Yesterday I attended the North Carolina Trombone Festival, held at Appalachian State University this year. It was a wonderful time. I heard two very fine trombone choirs perform, the ASU Trombone Choir and the Charlotte Trombone Collective. The Performer’s Showcase Recital featured a number of the guest artists and most performed pieces I wasn’t familiar with already. I got to meet some colleagues from around North Carolina that I haven’t met before and also finally met a couple of teachers face to face for the first time.

There were also some workshops and I gave a presentation on brass embouchure technique and pedagogy in the morning session. While preparing for this I spent some time practicing it and recorded myself. Here is one practice session, unedited, but I think that it will get the points across pretty well. I didn’t write out everything I planned to say. Instead I had some bullet points of things I wanted to say in my presenters notes (as well as on the slides) and spoke about them off the cuff. I think that this makes a live presentation feel more natural, but on video it perhaps comes across better to recite something prewritten. What do you think?

At any rate, here is the practice session for anyone who is interested but wasn’t able to attend the festival or went to another workshop at the same time.

If you’ve read through some of my embouchure materials I’ve already posted here you’ll recognize the discussion as well as many of the examples I use. But it’s possible that this format and organization works well for some people as an introduction or review.