The Only System for High Register?

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First, credit where credit is due. Harrisson Ball does play trumpet well and he does have a strong upper register. Therefore, it’s fair to take his advice on playing in the upper register seriously.

YouTube’s algorithm often suggests brass instruction videos to me and I guess when I look a bit at one to see what it’s about I end up getting a lot of videos from that content creator on my feed for a while. Harrisson Ball’s videos have been showing up a lot for me lately, so I watched this one carefully and will offer my comments and criticisms so you don’t have to spend 23 minutes watching it.

First, he acknowledges that he’s making this video because “it’s good for business.” If what Ball advises resonates with you then you can consider taking it to the next level and signing up for his email list or taking lessons. However, caveat emptor. More about this later.

He starts his video discussing how air should function in the upper register. He states, “more air does not equal high notes.” This is absolutely correct. A lot of players will misunderstand air “support” for “more” air with the upper register and they end up overblowing. Playing in the upper register actually requires less air than an equivalent dynamic down an octave or two, but it does require some additional air support. Ball’s aerosol spray can analogy is a good one. His advice to help a student work on breathing for the upper register here is to use a hot water bottle.

I’ve used away-from-the-horn exercises for some time now, but not all are created equal. In this case, I can see how blowing up a hot water bottle the way Ball demonstrates can help a player learn the feeling of support for the upper register, but I suspect it’s more of an overtraining exercise than “the same amount of energy” to get from high G to double C. I don’t have a hot water bottle, so I’m not able to try this out on my own right now, but they’re not very expensive so it might be worth a shot for someone who wants to try it out. If you do, let us know in the comments how well it works for you.

At 3:21 into the video Ball comes so close to offering a good description of functioning brass embouchures, and then drops the ball (pardon the pun). If you’ve read enough of my blog you understand already how air stream direction works on a brass embouchure and why it’s important. Ball says it’s important because “If you don’t know where the air stream is you don’t know where to put the vibrating surface.” He then proceeds to demonstrate how to determine where the air stream is going by simply hissing with open lips and finding where the air goes. That’s not remotely how air stream direction works when playing a brass instrument and it absolutely doesn’t tell a brass musician whether or not they should be an upstream or downstream player.

Ball then demonstrates the pencil trick exercise wrong. Or at least in a way that I don’t think is useful. Ball wants students to bite down on the pencil, form your lips around it in something like a buzzing position, and then blow air around the pencil. “Congratulations,” Ball says, “you’ve just discovered your first isometric exercise where you can work on the musculature driving a car…” No! Do not put a pencil in your mouth and drive! Not only will it distract your attention from your driving, but if you get into even a mild fender bender and the air bag goes off in your face you’re risking a serious injury. And since Ball’s pencil exercise doesn’t really work as well as the traditional pencil trick exercise, I would advise you to skip his version.

By the way, I don’t really use the traditional pencil trick exercise all to much any more either, for what it’s worth. I think there are better ways to work on developing the strength, control, and feel for where to put the muscular effort.

At 5:03 Ball tells us he’s going to show us “the biggest mistake trumpet players do on the internet.” To demonstrate this he first rolls his lips in, sets the “mouthpiece” (in his video he’s using scissor handles as a mouthpiece rim visualizer), and then purses his lips forward. I agree, this isn’t a good embouchure formation. Then we get to see a “cross section” of the “vibrating surface” in this graphic.

Huh? That’s a mouthpiece cross section. There’s nothing in that image that would be vibrating.

Now that Ball has told us what the “biggest mistake” is, he advises us to follow the Maynard Ferguson Protocol. Follow that link to see the video demonstration by Lynn Nicholson of what the MF Protocol supposedly is, but here are a couple of screen shots. First, what Nicholson calls a “conventional embouchure.”

And an “unfurled embouchure.”

First, I wouldn’t describe the later image as “unfurled,” I think that it’s putting the embouchure effort more at the corners, rather than clamping the lip center. In this case I think the wording is important because it can lead to someone doing something wrong and potentially damaging. Ball misunderstands and shows us the vibrating surface of his lip here.

OK, so the inner membrane of the lips will vibrate too, but I strongly discourage you from following this advice. Ball even comments on the scar tissue he’s developed here, so that’s one strike against it. Scar tissue doesn’t vibrate well. Nor should you be developing scars from playing a brass instrument, if you’re playing correctly. The outer area of the lip vermillion tolerates pressure just fine, however the inner membrane (oral mucosa) is much more prone to damage due to pressure.

Here’s Ball’s “unfurled” embouchure formation.

Compare that to Nicholson’s demonstration of the same “unfurled” embouchure formation. While I do allow for individual variations due to a player’s anatomy, this is different from what Nicholson was describing. Watch Ball’s demonstration when he goes to set the rim on the unfurled lips and notice how much micro adjusting he has to do before he gets it into position. When he goes to demonstrate the wrong way to play the instrument at 9:53 he tells us “most people” will just be blowing air and not actually playing a tone. Again, huh? Most people when they play the trumpet actually play the trumpet, they don’t just blow air. Even beginners sound better than this. He’s just pinning his lips open with the mouthpiece rim on purpose.

Ball also gives us a math equation to help out. We need “energy in ≥ energy out by at least 5%. Write that down.” That’s it, no discussion on where he gets that number and what it means for a player, it’s just there. While I don’t know for sure that Ball figured this out for real, I suspect that it’s just an equation he made up to bolster his claims and make them seem more scientific.

At 13:39 Ball again gets so close to giving good advice. Ball demonstrates that when he moves the bell up or down the pitch will shift higher or lower. I actually use this test all the time with students, not just up and down but also left and right (in Ball’s defense, he very briefly demonstrates circling the angle around in a way that’s closer to how I use this at 16:40). The angle change that happens is a result of maintaining the stable surface of the teeth/gums underneath the lips/teeth as we push and pull the mouthpiece upward and downward to change registers. Think of it sort of like a ball and socket joint. Ball just mentions this important part of our embouchure technique in passing and doesn’t point out that in this area what works for one player can be exactly opposite for another player. It seems that on this particular topic he has come across enough knowledge to be almost correct. The embouchure motion is what causes the different surface underneath he lips/rim resulting in the correct horn angle change for the particular player. It’s a package deal and I believe they should be discussed together.

Following the too short discussion on horn angle Ball mentions excessive mouthpiece pressure, then on to Bobby Shew’s wedge breath technique. Watch Ball’s demonstration of what this looks like on the trumpet at 15:02 and notice the hesitation between his inhalation and when he starts blowing. While that’s something that I sometimes struggle with too in the upper register, it’s something to avoid and the wedge breath technique seems to encourage that moment of bottling up the air just before the exhalation. Wedge breathing may be a good thing to try out, but be careful to not bottle up the air like this.

At 18:02 Ball again comes so close to giving accurate information and then fails. He states, “Remember, you have the option of being downstream, upstream, type one, type two. You can have both lips active, singular lip active, or both.” First, he doesn’t define what he means by “type one” or “type two,” but I’m guessing he thinks of one as being downstream and the other upstream. That’s fine, I prefer to not discuss that phenomenon that way but as long as you’re communicating clearly it’s not a big deal. But to describe it as an “option” is wrong. Your anatomy dictates which embouchure type will ultimately work best for you, it’s not an option you can choose. Furthermore, both lips do vibrate regardless of air stream direction. It’s true that the lip that is more prominent inside the mouthpiece vibrates with more intensity and the other lip serves somewhat as a more stable surface to vibrate against. But to describe this as one lip vibrating or both is not a good description of what actually happens.

Ball advises us to put the bulk of the mouthpiece pressure (60-65%) on the “non-vibrating” lip. The upper lip is thinner than the lower lip and is less able to tolerate mouthpiece pressure than the lower lip. I recommend that all players, regardless of embouchure type, put a little more weight on the lower lip.

His discussion of how to hold the instrument is fine, although I think there’s plenty of room for individual variations here. For example, I might advise one student to take their right pinky out of the ring if they are using it to pull back, but in general the right hand on the trumpet shouldn’t be used to hold the instrument anyway, it’s the left hand grip that is the “guardian” of the embouchure. The trumpet player’s left hand grip can be personal and depend on the size of the player’s hands and other factors. As long as the left hand grip is consistent and allows the musician to smoothly create the embouchure motion and accompanying horn angle changes I don’t think any one left hand grip is “best.”

“People overcomplicate the trumpet,” Ball says at 20:58. Playing any musical instrument is complicated. As he points out a few times in his video here, there are a number of things that need to coordinate together for efficient playing. The solution isn’t to pretend it isn’t complicated, it’s to break down those playing factors in manageable chunks and address them one at a time. Ball breaks it down in this video to supple lips and compressed air. He again then throws a number out of nowhere, this will fix “90%” of your trumpet playing. Again, I believe he’s making up a statistic to give his video the veneer of science without having to actually go through the hard work to collect data and actually do the math.

Before he wraps up Ball encourages us to go to the link in his video description (go to YouTube to grab it, if you want) for a free masterclass. I didn’t sign up, you need to give him your email address, but I did find a PDF on one of those horrid sharing web sites that steals people’s copyrighted content (I won’t link to it). Assuming that this is his free masterclass, it looks like a corporate motivational slide show with no actual exercises or discussion on how to play trumpet, followed by some practice logs, ending with a link where you can go to get a “free strategy session” (what’s a strategy session, is it like a free lesson?), where I assume he will try to sell you books, videos, and lessons.

Ball started his video by saying that giving away his system for upper register playing is “good for business,” and I’m going to end this post by looking beyond his videos and seeing what other folks have to say after signing up for his free “masterclass.” In that Reddit thread a trumpet player commented that after sending Ball his email for the free PDF he decided to not contact him for a “strategy session.” Afterwards he got the following email from Ball:

Quick Question….. Hey [Name Redacted], A few days ago, you signed up and watched my free training on 3 Ways to Improve Your Trumpet Playing—helping you play beautifully with less effort and maximize your practice time. During the session, I introduced an exclusive program for trumpet players, where many have already achieved remarkable results, including greater range, improved ease, and consistent performance—all while being part of a supportive community. But you didn’t book a chat… I’d really love to know why you didn’t book a time to speak with us. It will help me improve my messaging in the future. Feel free to adjust any part to better match your style! If you take a moment to fill out this [survey link] on your reasons for not moving forward, it would really help me out. Everything is anonymous so you can be as honest as you like. I’m also going to throw in a free training worth $100 for your time. I have sold this exact training for $100 in the past and people have told me it was the best $100 they ever spent and I am going to give it to you for FREE!!! After you submit the answers, you will be able to access the $100 training for free anonymously.   You can fill out the [survey link].

Thanks for reading my emails,

Your biggest fan, Harrisson

Another reviewer on the Reddit thread said that he didn’t even remember signing up for Ball’s PDF and got a phone call from Ball giving him a hard sell for purchasing his course. Another similarly got a call from a telemarketer. There is a video review from a younger trumpet player that is quite glowing about studying from Ball, so perhaps once you commit to his lessons he is a good teacher. However, it’s hard to find any positive reviews of his lessons that aren’t posted by Ball himself. If you’re curious, watch that video review and notice how she constantly looks over to her left as she talks, reading the prompts that she’s supposed to say. There’s nothing wrong with writing a script if you’re making a video, but her script doesn’t ring true to me. “He’s always checking up on every single one of his members,” she says. That sounds like something Ball told her to say.

I’ve watched a number of other videos Ball has posted on his YouTube channel and they are all about the same. There’s some solid advice (nothing really unique), but there’s also some advice I would advise against. Plenty of times he describes brass technique and starts off with something that sounds so good, but then he veers off and demonstrates that he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about in certain areas.

Again, Harrisson Ball does appear to be an accomplished trumpet player and he seems to be working in L.A. His success as a teacher, on the other hands, seems to be more due to his marketing and abilities at cranking out social media content rather than solid pedagogy. Then again, maybe I’m wrong and I’m just the pot calling the kettle black. Let me know in the comments if you’ve studied from Ball and give us your honest review.

Fundamentals of Music Prep for Jazz Composers/Arrangers

~ wilktone ~ 2 Comments

If you’re not familiar with Darcy James Argue and his big band, Secret Society, I encourage you to check out his music. Argue has a unique style of big band writing that has been described as big band jazz with an art rock sensibility. I like how he explores extended formal structures, different grooves, and otherwise bends the rules while still keeping at least one foot in the big band tradition. His band, Secret Society, is made up of some of the top jazz musicians around.

Argue has put up some materials for free on his web site that offer advice to jazz composers and arrangers for how to prepare their music so that the musicians are able to most easily read the charts and play your music better. He describes standard notation practices such as how large a font you should print your charts on, what size paper, how to properly beam rhythms, and more.

Darcy James Argue’s Music Preparation Materials

Looking through his materials there’s some stuff in there that I haven’t thought of before and will start adopting in my own charts. It’s very important to prepare your sheet music in the clearest manner and follow standard notation practice in order to get the best first reading of your music and then get the best possible performance. It can be very tedious to spend all that time getting your sheet music to follow all the conventions, but anything that you can do that will make it easier on the musicians who perform your music will only make your music sound better.

The “Payam Method” – Heft or Hype?

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I’m a bit late on this, but back in May this year 60 Minutes broadcast a report and a followup on a pedagogical system for teaching piano known as the “Payam Method.” This approach is named after its creator, Payam Khastkhodaei, a piano teacher that lives in the Seattle area.

After watching the 60 Minutes piece many of the claims and style of the reporting raised a lot of red flags for me and I bookmarked it and then forgot to do a writeup on it. The other day I came across the bookmark and started organizing my thoughts, but while doing some research I quickly learned that other, more qualified people, have already taken care of this. So I’ve deleted what I had already written and commented on and will leave you with one of the best responses I came across.

I guess that the main thing that bothers me from the 60 Minutes segment is how the reporters didn’t talk to other music teachers to learn how the basic idea Khastkhodaei claims is so unique to his method has been around long before. Music teachers have been selecting music to teach based on student interest since I was a student, and probably long before. Students are encouraged to “play” on their instruments all the time and to try to explore different ways of playing the same thing. Music teachers have been incorporating improvisation and composition into their lessons too. The 60 Minutes segment seems to largely be a fluff piece that comes off as an advertisement rather than actual reporting.

Guess the Embouchure Type – Bruce Harris

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Greg emailed me a video of trumpet player Bruce Harris trying out some equipment at the 2023 ITG. It makes for a good example to play guess the embouchure type.

While we’re at it, check out this video of Harris blowing over Ornithology, along with a transcription.

Harris’s embouchure type is very clear to see. Greg mentioned in his email that this would be a good example of mouthpiece placement on the red of the upper lip working well. Harris’s very low placement is an obvious example of the “low placement” embouchure type. Because his placement has more lower lip inside the air stream gets directed upstream.

You can also easily see Harris’s embouchure motion of pulling the mouthpiece and lips together down (and to his right) to ascend and pushing up (and to his left) to descend (the Ornithology video shows the slight side to side track better than the ITG video). Pretty much every player has some of this side to side deviation in the track of their embouchure motion, some players have more or less than others.

I enjoy watching examples of great players who place the mouthpiece like this, partly because that’s how I personally play and party because so many otherwise good teachers so strongly believe that this is a feature “to be avoided at all costs.” Harris plays great and shows that the lip vermillion is really an arbitrary feature and isn’t something in particular to be concerned about with regards to mouthpiece placement.

Guess the Embouchure Type – Alain Trudel

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This Guess the Embouchure Type is a tough one, sent to me by Steve M. a while ago to check out. The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra posted an online masterclass given by trombonist Alain Trudel. One of the interesting things about watching him play throughout the masterclass is that he often uses an Ergobone, a support system that helps hold the instrument off the player’s chair. I’ve never used one before, but it doesn’t seem to be slowing Trudel down at all.

Take a look at this video and skip around for clips of Trudel demonstrating things and see if you can spot his embouchure type. Some of the best spots to watch are about 30:00, 48:00, and 1:07:08. This one is tricky, my guess after the break.

This one is difficult. Trudel’s mouthpiece placement has enough upper lip inside that it’s certainly one of the two basic downstream embouchure types, but his embouchure motion is difficult to spot. The fact that his embouchure motion is so minimal suggests to me that he might have a Medium High Placement embouchure type, since those players often have very minimal embouchure motions compared to the other types, but that’s not a definitive clue.

I *think* that I see him pulling his mouthpiece and lips together down to ascend, particularly at the 1:07:08 time that I mentioned above. But at other points I’m hard press to see that and it looks as if he might be pushing up to ascend. It’s tougher to spot the embouchure motion when the player moves around or has grainy video, which makes it more difficult to say for sure here.

So my best guess, for now, is Medium High Placement, partly because of the difficult to spot embouchure motion and partly because his placement looks a little too low to belong to the Very High Placement Type.

I looked around for some other videos of Trudel playing to see if I could find a clip of him playing that would be more obvious and I was surprised to find a couple of videos of him playing jazz trombone, which I wasn’t aware that he also did. I know him as an orchestral style performer, particularly his solo recording of trombone concerti. Here’s a video of him playing All the Things You Are.

What do you think? Is my guess that Trudel belongs to the Medium High Placement type accurate or am I missing something? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Urbie Green King Promotional Clinic

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Sometime in the early 1970s (best guess, 1971-1972) trombonist Urbie Green made a promotional film for King Musical Instruments, giving a clinic to students from Willowbrook High School and filmed at Proviso West High School, in the Chicago suburbs not far from where I grew up.

The clinic covers basic trombone technique mostly, but he also covers some more advanced multiple tonguing and slide techniques. Throughout the whole video Urbie demonstrates and performs for the students, which alone would make this video worth watching.

Check out both parts:

Lennie Tristano

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It’s not instant composing. It’s not following any kind of a formula. All you do is hear music in your head and reproduce it.

– Lennie Tristano

In 1983 the Norwegian Broadcasting Company produced a 1 hour television documentary on the life, music, and teaching of the pianist, composer, and jazz educator Lennie Tristano. I have to admit that I haven’t check out nearly as much of Tristano’s music that I should have, but after coming across this documentary I’m very interested in going back through his music.

One of the things I find so fascinating about Tristano is that his legacy was not just as a musician, but also a music educator. He was one of the earliest jazz educators I’m aware of, predating even the Stan Kenton clinics, I believe. His philosophy was to help students express their ideas through freeing themselves from the “tyranny” of their thinking brain. But that didn’t mean that Tristano relied exclusively the “think method,” he required his students to learn scales, jazz melodies in all keys, and practice with a metronome. He stressed ear training and learning to sing and play improvised solos by jazz greats.

At a time when most jazz musicians were following the lead of Charlie Parker, Tristano developed and encouraged a different approach that became influential in the cool jazz period to follow. In 1949 Tristano even recorded music with the form of the music improvised, predating the free jazz movement by about a decade. Some jazz critics today argue that one of the reasons Tristano isn’t better known today is because his music was so hard to quantify and pin down to a particular jazz style.

Learn more about Tristano and his music at The Lennie Tristano Experience.

R.I.P. Paul McKee

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I learned yesterday of the passing of my mentor and friend, Paul McKee. He was an amazing musician, an excellent trombonist and composer/arranger. He was also one of the best teachers I’ve had the pleasure of studying from and was an all-around great guy. He will be sorely missed.

Here is an interview Paul gave me back when I was a student.

“The Worst Trumpet Embouchure” is maybe not quite right.

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Estella Aragon is a trumpet performer and teacher who teaches online lessons. She advertises her lessons on her YouTube channel as well as her own web site. She has a couple of different videos where she discusses playing in the “red,” but her take on this is a bit different from what I usually see from brass teachers who strongly advise not to “play in the red of the lips.” Here’s one of those videos (it might not embed here, so follow the “Watch video on YouTube” link if it doesn’t appear for you).

I’ve already spoiled what Aragon feels is the “worst” trumpet embouchure, that is playing on the red of the lips. What is different about Aragon’s opinion here is that she’s not talking about placing the mouthpiece on the vermillion, per se, but she’s talking about the inner membrane of the lips.

I agree with Aragon on this point. When conducting my own research into the topic of playing on the vermillion the only information I could find regarding the supposed sensitivity of the vermillion from a medical professional stated that “the vermillion portion of lips tolerates pressure well.” (Wilson, H.L. (2000). Lips. The Clarinet, 27(4), 38-39). The inner membrane, however, does not. A mouthpiece placement/lip position demonstrated in the photo here is not recommended.

However, I’m a bit confused about what Aragon is actually suggesting. She specifically defines “the red” as the “moist inner part that in the trumpet world we call the red of the lips.” That’s different from what most brass players and teachers call “the red,” which typically is referring to the vermillion. In fact, the vermillion of the lip is specifically named after a word that means “red.” Aragon’s definition of “playing in the red” is distinctly different from how other brass teachers use that term.

Aragon states, “So playing in the red happens when the inner rim of the mouthpiece is placed too far onto that moist inner part of the lip beyond the vermillion, the red exposed part of the lips. Ideally, the mouthpiece placement should encourage the vermillion to be vibrating surface.” What is it about the vermillion that makes it better as vibrating surface?

Let’s take a look at George Roberts playing a pedal F on bass trombone in slow motion. Notice that the entire upper lip, not just the vermillion, is contributing to the lip vibration.

Now of course in a trumpet embouchure the mouthpiece is so much smaller, so similar filming wouldn’t show quite as much lip surface vibrating, but you can still see there is no specific line around the vermillion border where the lip vibration pattern noticeably changes.

Aragon uses a cut-away embouchure visualizer to demonstrate what she means. “The image on the right shows the inner rim is well on the vermillion, encouraging the lip to roll outwards, revealing the red and making that the vibrating surface.” Again, if you look at the two videos above that show functioning embouchures in slow motion we can see that when the aperture is at its most open position the inner membrane of the lips can be seen. It’s not that the lip vermillion vibrates only and the inner membrane of the lip is static, the entire lip vibrates. So while there are elements of truth to Aragon’s suggestions to avoid placing the mouthpiece on the inner membrane, I don’t believe that placement on the vermillion itself is necessarily problematic, that depends on the individual performer’s anatomy.

According to Aragon, “Playing in the red is problematic because the skin there is sensitive…” I’ve already quoted a medical doctor’s statement that the vermillion tolerates pressure, so I don’t believe her statement here is true. Continuing on, “…it’s prone to fatigue and injury.” In my review of the literature I could not find any evidence that the vermillion is prone to injury. Furthermore, lip injuries happen outside of the vermillion on brass players, perhaps more commonly since most brass musicians have anatomy suited for a mouthpiece placement above and/or below the vermillion. “This embouchure is so limiting, in fact, that it’s extremely rare to see successful professionals with it,” Aragon states.

I do agree that brass musicians who have anatomical features that make placement on the vermillion best are rare (excepting when we’re talking about the placement along the sides of the mouthpiece rim), but not because there’s anything inherently limiting about this placement. Any placement that isn’t ideal is limiting, as are other embouchure characteristics that aren’t related to placement. But it’s not as rare as Aragon thinks. I happen to play trombone best with the rim placed right on the vermillion of my upper lip. Here’s a trumpet player with a very similar mouthpiece placement to mine.

Later in her video Aragon goes over a checklist of six playing issues that she believes are symptoms of placement on the red.

  • Chronic fatigue
  • Swelling & pain
  • Fuzzy, airy tone
  • Limited range and endurance
  • Undefined articulation
  • Chronic lack of progress

Those symptoms can certainly be caused by incorrect mouthpiece placement for the brass musician, but doesn’t necessarily even mean the player is setting the mouthpiece on the red. For example, I had many of those symptoms while playing a more common mouthpiece placement off the vermillion, which didn’t improve until I actually switched my placement to one that Aragon is discouraging. There are many other things that can cause these symptoms, including pinning the lips open with the rim, regardless of where they are placed in relation to the vermillion.

A bit later Aragon mentions “embouchure overuse syndrome” as being caused by placement on the red. I’ve written before about embouchure overuse syndrome, but briefly there is no evidence that suggests it is caused by placement on the red. In fact, you’re going to find brass musicians who have those symptoms (which are too broadly defined) more frequently who have more typical looking mouthpiece placements.

Aragon uses one of her trumpet students as an example to demonstrate what she feels are symptoms related to placement on the red here. Unfortunately, she blocked the view of his placement and initial breath with her video transition, so it’s hard for me to assess what’s going on with his embouchure. I can see his lips coming together as he makes his initial attack, so I suspect that at least part of his issues weren’t being caused by a faulty mouthpiece placement, but by pinning his lips into a too open position as he tried to get his embouchure into buzzing firmness at the same time as starting to blow.

Her student does the same thing in the example Aragon posted demonstrating his embouchure change six weeks later. He clearly has made some improvements, but I’m not really convinced that the mouthpiece placement change is fully responsible for that. Without getting the opportunity to work with the same student or know his background with other trumpet lessons prior, I can’t guess what I would have advised that student to try. But even a student with a faulty mouthpiece placement can make similar improvements in six weeks, so I don’t think Aragon’s example here is definitive.

I do commend Aragon for mentioning more than once that every embouchure is different and therefore everyone will need individualized instruction on how to play at their best. However, I wish that she would have been more clear about what she means about placement on the red and allow for that placement when it is correct for the individual.

All that said, Aragon has an impressive background as a teacher and performer and maybe you want to explore her ideas further. If so, visit her web site and from there you can reach out directly to her and schedule lessons.

The Hidden Trombone Database

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I’m always looking for new trombonists to check out, but it can sometimes be hard to find those hidden gems if you don’t know where to look. Often the trombonists on a jazz recording are sidemen and you have to go out of your way to find them. Shannon Barrett has put out a new public tool that helps jazz trombone fans find recordings, called The Hidden Trombone. Here’s what is said about this project.

This research project was established by Professor Shannon Barnett at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne, Germany. It aims to combine the knowledge of several professional trombone players and educators into a functional database that can be used by anyone interested in good examples of trombone improvisations in jazz and adjacent genres. These can sometimes be difficult to find, as many are ‘hidden’ on albums where the trombonist is not the bandleader. In this age of streaming that can lead to some players being overlooked when considering the history of the instrument in jazz.

Each participant was invited to submit up to ten examples of trombone improvisations or features that they value, along with the reasons for their choices. The participants were chosen due to their experience in performance and/or education, and come from varying musical and geographical backgrounds.

The result is a database of 75 examples, which can be searched by trombonist, style, focus or recommender (or a combination of those categories). It is not meant to be a thorough overview of the essential examples of trombone improvisations from the history of jazz, but rather a curated collection of personal favourites. There is potential to expand the database in the future.

They helpfully include links to where you can stream and purchase the music, which trombonist recommended the track, and also a short description of why that track was recommended. Go check it out and purchase some music to support great artists.