Arban’s for alto, Grove/Cherry Classics

[Bach5G]

I bought this a couple of weeks ago and, this morning, played through page 1 . This might not sound like much of an accomplishment, but it’s further than I got in my previous attempts to learn alto.

The Wayne Grove/Cherry Classics version seems to nail the learning curve perfectly, with lots of exercises to reinforce the information. Not too expensive.

Worth a look if you are working on alto these days.

[Crazy4Tbone86]

I am intrigued by this. I'm not going to buy it right now because I have plenty of alto trombone books to keep me practicing. However, I will definitely look for this book and peruse it at the next (post epidemic) trombone workshop I attend.

Sometimes, I ask the question "why?" when a different edition of a standard book comes out. Then.....after some time, I realize that the altered edition has validity that only becomes obvious after using it for a while. When the Young/Jacobs tuba edition of the Arban's came out, I wondered "why write these standard exercises up a whole tone?" Obviously, the editors were thinking in terms of the book being used on tubas in multiple keys....especially the C tuba. However after some time, I found that the Young/Jacobs edition was terrific for bass trombone......in particular because of the frequency of the low B-naturals. I'm wondering in the new Arban's alto edition will have some benefits that I am not seeing.

[Gary]

Two questions:
Is this book written in treble clef?
Is the only difference that it's the same exercises but written a step?

[BGuttman]

You could use Arban's for trumpet by reading it in alto clef and adding 2 sharps to the key signature (or removing 2 flats). Note that "D#" is D natural and "G#" is G natural.

[Bach5G]

Alto clef

[CalgaryTbone]

A quick review - I bought this book (says Volume 1 so I assume there's more to come) and have just started working out of it. I'm liking it very much. Essentially, it's about 1/2 of the familiar Arbans book up a 4th and in alto clef. Lots of scale/arpeggio work and some work at various articulations in a variety of keys.

I'm finding this to be a great resource for getting more comfortable with the alto, especially reading on the instrument. I've been playing the alto for a while, and have performed some of the major solos, and a lot of the big orchestral standards. Most of those works are not especially technically challenging, so the usual approach is to start slow and work out everything, so that by the time you're performing it, you are quite familiar with the music in front of you, and you are relatively comfortable with playing the music that's in front of you. In that situation, the player is good at playing that music, but not fluid with other music.

The Arbans is easy in places and a bit more difficult in others - that combined with the short etudes makes it ideal to pick one and start reading. You can play along and just discover what skips or spellings of notes makes you hesitate. A quick bit of "shedding" usually fixes that, but I find that this kind of practicing starts to pay dividends in familiarity with the clef/alto slide positions/tuning, etc.

I also think that the familiarity of the etudes is useful in this process too. Most of us have played the same material on tenor, so there's a muscle memory for the slide positions, but you're hearing and seeing the higher key and the alto clef.

The book is well laid out, and is spiral bound which makes it user-friendly on the music stand. I think that I discovered one mis-print (a few notes off by a step). There are also a couple of places where I realized that the choice of a couple of notes was taken from a different edition than what I'm used to (I know that there are different choices here and there between the Trumpet and the Trombone editions for instance).

I would recommend this book as both a good introductory book for alto, and for an experienced player to make their alto playing more instinctive with better reading skills on the instrument.

Jim Scott