Trombonist Rich Hanks studied from a long term former student of Donald Reinhardt’s, Dave Sheetz. He recently has launched a new web site to archive Reinhardt’s exercises, instructions, photos, audio recordings, and more. Here’s what Rich says about it.
I’m thrilled to announce the Reinhardt Archive (reinhardtarchive.com)— the largest digital collection of Donald S. Reinhardt’s materials ever assembled in one place.
For decades, Doc Reinhardt’s extraordinary body of work — his books, private teaching notes, unpublished lesson handouts, audio recordings of lessons and masterclasses, and the scholarly research his pedagogy inspired — has been scattered across personal collections, university libraries, and fading memories. Until now.
We’ve built a free, searchable, living archive to preserve this legacy and make it accessible to brass players, teachers, and researchers everywhere.
What’s inside:
Books, private study notes, and unpublished lesson handouts — digitized, OCR-processed, and fully searchable.
Audio recordings of actual lessons and masterclasses — with transcripts and timestamped segment navigation so you can find exactly the moment Doc explains a concept.
Doc’s written words come to life with “In Doc’s Words”, a series of avatar videos using Doc’s original wording to explain the key points of the pivot system.
A growing photo gallery from Doc’s life and teaching career, updated and enhanced with cutting edge technology.
Academic dissertations and second-order research from students and scholars
But this isn’t just a file cabinet. It’s a research platform.AI-powered chat — Ask questions in plain English and get answers synthesized across the entire archive, with citations linking back to the exact source passages. Ask “How does Reinhardt’s pivot system work?” and get a grounded answer drawing from multiple documents.
Knowledge graph — Explore a visual, interactive map of concepts, techniques, people, and their relationships across the entire body of work. See how the Pivot System connects to airstream direction, embouchure types, and pedagogical lineage.
Concept index — Browse a structured index of every concept, person, and technique mentioned across the archive, with linked evidence from source materials.
AI-generated articles — Curated deep-dives that surface interesting observations and connections from the archive, with linked citations to original sources.
Personal collections — Save documents, audio, video, and concepts to your own research lists for later reference.
Community forum — Discuss the materials with fellow brass players, students, and researchers.
Full citation tools — Every source includes copy-to-clipboard citations and BibTeX export for academic work.Who is this for?
Whether you’re a professional brass player who studied with Reinhardt himself, or with one of Reinhardt’s students, a college student encountering the Pivot System for the first time, a teacher looking for pedagogical insights, or a researcher writing about brass embouchure pedagogy — this archive was built for you. Even if you’re simply curious about one of the most systematic and original thinkers in brass playing history, there’s something here.
We need your help, too. We are actively seeking materials from the community — lesson notes, recordings, scans, and scholarly work — to grow this collection. If you have something to contribute, we’d love to hear from you.
The homepage is open to browse without an account. Create a free account to access the full archive, chat, and community features.
Hope to see you there!
There’s quite a bit already uploaded and Rich says he’s working to add more as he goes. Go check it out.
