6 ms·
What I've learned about the trombone
- jeffbee 5mo ago"The trombone is the only brass instrument in a classical orchestra" is a statement that requires further support.
- bradrn 5mo agoIt’s slightly confusingly phrased, but the full sentence is: > The trombone is the only brass instrument in a classical orchestra […] where the main mode of pitch control is by moving the tuning slide. Which is correct.
- jeffbee 5mo agoOh, I read that as an independent statement, rather than one qualifying the first.
- jordanwallwork 5mo agoYou read "where the main mode of pitch control is by moving the tuning slide" as an independent statement? What does that mean on its own?
- jeffbee 5mo agoThe interrupting parenthetical was so disruptive to the sentence that I thought it said, essentially, "The trombone is the only brass instrument. Parenthetical. The trombone is played by moving the slide."
- madcaptenor 5mo agoI had the same confusion - I'd move the [...] to the following sentence.
- mrhottakes 5mo agoThe trumpet, french horn, tuba, and euphonium also rely on the tuning slide to control pitch, so that's not an accurate statement.
- jeffbee 5mo agoIndeed, a trumpet has one slide for tuning only and two more slides that are used while playing, so it's not even technically correct.
- Polizeiposaune 5mo agoYep. A basic trumpet has more slides than a basic trombone.
- bluGill 5mo agoYour trumpet maybe, but my trumpet from 1957 only has tuning slides, which cannot be used while playing.
- jeffbee 5mo agoInteresting. A student horn I guess? I've never owned one that didn't have at least a third valve slide ring. I think they were widespread around the time that the trumpet really took over from the cornet, around 1900-1920. My pre-War Olds has moving slides.
- bluGill 5mo agoI know a few cases where slides were added later. I don't know when they became common but impression is layer.
- mbrameld 5mo agoDo you mainly control pitch with the tuning slide or the valves on those instruments? I think you mainly control pitch with the valves and only supplement with a tuning slide for certain notes, depending on the instrument, and therefore the statement is accurate.
- Polizeiposaune 5mo agoTheir terminology is odd. The thing you move while playing is generally called the hand slide. There's nearly always a separate tuning slide located in the crook of the bell section. (Some relatively rare instruments like the Shires Alto do "tuning in slide" with a mechanism for fine adjustment in the hand slide). If you're also moving the tuning slide in the middle of a piece you're probably a bass trombonist doing the now-impossible glissando (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWJPeA_1g48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWJPeA_1g48) in the Bartok concerto for orchestra.
- JeremyHerrman 5mo agoI was thinking the same thing. The tuning slide is not what you use while playing, it's the separate slide on the bell side of the trombone for fine adjustment to ensure you're in tune with the rest of the band.
- dark-star 5mo agoEverything I know about trombones I know from the game Trombone Champ. It's a good game for every aspiring trobonist (or people just remotely interested in music-related video games)
- Esn024 5mo agoThis seems a decent introduction. The only thing mentioned that I wasn't really aware of is the effect of the tongue in addition to the lips on the embouchure of higher notes. Can anyone recommend some more info on that?
- jeffbee 5mo agoThe role of the tongue is heavily emphasized in modern brass pedagogy. Try Claude Gordon, Physical Approach to Elementary Brass Playing, 1977
- Esn024 5mo agoThanks, I will.
- supreme_loquat 5mo agoFor embouchure mechanics, I'd highly recommend Dave Wilken's blog. That was his doctoral research focus and he's got a good intro to brass embouchures on his blog [0]. The tongue is usually not as much of a focus when it comes to embouchure, but he does have a post discussing his thoughts about the so-called Tongue Controlled Embouchure [1] which you might find interesting. Dave has been building on the work Donald Reinhardt started in methodically categorizing embouchure types and figuring out how each type best functions. They seem to be part of a minority in the brass community who actually care to approach things scientifically - I could go on about my own experiences of brass teachers who aren't interested in furthering their understanding of embouchure mechanics, but Dave covers that topic pretty well already [2]. Reinhardt's stuff can also be worth reading, but Dave simplified some of the categories that seemed unnecessarily complicated. [0] https://wilktone.com/?page_id=5619 https://wilktone.com/?page_id=5619 [1] https://wilktone.com/?p=307 https://wilktone.com/?p=307 [2] https://wilktone.com/?p=5496 https://wilktone.com/?p=5496
- _spduchamp 5mo agoOne of my favourite albums is Stuart Dempster's Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel. A group of trombonists all playing in a giant underground water tank with incredibly long reverb. https://youtube.com/watch?v=4tvMp4XDICU https://youtube.com/watch?v=4tvMp4XDICU
- SoleilAbsolu 5mo agoThat is awesome! Back in the '90s I participated in Tuba Christmas in NYC - I played sousaphone. The performance was on the Rockefeller Center ice rink, but the rehearsal was in the sub-sub basement parking garages of 30 Rock (I think). Imagine hundreds of low brass players activating this enclosed volume of air - I've never experienced anything like it before or since!
- liotier 5mo ago> But, how can a trombone ever be better than the piano when there’s so many variables? Well, unlike a piano, where each key produces a fixed pitch, a trombone lets me subtly adjust every note as I play. Thanks, but I'll stick to my keyboard's pitch bend control. The trombone's great expressiveness comes at a steep learning cost.
- noman-land 5mo agoThe learning curve is really not that steep. You pretty quickly learn the landmarks for the 7 positions of the slide.
- bryanlarsen 5mo agoAnd micro adjusting positions isn't that hard either. If it doesn't sound right, you adjust. The hard part is figuring out whether to adjust up or down. And that's just experience. My ear still isn't good enough to know whether I'm a little sharp or a little flat. But any note I get wrong at tonight's practice will likely be a note I've hit wrong many times in previous practices.
- liotier 5mo agoProgramming sequencers visually and with tons of help from the tooling pushes the ear sharpening later in the learning process - and I'm only now starting to realize that maybe making music is about deciding what sounds right... I suppose the trombone and violin's "sink or swim" approach ensures the early acquisition of that skill.
- cm2012 5mo agoEh I played trombone in high school and it is very forgiving. You can vibe play a trombone.
- liotier 5mo agoI suppose one's ear gets sharpened fast, out of necessity - but I recoil at imagining what the other band members have to get through meanwhile. The process for violin is the same though.
- bryanlarsen 5mo agoI've been trying to square the physics and my experience. Pedal B flat is the fundamental, low B flat is the 2x, F 3x, mid B flat the 4x, D the 5X, high F is 6X, G half sharp is 7X and high B flat is 8X. The position your music teacher most likely will have told you to adjust is 2nd position - you play it slightly sharper for an A vs the E or C sharp it's also used for. Why is that? It's the major 3rd that has the largest variation between just and equal temperament. The A is often a 3rd against the F, is that why? But it seems to me that it's all the notes on the D embouchure that will be off -- 1st position D on the trombone is 5X the fundamental, so it's justly tuned, not equally tuned, so shouldn't it be the one that needs the most adjustment? I guess all wind instruments have this problem, so maybe I don't notice because usually I'm playing in a wind band with very few equally tempered instruments like piano, guitar and glockenspiel?
- peatmoss 5mo agoMost instruments tend to pitch sharp or flat depending on the partial. I don't recall any music teachers giving advice that specific positions should routinely get adjustments, but instead that notes in a particular partial should be adjusted. For example, F above middle C should be flattened when played in 1st position to compensate for 6th partial tending sharp. Or the G in 2nd position above that F needing to be pulled in a bit to compensate for 7th partial tending flat. Manufacturers have different philosophies around this as well. I have a vintage mid-1960s King 3b whose partials line up differently and require different adjustment from my modern XO 1634... and both of those horns are extremely similar .508 bore tenor trombones.
- bryanlarsen 5mo agoThat advice makes more sense according to my understanding of the physics -- the entire partial might be slightly off and every position in the partial should be adjusted similarly. The just/equal temperament thing lead me to suspect that it was the 5th partial (a major 3rd partial, the D) that would be the one most likely to be off, but a trombone is neither a perfect cylinder nor a perfect cone so simplified models might be off. The perfect 5th (aka both the F partials) is pretty exact on an ideal model, but a real trombone isn't ideal.
- vintermann 5mo agoOne trombone feature not mentioned here is that the length of the pipe apparently affects the timing enough that they have to compensate for it.
- justonceokay 5mo agoThis is a feature of every instrument. Even with piano you have to start pressing down a key slightly before you want to ring out or you will be behind time.
- vintermann 5mo agoYes, but for trombone it varies markedly from first position to seventh.
- bluGill 5mo agoIf you play piano you should find a tuner who does something better than equal temperament. When you accept that changing keys will change the tone of the song you can get a lot better music. You don't need to go to just temperament (and since you still need octave stretch it wouldn't be ideal anyway - though if you can live with playing music in exactly one key it is nice). I tuned my piano to EBVTIII and I like it. (well I tuned 3 notes and then got my son interested and he tuned the rest). It isn't as hard to tune a piano as professionals make it out. However it takes me about 5x as long so if you can find a good tuner I'd call it worth it.
- drivebyhooting 5mo agoDo you get wolf tones?
- bluGill 5mo agonot with EBVTIII. Some temperaments would, but Bach showed it was possible to do without. (Bach did not use equal temperament)
- brudgers 5mo agoJS Bach did not use a piano either. Because so much of music was written around the organ (e.g. vocal music sung in tune with a church organ) tuning was what it was. The well tempered clavier is exceptional because it is an exception to the vast majority of JS Bach’s work.
- bluGill 5mo agoOrgans are and were tuned all the time. While he didn't have a piano, the organ was tempered in some way. His well tempered clavier was a plea to give him organs that could play in any key. We don't know what temperament he used (there is plenty of debate), but it is clear he was trying to show how the key in his system changes the sound/mood of the piece - something lost in equal temperament.
- DonHopkins 5mo agoOh, by the way... Pink Trombone https://dood.al/pinktrombone/ https://dood.al/pinktrombone/ https://github.com/imaginary/pink-trombone https://github.com/imaginary/pink-trombone Evy Kassirer - !!Con 2019 - Reverse engineering your mouth! by Evy Kassirer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTwjirrCuDE&t=34s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTwjirrCuDE&t=34s Zack Quattan - Pink Trombone Playlist - Gamepad / MIDI / Machine Learning / Phoneme Classifier / etc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LflxVULOtLs&list=PLzgiV7-SLJpYBfFG2GbpCdkFyLVKYusm3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LflxVULOtLs&list=PLzgiV7-SLJ... https://deepwiki.com/zakaton/Pink-Trombone https://deepwiki.com/zakaton/Pink-Trombone pink trombone controlled by max msp via OSC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7eJ209ayFw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7eJ209ayFw Circuit Bending - Pink Trombone "Speech Synthesis" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_qd116njyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_qd116njyk How to break Pink Trombone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4FWmlJPxsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4FWmlJPxsE
- frankfrank13 5mo agoI loved playing trombone in school. It's such a simple mechanism, it invites a lot of curiousity, and this piece captures that well. Instruments like piano, violin, and guitar are very visual, essentially wysiwyg. Instruments like saxophones, clarinets, flutes, take a long to mentally map and reason through (this combination of keys achieves note X). Trumpets, and other 3 valve instruments map exactly to trombone positions! Eg. no-valves = 1st position, 1st valve is 3rd position, 1+2 is 4th position. But visually you don't see this, and it doesn't invite the curiousity. Trombone super unique in that you get a little wysiwyg, but you have to square that with embouchure. But learning trombone, and then mapping that knowledge to a euphonium, trumpet, tuba, etc, gives you a knowledge about that instrument (eg ok if note X is 1st valve, and note X+1 is 1+2, then i know adding 2-to-1 adds a half step, because position 3 is a half step from position 4).
- mbrameld 5mo ago> But learning trombone, and then mapping that knowledge to a euphonium, trumpet, tuba, etc, gives you a knowledge about that instrument (eg ok if note X is 1st valve, and note X+1 is 1+2, then i know adding 2-to-1 adds a half step, because position 3 is a half step from position 4). I don't think intervals are unique to trombones. If you understand that X+1 is a half step above X, and you know note X is 1st valve and note X+1 is 1+2, then you know adding 2-to-1 adds a half step even if you've never seen a trombone.
- frankfrank13 5mo agoI guess, but the sequence of positions 6->5->4->3->2-1 maps to valves - 1+3 (6) - 2+3 (5) - 1+2 (4) - 1 (3) - 2 (2) - open (1) All I mean to say, sliding a little bit at a time up the slide is easy to map to "short slide higher pitch" in a way that valves don't
- RickJWagner 5mo agoThere’s also a ‘trigger trombone’ variant, where pulling a trigger routes the air through more tubing, bringing a different pitch. Source: I’m a sponsor of the trombone arts. My kid played trombone in high school.
- acheron 5mo agoMore formally that's an "F attachment", lowering the key of the instrument (assuming a standard tenor trombone) from B♭ to F. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombone#Valve_attachments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombone#Valve_attachments See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_instrument#Trigger_or_throw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_instrument#Trigger_or_th...
- asciimov 5mo agoThis is your reminder to stop touching the bell when playing third position.
- jschveibinz 5mo agoFor those who played in high school and then put your instrument down for 40 years, you can pick it back up and play again! One of the great joys of my life now is playing trombone in a local band with other people just like me--relearning their instruments and making new friends. New Horizons Band: https://newhorizonsmusic.org/Find_a_Group https://newhorizonsmusic.org/Find_a_Group
- macintux 5mo agoMy high school band teacher and my father have both performed with New Horizons. Great group.
- croisillon 5mo agoi loved when they reached Pluto, great job!
- dwayne_dibley 5mo agoMe too! Except it’s the tuba. Whomp whomp.
- jdauriemma 5mo agoI think you'll enjoy this: an acoustically-accurate trombone in the web browser. https://github.com/bignimbus/trombone.js https://github.com/bignimbus/trombone.js
- ofrzeta 5mo agoDoesn't really sound like a trombone?
- jdauriemma 5mo agoThere are limits to the web audio API :) but I did conform to the known waveforms of the trombone when setting the synthesizer values. The frequencies and proportions of the slides and partials are very precise!
- amavect 5mo ago>The tone is generated using two sawtooth oscillators I interpreted "acoustically-accurate" to mean physically modeled in some way. Filtered sawtooth makes a simple brass-like timbre, but 80% still sounds synthetic. Really neat anyways, thanks for sharing.
- BJones12 5mo agoI recently learned that valve trombones exist [0], where there is no slide and the notes are selected via valve-presses like a trumpet. [0] https://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical_instruments/winds/trombones/ysl-354v_354vc/index.html https://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical_instruments/winds/tr...
- natebc 5mo agoThat's wild. I suppose it's just a long baritone?
- tomcam 5mo agoNo. It has a trombone look but more important, it is not as conical as a baritone so it doesn’t sound as rich.
- etothet 5mo agoSimilarly, so do slide trumpets!
- tomcam 5mo agoI have a bunch of them, but I prefer to play marching baritones because I’m less likely to bang them into a music stand.
- complianceowll 5mo agotromboner
- lee_ars 5mo agoThe best part about playing trombone in high school band was not having to learn concert pitches. Concert F? I play an F. Concert Bb? I play Bb. Suck it, trumpets!
- khazhoux 5mo agoSpoiler: trumpet section DGAF. Cocky bunch, we were.
- pfedigan 5mo ago[dead]
- aidenn0 5mo agoA couple of comments: > But any instrument that’s not the piano or guitar can actually make micro-adjustments while playing a song You can make micro adjustments on a guitar, but only to be sharper[1] > But for now, one obvious advantage is that this allows us to do “real” glissandos, where the pitch smoothly transitions from one note to another For a famous example of a "fake" glissando, the opening clarinet solo of Rhapsody in Blue, which, as typically performed, is rather smooth from D5 to C6[2] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_bending https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_bending 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykFWUEHhkMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykFWUEHhkMw
- ratmeadow 5mo agoYou can make adjustments on a guitar to make a note flatter by pushing the neck/headstock forward, relaxing the strings slightly
- tomcam 5mo agoNo one has yet mentioned that getting good tone quality on a trombone is perhaps its biggest challenge. The same as true with violin and viola. The older and more primitive and instrument is, the more work you have to do. Contrast this with the trombone’s cousins, the baritone and euphonium, which have infinitely better tone quality with little to no effort at all. I will get downvoted for this, but modern players like Trombone Shorty have nowhere near the tone of players like Tommy Dorsey. this is clearly a matter of preference because he could nail that smooth smooth sound if you wanted to. I just don’t like the blatty sound.
- jancsika 5mo ago> This system ensures that every key and every note sounds equally good, but it sacrifices the purity of just intonation. Bach wrote two books of the Well-Tempered Clavier over 300 years ago that explain musically why that sacrifice is worth it: * Book I: pick a prelude/fugue in any key and it will sound ok on a keyboard that you tuned ahead of time * Book II: modulate anywhere you want[1] in the middle of a piece and it will sound ok That same system works all the way through high-Romantic Wagnerian operas and atonal pieces of the 20th century. Use equal temperament and let the singer/violinist/horn player "sweeten" a third by ear where applicable. Edit: well, anywhere Bach wanted. Hee hee.