Christmas Carol Quintets

That time of year is approaching again. Yep, that's right it's the holidays and now somehow its our job to play everybody a christmas song or whatever else they want to hear. All the family will be coming over to celebrate and they've never seen or heard you play it before. "Play us a song!" they'll say and you don't know any melodies to the songs they want to hear.

I've been in that situation before. All I had was some backgrounds for some of those songs, so with my family being so geared up to hear me play I had to do improvisation for five minutes. (Good thing I was in jazz band). The solo was bad even though all my family clapped and applauded. This year I'm ahead of the curve. I bought music for a full trombone quintet to play for two concerts. Ten songs five part harmonies, the works and I couldn't be more excited. Now I don't have to improvise and I can actually play the songs that my family wants to hear. Christmas music is fun but it isn't free. You have to buy the music if you want to get legitimate copies. Sure if you go to this link you can just print the preview pages which might just be a couple of free christmas songs. Getting a group together is such a fun thing and everyone out there with an instrument should really think about doing. It gets everyone together, and is just overall a good time.

Hip Hop Trombone Quartet Crew

Look at these guys are having the time of their lives doing chamber groups. These guys could be you guys. My quintet and I are doing a rehearsal tomorrow and It's going to be great. If you want to be a better player getting into or starting a chamber group is a great idea. Also If you want to do a solo that would be a great idea as well if you just wanted to know the melody without having to worry about harmonies. Thanks for reading and I'll talk to you guys another time.

Musical Opportunities

In my last post I talked about how to change your tone quality from a darker tone to a brighter tone. Today in my post I'm going to talk about not being modest. Of course there is a time and place for modesty, I myself am very modest, but don't let modesty get in the way of what you want to do. For example if there is a band that you have the opportunity to tryout for, don't tell yourself that your not good enough for the band, because you are your biggest critic. Get input from other people before you give up on an opportunity. This applies to all activities, whether it's in debate, football or anything don't let yourself tear down your self-confidence to the point where you give up opportunities. Also in this blogpost I'd like to talk about choosing your trombone. I found a very useful source, Douglas Yeo for this topic and I'd like to talk on it. The author Douglas Yeo talked about selecting your instrument and I agree with his points fully. The questions you have to a ask as a person buying or renting an instrument are what are: What are you using the horn for? How much money do you have to spend? Are you a new player or a professional?  These are some of the most important questions when buying a renting an instrument. For example for the last question, you don't want a boutique trombone that Andy Martin used in Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band, because that is a very hard instrument to learn how to play on. It's best to learn on a student-line trombone, because it is specifically made for kids to or even just learners to be able to produce a sound.

Yamaha Student Line Trombone

Custom YSL-891z Trombone

 Student VS  Pro