Admitted, this exercise is not the most fun you can have with a trombone, but there´s no way around the fact that there´s a lot of hard work involved if you want to be a top performer on a brass instrument. Footballers don´t kick a ball around all the time at practice…

With that in place: Let´s do something about the world of lip trills. Regardless of the genres you play, they will be needed at some point.

There is only one way to make it work, and that is to start slow. Find a metronome, and set a slow tempo that allows you to play the whole phrase. I recommend that you write down the tempo you can play it in today, and try to raise it by a few beats per minute every day over a period of time. The goal is to get to the point where you don´t notice the individual notes, and just let it flow. Think of it as running, you don´t want to think about every step you take, but rather just the direction and the speed.

If the last few intervals are too high, just skip them. Start the exercise on 1st position and work your way out to 7th, repeating the whole pattern on every position. And tomorrow you start at 7th and go up to 1st position. Deal?

There is not much more to be said about this exercise. Just go for it!

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You will find this exercise and many others in the book Flexibility for Trombone – 38 pages in print friendly pdf format.

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