Ok, it does not have to be about hardcore breathing exercises and tongue wrecking scale patterns al the time… With christmas is coming up, I believe that it is time to chill out a bit and just relax. So, as a warm up before long hours in the TV sofa, watching ten year old romantic action thrillers, here´s a bunch of clips from the world of cartoons with focus on the TROMBONE. If you actually learn anything from this, my mission has failed…

Let´s start out with one of the really good ones, enjoy!



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Setting up for soundcheck at a club recently, I caught eyes on a mic I hand´t seen before,
Audix i5 Instrument Microphone mounted on the stand in front of me. Being a moderat gear nerd, I noticed the design, and appreciated the fact that the sound guy actually made a deliberate choice, instead of just setting up an old dented
Shure SM57.

“Well, it´s just another mic, let´s get this sound check over with…” But to my surprise, read more »

How to improve your trombone playing with 5 minutes of theory (and a lot more practice…)
or
The only way to get to the next level of brass playing
or
Get that music-school-trombone-sound out of my life!!!
or
The truth about one of the worst and most common bad habits among brass players

Are you convinced that you continue reading this? Good, then let us get down to business! This post is about attack and tonguing for trombone players and ALL other brass players. This post is about how to discover one of the most common bad habits among brass players – and more important – how to get rid of it. read more »

It does´t matter if you are a jazz or classical player, you still want to make music. And you should still make music in your practice room. A really good way to get some music into your daily routine at an early stage, is to play some free improvisation. Again, it does not matter what genre you play, as a matter of fact, if you are a non-improviser I would say that this tip is even more important!

Here is what I want you to do:
Find a simple warm up exercise and play it for a few minutes, just to get some air through the horn. Then you play a totally free improvisation for five minutes. Just play, and see where it takes you! Don´t worry about stiff lips, bad sound ore any other detail that probably would distract you if you where playing your standard 4 pages of flexibility exercises.

“But I have never learned how to improvise!” No problem. Here is the key: read more »

I just wanted to say farewell to two beloved Danish jazz musicians who both past away, with only a few weeks in between. With their colorful personalities, strong egos and and excellent musicality, they will be missed both by colleagues and jazz lovers.
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Monday morning in the practice room? This is a great little exercise to get the chops going when you first pick up your horn that day. The key to all brass playing is in the air flow, and the key to a good air flow can often be found by working on a full, overtone rich sound in the medium to medium low range.

In this exercisee, I focus on F (below key hole-C) an augmented fourth down to B.* Many players have a hard time getting this register to sound as good as the rest of the middle range. One of the reasons is that the sound waves of the fifth in any given slide position doesn´t fit the instrument as goods as the fundamental on the same position (for example F versus Bb on 1st position). read more »

Practicing low range with a small mouthpiece
If you are working on the low range, consider doing the exercises you work on, on a smaller mouthpiece, or even on a smaller trombone if you play on a large bore tenor or bass trombone. Why? Well, playing a smaller mouthpiece makes it even more important to have the airflow centered in order to get the full sound. Big instruments and mouthpieces tend to be more forgiving if your embouchure and/or air flow isn´t dead on. You can test yourself: play a few notes in the low mid / low range in f on your large equipment. Now do the same with a smaller mouthpiece/trombone. Can you get the full sound out of it, or does it feels like it “locks up”? Of course, a big fff low E on a small bore horn with a 12C mouthpiece wont sound that great, but in general, you read more »

You might know the feeling, playing all those scale patterns one half tone up at the time… Seven keys to go ands the lips already feel as flexible as a train rail track!

There are lots of exercises where you gradually expand the range, and end up playing in either the extreme high or low register. I will give you a little but effective tip how to get the most out of those exercises, without busting your chops.

Expand from the middle
The solution is simple, make sure that you start in the middle range, and work your way both up and down from there. Mixing high and low range both save chops, and helps you to play with the same embouchure in all registers. This mouthpiece exercise works this way. read more »

Digitaltrombone.com wishes You all a merry Christmas with 60% food and beverages, 30% sleep, 9% family fights and 1% trombone practicing.

Enjoy this mix of Christmas songs, performed with love and good intentions on various trombones and other brass instruments! read more »

I just wanted to share a few tracks from a live concert in Copenhagen in June 2010. It´s with my quintet, featuring the amazing trumpet player Gerard Presencer. He decided to move to Copenhagen in 2009 to play with the Danish Radio Big Band, thank you for that, Gerard! Check out his solo in Coltrane´s 26-2, it is absolutely unnecessarily good…

The rest of the band consists of some of the best Danish jazz musicians, Henrik Gunde on piano, Thomas Fonnesbech on bass and Karsten Bagge on drums.

[mp3player width=400 height=80 config=player-in-post.xml playlist=alq-feat-presencer-live.xml]
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