Teaching Jazz Trombone to kids

[alberttrombone]

Hello,

Do you know about good methods to teach jazz trombone to kids?

Is there any curriculum in the US, as the on for classical music, where is very clear which tunes should be played at each age? Which scales and harmonic turns?
Or a list of easy trombone solos for start transcribing?

Thanks so much!

Albert

[BGuttman]

The first few years for trombone are the same whatever you plan to play eventually. You'd be amazed how many of the great jazz players started on the same stuff the rest of us use.

The difference starts when jazz players start to improvise. At this stage you can begin learning classic tunes for improvisers. A fake book (Real Book or other collection of songs) becomes useful. Have the student learn the heads of songs and memorize them. Then trying to noodle around on the melody of the songs.

After that I'll leave it to the teachers to suggest things.

[Redthunder]

Is there any curriculum in the US, as the on for classical music, where is very clear which tunes should be played at each age?

No, not that I know of. And I'm not sure there's a clear curriculum that's universally agreed upon for classical music either.

Don't worry about teaching specific tunes.

In fact, if they're beginners, don't even worry about quantifying jazz as it's own entity. Just have them improvise. There's no reason why improvisation should only be included when teaching jazz - it should be a universal skill that's taught to every instrumentalist.

I teach improvisation to beginners (or advanced instrumentalists that have never done it before) through thourough and consistent aural skill building.

For example, if you can teach a young musician a five note scale, in solfege and in note letters, you can begin singing tonic and dominant harmonic patterns for them to sing back. Then you can have them translate that to note letters on their instrument, and once their comfortable hearing various combinations of those five notes, you can ask them to come up with their own patterns. Same can be done with rhythms.

All of these skills will help them become competent jazz musicians if they desire to do so, but it will also create fantastic musicians on the whole, no matter what styles of music they study or choose to play.

[Geordie]

Wondering if this helps to focus. Not a fan of jazz exams but gives a structure.
https://us.abrsm.org/en/our-exams/jazz- ... one-exams/#

[Grah]

Listen! Listen! Listen! Get them to listen to the classic jazz recordings, starting with early New Orleans jazz.

[alberttrombone]

Thanks for all the responses!!!

[jcdoubleu77]

1. Listen a whole lot and develop good feel by playing along with recordings.
2. Abersold play-alongs used to be the standard method back when I was learning to play (maybe it still is). These teach you to hear the changes, read the changes, and develop a repertoire of standard tunes.
3. Focus on blues, rhythm changes, and ii-V-I patterns at first, then move on to more complex changes.
4. As JJ said: scales, scales, scales.
5. At more advances stages, work on playing the same tune or pattern in multiple keys, working up to all 12 keys.

All of this is wood-shedding stuff, but you also want to be out there playing with others constantly. For beginners, find a rhythm player at minimum: piano, bass, or guitar. The more folks you have to play with the better. Play-alongs help, but listening and navigating real live players is crucial.

[AndrewMeronek]

As much as universities are trying to codify otherwise, learning jazz is traditionally very strongly aural and imitative. Virtually all the 'greats' of the first century learned jazz by wearing out records or being lucky enough to be able to see live jazz every day.

[Pre59]

As much as universities are trying to codify otherwise, learning jazz is traditionally very strongly aural and imitative. Virtually all the 'greats' of the first century learned jazz by wearing out records or being lucky enough to be able to see live jazz every day.

Those days are gone as far as I can tell. Since the rise of the jazz education industry, encapsulating college courses, Aebersold play alongs, YouTube courses etc etc, jazz has become divided into two camps. Those usually older, who've learnt on the job, picking up info as they go and often taking lessons from pianists and guitarists as I did, and those that took the jazz education route.

The problem is that often the two factions can't always work together. I would never consider that I knew a piece if I had to have a fake book or tablet on the stand to play it. But conversely I couldn't create an interesting solo on 2 chords for 5 plus minutes either.

The younger players that I (sometimes) play with seem to be impressed that I can pull a song out of the air, but I'm amazed that they can create so much from a chord sequence alone.

That's a big difference.

[AndrewMeronek]

Those days are not really gone. Musicians who 'make it' specifically as jazz players still have to go through that process of intense, long term listening and imitation. There's just a lot of incentive in institutions to generate and push learning materials in addition to this process so that students and teachers have to buy them. Some of these materials are actually pretty good. Some of them aren't. I've gradually moved more to the opinion that fake books are more generally in the 'aren't' category, mainly because of how common errors and deliberate changes are in them, and how students tend to think that learning a fake book version of a tune means they can skip checking out the original recording of that tune.