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Course: Music > Unit 4
Lesson 3: Brass- French Horn: Interview and demonstration with principal John Cerminaro
- Trumpet: Interview and demonstration with principal David Bilger
- Trombone: Interview and demonstration with principal Joseph Alessi
- Bass Trombone: Interview and demonstration with Denson Paul Pollard
- Tuba: Interview and demonstration with Chris Olka
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Trombone: Interview and demonstration with principal Joseph Alessi
Created by All Star Orchestra.
Want to join the conversation?
- So, if you are a Trombone player, do you have to have perfect pitch?(5 votes)
- no one can get a perfect pitch on every single note, especially when doing the sixteenth notes lol, but after lots of practice with tuning with every note, you will be able to be relativity close to perfect pitch(3 votes)
- Athe mentioned a contrabass trombone. What is the range of a contrabass trombone? 0:33(6 votes)
- from A flat in octave 0 to C in octave 5. If you are still confused, go to this website (http://www.orchestralibrary.com/reftables/rang.html) and scroll down to the brass section. That may be a better explanation.(4 votes)
- I was wondering, when it shows the whole orchestra are they practicing or performing?(3 votes)
- This is by the All-Star Orchestra, and they do not perform for the public, they only make videos. So I would say that they are performing for the internet.(1 vote)
- Next year I am playing trombone. Any tips?(2 votes)
- Patience. It can take a while to get comfortable playing without definite stops for the slide, especially is you are used to keys on a trumpet or baritone. But be patient and you'll get it. Also, don't let your fingers bang on the bell when you hit third position. I did that all the time to 'know' where third was and I still find myself doing it years later.(3 votes)
- how do clean your trombone ?(1 vote)
- There are cleaning kits readily available at music stores. They are really nothing more than a long wire and a small cloth. The cloth is attached to the wire and the wire is used to push the cloth through the length of the horn.(4 votes)
- As a trombone player what scale was he playing when he was showing glissando
Thank you from a trombone player(2 votes)- He was playing D HARMONIC minor! Don't forget that MAJOR, pun intended, change! Because in harmonic minor you'll play a MAJOR seventh scale degree instead of a minor seventh scale degree.(2 votes)
- How much does a soprano trombone cost?(2 votes)
- Looks like they come as low as 200$ and go up from there!(2 votes)
- After playing the trombone for awhile, do your lips hurt?
I would think so even though I don't play trombone......(2 votes)- Not really. The buzzing itself is quite natural.
However, your lips are a muscle, and just like any other muscle, they can get sore from overuse. If you play high notes for a long time, they will start to hurt. If you stick to lower notes, you can play all day without them hurting.(1 vote)
- I play the trombone and the baritone so this is awesome How do u imagine it that's my hard part(2 votes)
- How hard is it to play the trombone?(2 votes)
- Well like any instrument, it will be hard at first but with practice you will get better.
BUT, if you are younger/VERY small arms you may not be able to reach all the positions. That is alright because you will grow into them/find a solution but just a warning.(1 vote)
Video transcript
("Symphony No. 2" by Gustav Mahler) - This is a tenor trombone. And there's a bass trombone,
and an alto trombone, and a soprano trombone,
and a contrabass trombone. So we got a lot of different sizes. And the trombone goes
back to the Baroque ages. And then they had a funny
name called the sackbut. Trombone, of course, a lot of people associate it with jazz 'cause that's its natural habitat, but then there's a whole world
of the classical trombone. There's usually three
trombones in an orchestra, two tenors and a bass, but then there's the brass band world, the concert bands, wind ensembles, and then for crazy trombone players there's trombone choir
and trombone quartet. And that's a lot of fun. If you've never heard eight
or 12 trombone together, it's an incredible sound. ("Symphony No. 9 in E
minor" by Antonin Dvorak) The brass player and the vocalist share one special thing in common, and that is the brass player makes the pitch with a body
part, and that's our lips. And the vocalist makes their
pitch with the vocal cords. That's not that far away
from the brain, actually. You know, it's just pretty close. And no other instruments
share that same association. All brass players have to conceive the sound and the pitch in their head. And then it's transferred to here, then it's transferred to the mouthpiece, and then you send that
message into the instrument. And if the brass player
doesn't hear the pitch, then they, you know, I do
this with my own students, they have to be able to hear the pitch and transfer it to here, and then the instrument will basically do what you want it to do. And that's how people get a great tone is this center of sound and center of pitch first before you play. So many days, I'll
start my day in the car. I'll have my mouthpiece, and I have about a 45-minute commute, and without turning on
the radio or anything, I'll just start playing
or start buzzing something on the mouthpiece and in my mind I will know exactly what pitch that is. Well, I'm buzzing an F, I'm buzzing a C, or whatever, on the mouthpiece. And when I get to work, if that pitch center is correct, when I pick up my horn, bingo. You know, that's exactly the pitch that I was buzzing all along. (whistles) That's a B flat, better be. (pitch fluctuates) And I know that pitch, that last pitch I just played is a B flat. (pitch elongates) So the whole world of
brass playing, I think, is essential to the brass
player, a very good brass player, to have that pitch in their
mind even before they play. And this way if you sing,
if you sing in your mind, then it's just, and it happens very easily on the instrument. I'm sending the message
from my brain to my lips and all the muscles
that are around my face determine what pitch I make. The instrument is just sort
of an aide in some ways. It's aiding, it's allowing
this pitch to happen. ("Daphnis and Chloe - Suite
No. 2" by Maurice Ravel) One of the keys to the success of the classical trombone player is ultimate control of
how you move the slide. That's the key in classical trombone is to have complete control of the slide, where you don't show any glissando at all. And so if you play a scale. (scale fluctuates) I'm very careful how to move the slide. And you can play a scale not carefully. (scale fluctuates erratically) You know? A lot of glissandi that I was making. So glissandi. (scale fluctuates rapidly) Something like that. If you played, let's say, you know, Mahler, three, okay? And you used the same technique, it would sound like this. (scale fluctuates dramatically) Okay? So that doesn't really work. ("Symphony No. 2" by Gustav Mahler) My father was a trumpet player and he played here in New York
at the Metropolitan Opera. And my mother sang at the opera, also. So when I was, then we
moved out to California, and I would watch my father
warm up on the trumpet. So I kinda gravitated to that, and I probably begged him to start me on the trumpet, and he did. He started my on a cornet. And I did that for several years, but always had trouble with the high register on the trumpet. And my father came in one day and said, "Why don't you just try this trombone?" and I reluctantly tried it and found that I had a
fantastic high register on the trombone at a very young age. So and I think the reason why, he knew brass pretty well. His father was a trumpet
player, my grandfather. But I just, I think, this
is not true for everybody, but in my case, just the size of the mouthpiece fit my face better. So that's how I ended up on the trombone. And I didn't really know what
I would do with the trombone. It wasn't something
that I was interested in until I started to listen to J.J. Johnson and also the Chicago Symphony Low Brass came out with a record,
educational record, where they played orchestral
excerpts as a group. And then I got to hear
the trombone section by themselves in four-part
harmony with the tuba, and that really interested me and I started to get recordings and listened to all kinds of repertoire. And the teachers in San Francisco at that time were fantastic. They all had played in the
San Francisco Symphony. So a lot of times it's
who you study with, too. And I think I was lucky in that way. In our high school we
had a great jazz band and a good high school music department. And I went to audition for the, I think, Monterey Jazz Festival had a band, a high school band that they put together. So I did that for two years and got to work with The Heath Brothers and Bill Evans, and all
these great jazz players. So I got more and more into that. And there was a trombone, was not a trombone, a
music competition called, it was sponsored by
Pepsi-Cola in San Francisco. And there were four divisions, brass, woodwinds, piano, and strings. And so I entered this
competition and I won. And the prize, it was a great competition, was a chance to solo with
the San Francisco Symphony, $500, back then that was pretty good, and also a two-week tour of Europe. All expenses paid. And that year, the piano
winner was Jeff Kahane. Everybody has to be encouraged. And I think when you're encouraged and there's some kind
of success that happens, you know, you ramp it up and you wanna practice more, and you wanna study more, and it gives you a boost of confidence. ("Daphnis and Chloe - Suite
No. 2" by Maurice Ravel)