

I find it incredibly helpful, even essential, to organize my practicing according to what I need to accomplish, and to do so deliberately and systematically. In any given practice session, or even in a portion of a practice session, I can make more advances in my performance by focusing my attention on one of the modes I list below. I don't necessarily need to do all five every day, but I need to do all five with some regularity.

1. Practicing Technique – working on the physical coordination needed to play your instrument or sing. For example: scales and arpeggios, long tones, tone or vocal placement exercises, fingering studies, etc. This is the time to cultivate the most relaxed, natural way of managing the interface between your mind, body and instrument. This is a lifelong endeavor, and nobody ever has it perfected.

2. Practicing Music for Your Body – learning the music you intend to perform, addressing the technical demands and physical coordination, learning notes, ingraining the musical structures in the inner ear. This is the mode we most often call “woodshedding.” Mode 1 serves Mode 2, and Mode 2 can inform the focus of Mode 1.

3. Practicing Music for Music – exploring the music you will perform in a mindset of experimentation. Finding what makes it happen musically, making decisions – or simply experimenting – about relative dynamics, tempi, articulation styles, tone color. This doesn’t have to happen with your instrument! You can also study scores, listen to other music by the same composer, listen to other music in a similar style, etc. Instrumentalists can sing through music, either with your voice or just in your imagination, to develop phrasing ideas separately from instrumental concerns.

4. Practicing Performing – practicing the music you will perform for the mindset and thought processes of actually performing. Commitment to the moment is vital in this mode – no stopping, no going back. And in order to fully commit, the critical, self-evaluating mind has to be turned off now! Only after you finish do you think back or listen back to a recording of what you have just done, and think about what needs to be addressed in the next session of Mode 2 or 3. This is an extremely important step if you want to be a successful performer, and particularly if you take auditions.

5. Practicing Joy – playing music you love, for yourself, just because you love it, even if you have no intention to ever perform it. This is also crucial to a life as a musician, and feeds all of the work we do. Also, get together with friends to play duets, trios, quartets, small jazz combos, etc.

In Praise of Smaller Trombones in Orchestras

I recently had the pleasure of playing two different programs with an excellent summer festival orchestra made up of marvelous musicians from all over the United States. One program included Mozart's Magic Flute Overture and Schubert's Great C Major Symphony; the other Brahms' Third Symphony and Tchaikovsky's 1^st Piano Concerto. Both of these symphonies are on my list of favorites to play, with important thematic material and many magical moments given to the trombones. Knowing the excellent principal trombone player only a little bit, but knowing that he also plays sackbut and is comfortable on a variety of instruments, I asked ahead of time whether and how much he would be scaling down from his primary large bore instrument. He said he would certainly play an alto on Mozart and most likely a small bore tenor for the rest. As it turned out, the instrument he chose was a fantastic Mt. Vernon Bach 8.

This seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring out my 1940 Conn 70H, an instrument I bought from a friend on the West Coast, who had bought it from Don Waldrop, who had bought it from a fellow member of the Navy Band, I assume the original owner. This Conn is a beautiful instrument that has been played and cared for by professionals for its whole life. The lacquer is worn and scratched, and there are several small dings throughout and some wear on the inner slide chrome plating, but there's no sign that the bell was ever dented badly, and the instrument is mechanically sound and reliable. Although there was a detachable 2^nd valve added and then removed, one bend in the valve section had to be replaced, and it looks like the bell section was re-lacquered at some point, it is essentially an original pre-war Conn, and even though I bought it primarily for its historical value, this is a player's horn, responding evenly and beautifully throughout the entire range of the bass trombone.

The more I played it the more I appreciated what the 70H allowed me to do; I could simply play, without worrying about overpowering the small orchestra when I wanted an exciting tone color. And the soft dynamics! No pinching, no straining, no worrying, just relax, think the note and play, and there it is. I've tried to play this instrument in similar repertoire before, but usually had to abandon it because the rest of the trombone section was playing such big instruments that I couldn't blend with them beyond about mezzo-forte. The bassoon player sitting in front of me, with whom I play often, told me repeatedly how much she liked the sound of this instrument. She never put in earplugs or asked for a sound shield.

Could I have played these concerts on my everyday bass trombone, a not-overly-big Shires? Absolutely. I know I could have balanced well and played with an appropriate color. If the principal trombonist had played his large bore instrument, I'm fairly sure that the Shires would have been a better choice, but the 70H, with its smaller bell, narrower slide, and old-world design and construction, made my job significantly easier in this situation. Furthermore, from where I sit in the orchestra, I love – love! – the sound of the trombone section with the small bore on top, particularly one as warm and rich sounding as this particular Bach 8 in the hands of this particular musician.

A horn-playing colleague I used to work with, who has now moved on to be principal horn of a major North American orchestra, would sometimes wonder aloud why trombone players were so often buying new equipment that allowed them to play louder and louder with bigger, wider sounds. They were rarely asked for more sound, he noted, and frequently asked for less. Why not find equipment that makes it easier to play softly instead?

While thinking about this experience and these issues, I re-read Doug Yeo's “ME, MYSELF and I:Are Orchestral Brass Players Losing the Concept of Being Team Players?”, published in 1997 in the trombone and tuba association journals. While I don't agree with everything he wrote, he brought up many essential points and argued them persuasively. Many things have changed since 1997, if not necessarily for the reasons he presented. In my time doing sales for the S. E. Shires Company between 2004 and 2009, I saw the aesthetic among orchestral trombonists shift quite a bit, from a one-sound “mf quality at all dynamics” concept towards a much more lively sound at all dynamics and instruments that allow much more variation in tone color. Consequently, lightweight bells have become extremely popular choices among Shires customers, and what was established as “standard weight” when the company was founded in 1995 is now significantly heavier, duller in response, and thicker-sounding than most professional players want. When I was in school in the late 80s and early 90s, many players were looking for trombones that would be darker and broader than their Bachs, and today we've seen the resurgence of the Bach 42 and 50, especially as customized by the Greenhoe company. The recently introduced Alessi model Edwards is a fundamentally more brilliant, colorful – and slightly smaller – instrument than the combinations Mr. Alessi was playing previously. Very similar changes have happened among many orchestral trumpeters.

I don't mean to imply that all the trombone players in every orchestra should scrap the instruments with which they won their jobs, or that the players at the top of our profession, who have chosen their primary instruments to match their very large orchestras and concert halls, are in any way misguided. But I would suggest that we take our prevailing aesthetic another significant step farther, that we all find smaller instruments that we can play comfortably when the repertoire, orchestra size and concert hall call for them. Then, I would suggest that we experiment with open minds regarding how often these smaller instruments are the right tools for the job at hand, the ones that allow us to simply play in beautiful balance of dynamics and tone colors with the musicians around us. I think we might find that we use them more often than we thought we might, and that our jobs are significantly easier and more enjoyable.