Trombone Wisdom

[tbdana]

Whether pedagogy, mythology, metaphors, parables, cautionary tales, quips, alliterations, poems or humorous observations, give us your trombone wisdom. I'll start with a couple quick lines:

Easy isn't easy, and hard isn't hard.

Any idiot can play loud. You find out who is good when the music gets soft.

[Doug Elliott]

Tuning is a myth.

[LetItSlide]

Play happy.

[harrisonreed]

There's generally less necessity to lower the third than you've been trained to do. In fact, melodically speaking it's usually wrong.

Harmonically speaking, different story.

[Fidbone]

It’s just a trombone

[stewbones43]

You can programme a clockwork monkey to play faster and faster but it takes a real musician to play a slow ballad.

[tbdana]

A link Bob Sanders sent me this morning that contains some good wisdom (as his whole interesting website does), especially for community players. Here it is:

https://bobsanders.net/swindlesmanship.html

[Crazy4Tbone86]

“Using your air properly does solve about 95% of all problems.”

I was told this hundreds of times when I was a student. Unfortunately, I was not advanced enough to understand and apply it.

There should have been a preface stating……. When you have reached an advanced level of playing, then using air properly solves about 95% of all problems.

Let’s face it…….you can use your air support properly, but it will not do anything to fix your wrong pitches, rhythms, articulations, etc…..

[sirisobhakya]

Counter-inituitively, playing high softly is much easier than playing it loud.

[iranzi]

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[iranzi]

deleted

[AndrewMeronek]

If you hear yourself in balance with everyone else, you're not playing piano.

[Kbiggs]

Slow practice makes fast progress.

[TomWest]

Slow practice makes fast progress.

+1

[Cmillar]

"There are many roads to Rome"

This well known quote was shared with me during a lesson with Dave Robbins.

Dave (former lead trombone of choice of Harry James, LA studio player in the late 40's-50's, principal tbone Vancouver Symphony in '60's, arranger extraordinaire, etc.) had at one time been freelancing with different orchestras in addition to his work with James in LA at the Palladium in the early '50's.

When he played principal trombone in the Denver Symphony, they were playing a piece by Charles Ives.
On the 1st trombone part (which was very difficult according to Dave, so it must have been!) Ives had hand-written the quote "There are many roads to Rome", signed by the composer.

Dave said he also took this as a reminder that a composer should never underestimate the ability of any musician to 'play the part', no matter what you write for them. They'll figure out a way to make it work if they're a good musician.

[atopper333]

Slow practice makes fast progress.

+2

“Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”

[CBlair]

A sign in a local university trombone studio -

"Don't work harder, play easier."