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.