Some advice on learning after bad start

[imsevimse]

Hello.

I've tried to think how to write this post for a while but have stopped because my language skills probably will not be sufficient, but then I thought I should try something new so I used Google translate and then I adjusted the english text a bit.

So here it goes, some advice on learning after a bad start. Best is of course to avoid the bad start, but if you realise you need a change early you can make the change now and then you will not loose all those following important years. These is things I think I had benefited from if I had known this when I started and if I had understood a post like this one and if I had been able to make my mother and father understand so they did something about it. They could then have helped me to get another teacher since I become so interested and practiced a lot. That had probably made a difference

I have been struggling to repair a bad start since I realized myself that I had developed in a way that I had reached a dead end. Teachers might have seen it before I did but they didn't say anything. In the mirror it might be because they didn't know how to deal with it. The turning point first came when I was 17-18 years old when a new teacher was straight and told me so, so I understood how important it was to fix my technique. Now it is more than 40 years since I started that technical journey.

About my journey

Started playing trombone in 1975 when I was 12 years old and then quickly learned to reach an acceptable level so I could start to develop note reading and deepen my interest in music. My bad start was only about four years of having a teacher that could not play trombone or any brass but those four years cost me another forty years to fix and probably it also cost me a better musical career. In 1980-81 I made that drastic change to the emboschure and the slide technique, which meant that I had to start all over again for six months and then could not play at all. I had to relearn away from a terrible smile emboushure. It raised me a level and in 1983 I entered the university on trombone. My technique was not fully repaired so I could not absorb the teaching there very well because it made high demands that the technique should be fully developed. I struggled with the concerts I had to play with that insufficient technique and had no real idea how to follow that transition from smile emboushure to "puckered". A got another teacher at that college and he only concentrated teaching on concerts which I was not ready for. Musical confidence got low and I hid behind those who were doing everything right. After finishing my studies, I started to decide for myself how I should change my practice and gradually with maturity I learned to be my own best teacher. Here, then, the development curve began to change from being a linear rather flat curve to an exponential curve.
What has happened in the last maybe 10 years is that the slope now rises very steeply, so finally I can fully go up and concentrate on the music when I play. I no longer have the mental blocks that were nurtured and inherited from my bad start and shaky followup. Now since ten years everything feels very good to play and my technique feels solid. It's now just a matter of strengthening and training further to fine tune everything. Those small corrections now makes me take leaps in playing. Music is now very fun.

Some concrete technical advice how to overcome problems I leave to teachers but I want to give some general advice that has nothing to do with concrete technical advice and that is to take advantage of all the opportunities offered when musicians you admire and play with give you all those "free advice" in person, because it is based of what they see and hear in the moment and often is very sincere. If you are in training then instead listen to your teachers, but then make sure that you really have a good teacher who is not only a nice teacher but someone who has solved the puzzle, who knows what the path to learning to a high level means. Ask all kinds of questions to those who give you information so you really understand. Don't leave those important moments in confusion. Don't forget that what is most important is being able to translate that information into something fruitful when you get home to practice. Practice smart. All that important work you have to do yourself, because then you are alone. Always think about what the information you pick up means to just YOU in each situation. The earlier you start to take great responsibility for your learning the better for your learning curve. This is what I believe. It's a bit late for me to try to pick up competition to get a full pro career now then I'm in my late 50ies so it will never happen, but to be able to do music at an always higher level then the day before is what I want as my award.

/Tom

[harrisonreed]

Maybe it's hidden, but I don't see where your bad start, um, started. What or where did you do wrong?

I can relate to the education portion. I think the conditions all have to be right to get anything out of college. You have to be there with the basics already learned, be receptive, and have the right teacher. Harder than it sounds. That goes for any discipline.


FWIW, if you aren't usually using Google translate for your posts, I'd go back to not using it -- this is your first post ever that I've read and not fully understood everything. Usually your English writing is very good.

[imsevimse]

Maybe it's hidden, but I don't see where your bad start, um, started. What or where did you do wrong?

Yes, I didn't write much on the actual problems I had from those first four years. This teacher was one special enthusiast that did support me and encouraged me, but he could not play trombone and that I didn't know. I hadn't heard a true trombone sound those first four years and my slide technique was a very firm "full hand" grip. I had no instruction besides "play like you had a fly between your lips that you want to blow away". Well, yes that did make a sound but then, what? I developed a smile emboushure, and I practiced a lot and then I mean A LOT. It really had been better if I hadn't After those first four years I was a rather good trombonist. I could play the second parts I was handed and I had a good ear. My sound wasn't that bad so teachers just let me practice more on the "smile-emboushure". Shure there are players who have managed to do music despite flaws but if you really want control and a good register that emboushure technique is wrong. I did manage to relearn to be accepted at the Royal Accademy of Music two years after the change but unfortunately I wasn't ready for all those concerts. I was in the right age but really in need of a lot more basic technique training before taking on concerts. All of that just gave me bad confidence because I thought I was real bad. So this was the consequence of that start and I think it had been better if I hadn't practiced wrong so much. Four years for that first teacher wasn't really helping me and it had been better if he had at least been a trumpet player That was the bad start. Anyone who has developed a smile-emboushure that they later wanted to get rid of knows it is a completely rebuild of the emboushure. It is a lot of stress, sorrow and anxiety. You can not play anything and it is extremely difficult to NOT slid back into that old habit.

I can relate to the education portion. I think the conditions all have to be right to get anything out of college. You have to be there with the basics already learned, be receptive, and have the right teacher. Harder than it sounds. That goes for any discipline.

Yes, basics skills need to be there or else you will not be able to do very well. Not ready to follow the general course very well. Will be bad.

FWIW, if you aren't usually using Google translate for your posts, I'd go back to not using it -- this is your first post ever that I've read and not fully understood everything. Usually your English writing is very good.

Okay? Thank you (I suppose)
Maybe google translate is even worse than my own English? I will go back to what I did before. I have to relay on what my English teachers taught me, or to be more frank what I picked up and remember from all their teaching. We do watch American movies all the time so we hear the language a lot. This means we understand pretty well. It is more difficult to speak because it's rare anybody here don't speak Swedish. Most training I get to read and write is from trombone chat. That besides my interest in trombone is also a reason for me to be here, to be better at writing/reading English. I go back and write as I did before. No more google translate

/Tom

[ithinknot]

Thanks for sharing, Tom.

And +1 anti-Google - your usual English is very good, and much better than you think. Google does a good job on individual word choice, but it's not so elegant for syntax and general direction.

Same here, basically. I started when I was 13 and already a good pianist. I took it very seriously, made quick progress, grade 8 distinction (this was in the UK) within two years, played for all the regional youth orchestras, worked with my teacher for local musicals, choral societies etc. People were happy to have me - I already had a good enough ear that intonation was never a huge problem, and I was a good sightreader. But I knew the chops had never been right. Crazy downward angle, some weird breaks, and the tone wasn't really there. I'd learned to politely diffuse everything to camouflage the worst areas, but at the cost of a euphoniums-in-the-mist sort of sound. I was already much more employable on other instruments, and by college the case was under the bed.

Picked it up again in the first lockdown out of bored curiosity. Hadn't gotten vastly worse, and somehow hadn't improved in the intervening dozen years. After a few weeks, I bought an eBay bass mouthpiece to stick in my large tenor just to see what that was like. (A 1.25G which, I later discovered, had been modified with an ultra-thin 1G-diameter rim.) This was extremely comfortable, sounded fine, and seemed to have no cost to my then-upper range. This led me to two possibilities: 1, that I was an Extremely Special Person who needed, no, deserved, Extremely Unusual Equipment; or B, that I was definitely doing enough wrong in technique (and possibly equipment choice) that I needed some serious advice.

After a little while, I got in touch with Doug Elliott, who correctly noticed that my technique was garbage, and told me a variety of things that someone really should have mentioned in my first fortnight on the instrument. Some of these helped immediately. Others were extremely frustrating, but I could already see 'how it would work once it did', so I stuck with them. Of these, some were instantly doable but took a long time to stop feeling weird, and others took a while because I thought I was doing them, and only discovered I hadn't been when I finally - accidentally - did do them, and then they clicked into place just fine.

At this point I still stink, but I stink a lot less, and practicing seems vastly more productive. Also, 'warming up' mostly isn't a thing anymore. On bass, it does take a little while to get everything into supple low-range shape, but on tenor, pretty much everything that's going to be there seems to be there after the first 90s of cobweb removal.

Across all instruments a staggeringly high proportion of teachers - many of whom are delightful people, and/or extremely fine players, and have a huge amount to offer in teaching musicianship/interpretation/the human condition - have essentially no idea what they're talking about in terms of technique, and fall back on a combination of figuratively describing what they think they do, and recycling the 'tongue and blow'/'everybody's different'/'it's the player, not the equipment'/'just gotta put the hours in' repertoire of profundity-adjacent generalities. In the vast majority of cases, this isn't a cynical dodge - they're sincerely replicating the teaching they received. (To be much harsher, too many people assume that their not knowing something qualifies them to claim that No One Knows, which is pretty rotten behavior beyond being bad pedagogy.)

This is where the cheap and often encountered University of Life/'no magic bullets'/'go practice' rhetoric drives me nuts. Maybe I don't spend enough time in the company of the stupid, but who thinks otherwise? Even with the best advice, it's still up to you to put it into intelligent practice... but having that advice might save you a lot of misdirected time and effort. If you're thinking constructively, equipment can teach you all kinds of things. To take a really crude example, sure, some high school nincompoop is going to put a tuba mouthpiece in their bass tbn and proclaim themselves King Of Pedals... but if you try that out and suddenly realize what easy unshifted pedals feel like, then it might just be a ' moment' that allows you to go back to something sensible and try to replicate a new and useful feeling. If you've been plugging away for years and still can't double tongue, or lip trill, or play high/low X, then it's not unreasonable to suggest that more hours of the same isn't the answer; you'll still probably need the hours, but of something different.

It's not the repetition for its own sake, it's the listening during the repetition. FWIW, on the keyboard instruments I play professionally, I can learn music to - let's say - 95% just from score study. That's not to say that I don't sometimes practice 6+ hours/day, and I'm not certain that this is *quite* as true on more 'holistically physically demanding' wind instruments, but once the technique is stable the vast majority of The Work happens Upstairs.

[BGuttman]

Just practicing doesn't necessarily make you better. If you are doing something wrong, you will just be better at doing it wrong. This is where a good teacher helps. You have to have somebody correct what you are doing wrong so you can start practicing to fix it.

[imsevimse]

Just practicing doesn't necessarily make you better. If you are doing something wrong, you will just be better at doing it wrong. This is where a good teacher helps. You have to have somebody correct what you are doing wrong so you can start practicing to fix it.

Yes, but I got better when I practiced with the smile emboushure, but all practice I had done was in vain the day I understood I was in a dead end and when I decided to do a complete change. I think it is very important in the beginning to get a start with a good teacher to avoid the worst mistakes and also to have a teacher who can demonstrate a good sound on the instrument.

/Tom

[imsevimse]

...
Across all instruments a staggeringly high proportion of teachers - many of whom are delightful people, and/or extremely fine players, and have a huge amount to offer in teaching musicianship/interpretation/the human condition - have essentially no idea what they're talking about in terms of technique, and fall back on a combination of figuratively describing what they think they do, and recycling the 'tongue and blow'/'everybody's different'/'it's the player, not the equipment'/'just gotta put the hours in' repertoire of profundity-adjacent generalities. In the vast majority of cases, this isn't a cynical dodge - they're sincerely replicating the teaching they received. (To be much harsher, too many people assume that their not knowing something qualifies them to claim that No One Knows, which is pretty rotten behavior beyond being bad pedagogy.)

This is where the cheap and often encountered University of Life/'no magic bullets'/'go practice' rhetoric drives me nuts. Maybe I don't spend enough time in the company of the stupid, but who thinks otherwise? Even with the best advice, it's still up to you to put it into intelligent practice... but having that advice might save you a lot of misdirected time and effort. If you're thinking constructively, equipment can teach you all kinds of things. To take a really crude example, sure, some high school nincompoop is going to put a tuba mouthpiece in their bass tbn and proclaim themselves King Of Pedals... but if you try that out and suddenly realize what easy unshifted pedals feel like, then it might just be a ' moment' that allows you to go back to something sensible and try to replicate a new and useful feeling. If you've been plugging away for years and still can't double tongue, or lip trill, or play high/low X, then it's not unreasonable to suggest that more hours of the same isn't the answer; you'll still probably need the hours, but of something different.

It's not the repetition for its own sake, it's the listening during the repetition. FWIW, on the keyboard instruments I play professionally, I can learn music to - let's say - 95% just from score study. That's not to say that I don't sometimes practice 6+ hours/day, and I'm not certain that this is *quite* as true on more 'holistically physically demanding' wind instruments, but once the technique is stable the vast majority of The Work happens Upstairs.

Thank you "ithinknot" for sharing your experience. Yes, it is important to either do everything correct by pure luck or to be intelligent enough to take instructions. When taking instructions a good teacher or raw model is a must. Most important is to have a teacher that can show how it's done. This at least gives the student a goal and how to sound, but not all students will be lucky enough to hit the target just by recognition, so the teacher also need to be able to correct problems to help the student to hit the bulls eye. I was lucky to meet the teacher that saw and helped me correct my smile emboushure. I was also lucky to have very good memory so those two years I studied with him I remembered what he taught me even though much of it had to wait until my smile emboushure was gone and the "puckered" emboushure was functioning. I was then lucky to be able to have him as a friend. Later as I got better, a few years after college where I had studied with another teacher who was the principal at the "Royal Opera Orchestra" my friend continued to support me and helped me get professional freelance gigs. Then most of my most obvious technical problems were solved. I was on track. Then I did a complete change in career and started to educate myself to be a computer programmer. This was really at the time when I started to have more jobs, but I wasn't very pleased with the situation as a teacher in the public music school and realized I wasn't going to be able to continue like this. I also had two small children and needed to get a more secure situation. I quit playing for four years during studies but then after I got a job I started again in a local community brass sextet consisting of other brass teachers on second trombone. After a couple of years I got in contact with my pro friends and started to play more seriously again. As I become more comfortable in my role as computer programmer I played even more and also came back to play as a semi-pro. Now I play most of my free time and I'm better than ever. All this time this important teacher/musician has been there as a mentor and friend and he has supported and helped me. I have picked up a few ideas from this forum too. A couple of years ago (before 2018 on the old forum) I put up recordings of my playing and got valuable feedback from all kinds of players here. I appreciated it all and it helped. The instruction/help from my mentor has been more and more "fine grained" which is understandable because things must be fixed from the ground up. You can not put candles on a cake and make it pretty before ingredients have been mixed and it has been baked in the oven. This teacher/mentor/friend was/is my good fortune.

I suppose my recommendation is:

1. Get a good teacher from start, and if your teacher can not play a brass instrument then ask your parents to help you get in touch with a good trombone player and teacher who can help and guide you. It can be a supplement to the other teacher. The private teacher should be there to keep you on right track.

2. Practice smart. Not just repetition. Practice slow. Practise soft. Listen to your self (the sound) and try to match the sound of a raw model.

3. Do not play too large equipment as you learn. This is an advice that I give because I myself tried to cover my flaws with larger mouthpieces and larger instruments. As a small kid that did not help. Any size can due when you learn to find your balance, where to aim to make the best most economical sound. Do not try to go bigger just because others go bigger because it might not be the best path for you. After college I went back to a King 3b and played a Benge 12C. That tool was what I needed after four years on a Conn 88h and a pretty medium Denis Vick mouthpiece (6 bl) at "The Royal Accademy of Music".

4. Learn on a good quality instrument with a good slide. A slow sluggish slide will hinder your emboushure to evolve because the force from moving the slide will then affect what you are trying to do with your lips. You also will grip the slide to hard with your hand/fingers. I started on a very bad instrument but got a better after a year, unfortunately even that a bit too late.

5. Learn early to play the Bb away from the bumper. I smacked my teeth many times during my first years just because I thought the first position must be at the bumper. As you become better there are also other reasons to play first position away from the bumper.
It could have saved me some pain especially since the slide was bad. Since my teacher knew nothing about trombones I didn't know how to take care of my slide so even though I got a better instrument after a year, the slide was always sluggish. Noone told me it should be smooth and I did not think of that myself and had always too much cream on the slide. I put cream on the whole slide not just the bumpers and then I had a bottle with water that I sprayed, sprayed and sprayed. Today I use much less cream (if I use cream) and I do not need a bottle with water really. Without a good slide it is a lot more difficult to learn.

/Tom