I’ve moved slide technique up in my list of priorities to address in my practice routine and wanted to share a variation on a standard exercise that can be used to work on moving the slide smoothly and quickly. Most trombonists are familiar with the Remington Warm-Up Studies, which include an exercise Reminton called “Sustained Long Tones.”
This is an exercise that many other instrumentalists use, not just trombonists. I know several band directors who use this as a warm-up for their middle school or high school concert band.
I use variations on this exercise to teach and practice slide technique. I change it in three ways to focus on slide technique: by expanding it so that it works all 7 slide positions, by using no tongue except for initial attacks, and by altering the pattern to ensure that breaths are taken optimally.
Play the F in 6th position and the E in 7th, so that you’re practicing moving the slide from 1st out to every other position and then back to 1st again. The extra Bbs are to ensure that you don’t use the breaths as a way to avoid moving the slide quickly and smoothly at any point.
Another excellent way to get feedback on the slide technique is to only tongue after the breath marks and without backing off on the air (blow through the slide changes), try to make each note change have as little gliss as possible while still being relaxed and not too jerky with the slide movement. After playing through it once this way add a light legato tongue to each note change to smooth out the legato. Another variation you can try is to transpose the exercise starting on any other 1st position note. Simply use the exact same slide positions (altered for intonation according to whatever partial you start on).
I’m a big believer in the idea that it’s not so much what you practice that is important, but how you practice it. With a particular goal in mind and a little creativity you can take a lot of things and alter them in ways to target your particular weaknesses. I got the ideas for the various alterations from a variety of different teachers or books and simply applied them to a different exercise.
What’s one of your current practice goals and what are you practicing to address them? Can you think of ways of altering other materials that you already know in order to specifically target your goal?
