Hate alto clef on alto?

[harrisonreed]

Interesting series of videos on how to tackle an impossible piece. Very interesting little bit right at the end. You can see that maybe he was even worried about what people would think since he cut the edges off each page, but in the end offers up an interesting tip for playing the alto.

I'm excited to hear the final result! Just singing this piece sounds exhausting.

[andym]

Huh. I’m confused about how he is transposing it to make it like playing a tenor trombone.

Personally, I have trouble playing alto in anything but alto clef. I performed one trombone choir piece where my part (alto 2) went into bass clef and I had to just rewrite it in alto and tape it in. I could never figure out why the composer had done that as the part wasn’t particularly low.

And yes, even singing it is clearly exhausting.

[Doug Elliott]

I learned alto reading treble clef, because I didn't want to associate it with any of the clefs I normally read. That way I'm actually reading and playing the notes, not positions. It doesn't matter much what clef I'm reading, except I generally dislike reading alto clef on any instrument.

[harrisonreed]

Huh. I’m confused about how he is transposing it to make it like playing a tenor trombone.

Personally, I have trouble playing alto in anything but alto clef. I performed one trombone choir piece where my part (alto 2) went into bass clef and I had to just rewrite it in alto and tape it in. I could never figure out why the composer had done that as the part wasn’t particularly low.

And yes, even singing it is clearly exhausting.

He transposed down a perfect 4th. So the opening note, Eb, is written as a Bb in tenor clef.

[timothy42b]

I cannot believe I watched someone sing for 4:20 a piece I would find boring on trombone. But I wanted to find out the trick.

So, if I understand correctly, what he does is rewrite alto clef into tenor clef, then play it on alto trombone using Bb tenor trombone positions. That would drive me nuts, it would be faster for me to just get better at alto clef. But everybody's brain is different and clefs are harder for some.

I suspect doing anything in tenor positions delays learning alto positions, so I do some regular tenor exercises moving the slide where the alto requires - makes all those lip slurs in one position, not.

I've been working just on the mini pBone, hope to get a real alto soon, not playing anywhere so it doesn't matter what I'm doing. I noticed something yesterday I have to fix. I downloaded some public domain band sheet music and played along with youtube videos. I had trouble with Bb treble, it's been a while, but also with technical passages, and I realized I'm still reading note by note. That's way too slow, nobody sightreads one note at a time, but I haven't put time in to getting scales, etc., into muscle memory.

[andym]

Thanks, Harrison. I hadn’t quite understood what he said. It would take me a lot of time to switch my alto playing to that mindset. But when you are Christian Lindberg you can do it any way you want.

[Digidog]

I never knew about this, but it seems to me to be an overly complicated way to learn the alto - but to each their own, whatever works, works and so on.

I personally found it much easier to learn the alto clef straight away, and I treat all clefs as transformations of my instrument, rather than a reading issue (fyi, I read almost all clefs on all my trombones, but the ones I have the most trouble with are Bb treble on alto, and C tenor on alto).