TromboneChat

chouston3 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 11, 2024 11:54 am Dana, your post is art. I think I am going to print it out and put it in my trombone case. I agree with it.

tbdana wrote: ↑Fri Oct 11, 2024 10:30 am I've been ruminating on this, and I'm of two minds.

First, I am fascinated by the simplicity of the trombone, and how one can take this basic metal tube and somehow make beautiful music with it. That's amazing. So simple, so pure, so beautiful.

OTOH, I have spent my whole life trying to overcome the trombone. It lacks dexterity, versatility and athleticism. The trombone is ground-bound, plodding, and lives close to the earth, while other instruments sprout wings and fly and float among the clouds and perform somersaults on the breeze. The trombone is a tortoise among eagles and hawks. It is a quadriplegic on a basketball team. I often characterize the trombones as the cows of the orchestra.

I did not choose the trombone, it was assigned to me because I was the only kid who could reach 6th position. The only love I have for the trombone is the kind of love you get from having struggled and survived together over a long period of time. It's a foxhole kind of love. I feel like I have spent my life trying to reach the moon riding a fart. There is beauty in the absurdity of it all, but there is much more pain. And failure.

The trombone and I are like an old couple in an arranged marriage who have struggled just to survive. We've never had the passion or romance experienced by violinists, guitarists, and woodwind players, but we've reached a point where we are comfortable with each other and can finish each other's sentences.

I cannot love the trombone for the same reasons that I cannot love a spork or a broom or a chisel. The trombone is a blunt and simple tool that is useful for basic tasks but lacks sophistication, versatility, and general utility.

And yet, after so many years of toiling, I have finally learned to make it fly, in its own way. So there's that.

LeTromboniste wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2024 1:44 am There's how close it is to the most natural and innate of instruments, the human voice, both in sound and in its technical limitation. What it does best is to sing.

It's the last trumpet, the instrument of the underworld, the herald of big important things.

In orchestral music it doesn't play a whole lot, but when it does, you know it's an important moment.

chouston3 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 13, 2024 7:29 pm Playing trombone is very sensory for me. The way it feels when I play it is something else. The way low notes feel, pedals feel, slurring feels, are all unique sensations. No other instrument feels as visceral to me. The sounds one can create are also wonderful.

The way playing an in tune chord in a section or joining in a trombone choir is also a very visceral feeling.

Singing does not do this for me. Playing euphonium or valve trombone does not do it either.

I know there are those who play trombone very intellectually but the feel of it might be my favorite part.

iranzi wrote: ↑Tue Oct 15, 2024 6:19 pm These past six months undergoing a conversion from a soprano saxophone player into a trombonist. Just letting it happen; definitely feels like a new beginning.
For now, the "Why is it special?" question gets answered for me by a couple of Smithsonian Folkways recordings

• Laneville-Johnson Union Brass, apparently recorded ~1955

• Clouds of Heaven (United House of Prayer), apparently recorded ~1999
  Note that there are 3 trombones, one with an F-attachment!
  (Never would have seen such a trombone in the "Union Brass" days - reflecting back to late 1800s/early 1900s.)