Free Trombone Music - Buzz's Place

Air Flow Warm-ups

I won't say, these are THE Vincent Cichowicz warm-ups. But the first exercises are more or less +/- the ones that my trumpet teacher at the time, Edward H. Tarr gave us, telling us they were … THE Vincent Cichowicz warm-ups. He also explained what they were good for and how to do them. I don't claim that these are the original Flow Studies. These are exercises based upon my understanding as explained by Edward Tarr to me and the class at the time. I have no idea if Ed got them from Mr. Cichowicz.

The whole idea of these warm-ups, especially those on pages 1-2, are to re-teach your entire playing mechanism each day to get the most relaxed and beautiful sound possible. So the basic dynamic is somewhere between mp - mf. It's ok to not feel good on your highest note or lowest note of any particular exercise. If that's the case, simply do it again, make sure you're not cramping yourself and make this time the one you're playing everything beautifully. There is no goal other than to play beautifully, so if you don't get up to your highest note or down to your your lowest note today, don't worry about it.

I added on pages 3-4 especially to work stepwise down into the lowest register of the bass trombone. They were not in the exercises I got from Ed, but I play them with the same idea. Then I added at the end on page 4 a kind of test: after exploring the upper register and working down into the lowest register, can I then hang them together? The idea here is to be able to perform that arc down to the pedal f and up to the high b-flat and down again in one breathe. That means, that if you're shifting/pivoting (whatever you want to call it), you know where you need to shift/pivot how much AND you still keep the beauty of the sound no matter where you are in the register. That means the goal is not just to reach those extremes, but to do so with the same beautiful sound as previously.

What comes next in my daily routine is 3-5 Bordogni for tuba/bass trombone, which I play an octave lower as well as afterwards, as written. I find the last Cichowicz sets me up very well for this. I will then play a few Concone Op 10 pieces which have a relatively middle to high tessitura. And then another 1-2 Bordogni to relax me again - and because they're musically rewarding. But that's just me.

Air Flow Exercises (download PDF)PDF • 240KB

Giuseppe Concone's 25 Leçons de chant, Op.10 For Low Voice

As a trumpet player, as compared to similar etudes by Bordogni, I always found these to be rather boring. Of course I was a young punk kid back then, what did I know? But now I find these cool. Something I can play in my own four walls letting my inner Schmalz out, seeing how I can ham it up musically with them.

There are already a couple editions of these for bass clef instruments. And they're published for different singing registers. They're all available on IMSLP https://imslp.org/wiki/25_Leçons_de_chant%2C_Op.10_(Concone%2C_Giuseppe) including a written out piano accompaniment! I chose the edition from low voice for obvious reasons and then transcribed them, making a couple corrections of misprints. But … this (as well as Charlier below) is a “quick and dirty” transcription. I did superficially “check” them, but I'm familier with the traps of music editing, so know … there's no such thing as a perfectly perfect work.

One of my favorite sets of exercises are the Bordogni Etudes as arranged by Chester Roberts for Tuba/Bass Trombone. These are basically a selection of the Rochut/Bordogni etudes, but transposed an octave down. They're great for bass trombone as they stand, but then in order to work on my double-paddle and pedal register, I play them another octave lower. This got me to thinking. The one set of Concone Etudes I posted fit well for tenor. So I then transposed them down an octave and they're also great for lower bass trombone lower register, going down as far as pedal f/f-sharp. So now as a real workout (that's also fun), I play one etude in the lower register and then the same in the upper register. So as it says on the link, one set (with piano accompaniment) is for tenor trombone and the next is for bass trombone. And the idea when I'm playing the lower version is to try and keep the light, breezy feeling downstairs as I do, when playing them upstairs.

Concone Op. 10 for tenor trombone (Download) PDF • 7792KB

Concone Op. 10 for bass trombone - Download FilePDF • 14883KB

Selected etudes from Charlier's 36 Etudes Transcendantes

These are just fun. In fact, they're so much more fun than when I had to play them on the trumpet, that I transcribed a few, setting them sometimes in “more appropriate” keys for trombone than the originals.

Charlier Etudes (Download)PDF • 2113KB

Carl Maria von Weber (but probably not from him) Romance

I played this in 1996 for my tenor trombone playing exam. Loved it then. Somewhere I still have that arrangement from Marc Reift's publishing company. I remember at the time, my problem on tenor was not the high c, but rather the low register. When I pulled it out a few weeks ago, actually stumbled onto it in a stack of old music, as usual, things were reversed. The lower register was no problem, but the high c ... well, high b-flat is fine, but c is a 50/50 proposition. I then went on to IMSLP and found it there in a russian edition from the 1930's for Trombone/Cello/Bassoon and Piano. The printing was terrible, lots of places very difficult to read, but there were "differences" singled for the different instruments. And one spot, where the high c was, had also another alternate version. I then decided to write this part out and do some "musical suggestions" editing. Take 'em or leave 'em. But I find this to be a lot of fun on bass trombone. So here the file downloaded from IMSLP plus "my" version of the solo part for (mediocre) bass trombone

von Weber - Romance (bass trombone)PDF • 2285KB

Max Bruch's Kol Nidrei, Op. 47, arr. Keith Brown

I first ran into this on YouTube in a recording by the great Jacqueline Du Pré. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i91RX2LhY8s. This remains to date my favorite version of the piece. It's been performed well by many other cellists, but … Ms. Du Pre is IMHO still the best. Unfortunately I've always then been disappointed by trombone versions, let alone bass trombone versions. Well played bass trombonistically, but missing the soul of the piece. So I wanted to give it a try. You will notice, there are some changes compared with the original cello part as well as compared with Mr. Brown's version for tenor trombone. I feel, these make the piece a bit more approachable and fits the character of the bass trombone without losing the desired emotional content. Trombone does present technical challenges in this respect, but I do try to directly imitate a cellist, not a great trombonist when playing this.

Bruch Kol Nidrei (Download)PDF • 201KB

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New transcriptions – November 2024

These pieces are actually for MY use and enjoyment. If you like them, fine. If not, also fine. The „why“s.

Taking an example from the 6 Vivaldi Sonatas, the Bach Cello Suites, and others, using cello music or bassoon music for trombone solo literature has a long past. So these here aren’t breaking any new ground. The are however, some of the better pieces I dug out of IMSLP. And that being the case, there is, of course, a certain lack of qualitative uniformity. Some are great, others are less so. Some didn’t actually survive past the transcription process and I abandoned the work on them – they DON’T appear here. But I’ve played them all, with all their strengths and weaknesses as well as mine.
In August, the company Make Music announced, that Finale will no longer be developed or sold. And that it will not be „certified“ for use under MacOS 15.x Sequoia. That doesn’t mean that Finale will evaporate at some point. Nor does it mean that one MUST switch to Dorica, even if Make music is pushing a cross grade. But at some point in the future, you’ll update your OS and Finale will break. I went through this with HB Music Engraver, which never started again after I updated from System 6 to System 7. Shortly thereafter I bought into Finale, according to my records, in 1991. I used it for my engraving business from around 1994-2002/3 or so. I used it for my arrangements which I ended up selling to Marc Reift and Emil Ruh. Despite all that I am planning for the future, (however long that will be, being that I’m creeping up on 72) to continue transcribing music. Because of this, I decided to work on some multi-movement sonatas in Finale, Dorico and MuseScore, learning the later two as I went along. I found Dorico to be frustratingly rigid (online the „advice“ is to learn Dorico’s way and don’t question it), illogical and just plain a PITA. MuseScore was much easier for me to learn – still learning – and I’ve found it does some things exceedingly better than Finale. The question I had was „Can I develop a combined work-flow, or is this an either-or-proposition?“ As is so often the case, the answer for me is „it depends“. With much of this work I entered notes in Finale, added most articulations and texts, slurs and such. I then exported in either uncompressed XML or the older version of XML Finale offers. Then I’d open this XML file in MuseScore. For those curious as to the reliability of this process: all the notes themselves came over well. Not all the editorial signs did. But importing Finale’s XML, no matter what version, caused some wonkiness with MuseScore. For one thing, after the first movement, all subsequent movements have slightly messed up measure numbers, requiring adding to the showing measure numbers one number at the beginning of each and every movement individually – easily done in MuseScore. Also, although all time signatures and key signatures showed physically properly, a bug to this process is, means needing to go, movement for movement, and re-establishing the key signature in the first measure of the movement, no matter what is already showing. If you don’t do this, any transposing of a movement may or may not transpose all subsequent movements although you only select the one. And the transposition is wonky – the notes get transposed, but the key signature doesn’t change UNLESS you first take this previously explained step. This problem only happens with files based on imported XML files. Also changing playback speed is … hit and miss - sometimes it works, sometimes it reverts to the previous tempo after 2-3 measures.. Long story not short (for those considering switching from Finale after simply exporting all Finale files as XML, … it ain’t necessarily so...easy or bug-free. Anyway, doing these sets of sonatas was a great learning experience for me.

Now we get down to the editing. Basically, anything in a bracket is an edit. So any dynamics in brackets are edits from me – feel free to ignore them. BUT any dynamics NOT in brackets are original in the „manuscript“. Editorial slurs are dashed, original ones are solid. These either compliment slurred figured already in the piece, but obviously missing or are gut-feeling edits. But many of the editorial slurs also may denote something to do with how I like to phrase. All breathe marks (commas) are editorial and serve the same purpose, mostly. In a few spots, as a reminder to me, I signaled hemiola bits with brackets. Didn’t catch all of them, may insert them in later corrections. I tried to keep the same key signatures and tessitura, but did make some allowances. Some will be obvious, others not so much. Very easy to see how the original was in both instances – I provide a link to the PDF manuscript on IMSLP. Feel free to check these out. There are many original trill signs throughout all the pieces … and yet, many more places one can/could play a trill or turn. I did not add any editorial trills/turns, but for my own enjoyment, do so when playing these.

Continuo part: Don′t let it bother you, that the figured bass is for harpsichord. That was purely an aural convenience for me, that I could, during aural proofing, keep the trombone better apart from the figured bass part. And don′t let the sharps in the figured bass part in a flat-key bother you. In many instances, a sharp sign in a manuscript doesn′t necessarily mean „sharp“, it means to raise that note or interval or note. So in B-flat, you might see a sharp sign in front of an e(flat) which just means to raise the e-flat to an e-natural. I also did not actually realize the figured bass – let your organist or harpsichordist do it, or … simply do it yourself.

For those interested, to serve as my future music notation machine, I bought a pristine 15“ 2015 MacBook Pro, top-of-the-line configuration with a new screen and a new battery. It’s now running MacOS Sonoma 14.7.1 via Open Core Legacy Patcher and will remain there, so nothing Apple will update will break Finale. This vintage MacBook Pro runs Finale v27, MuseScore 4.4.3 and my dear LibreOffice, just like my (daily driver) M2 15“ MacBook Air. Ignoring start-up times, one can’t really tell the difference between the M2 and the vintage Mac. If I update to Sequoia on any machine, that will be after another couple of rounds of bug fixes. For notation I also used my daily M2 and will alternate between the two until an OS update kills Finale on the M2. And then I′ll still have the vintage 2015 MacBook Pro. I also have a 2014 MacBook Pro as a further back-up, also running same software as on the other 2 machines.

12 Cello Sonatas, 1-6, Pierre Hyacinthe Azaïs (1741 – 1796)

Azais 12 Cello Sonatas 1-6 - Bass Trombone, SCORE.pdf

scanned manuscript:

https://ks15.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/9/9e/IMSLP191062-PMLP329247-Azais_-_12_Sonatas_for_Cello_1777.pdf

12 Cello Sonatas, 7-12, Pierre Hyacinthe Azaïs (1741 – 1796)

Azaïs_12 Cello Sonatas 7 - 12 - Bass Trombone, SCORE.pdf

scanned manuscript:

https://ks15.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/9/9e/IMSLP191062-PMLP329247-Azais_-_12_Sonatas_for_Cello_1777.pdf

6 Sonatas for Bassoon or Violoncello, John Ernest Galliard (1687 – 1749)

Galliard, Sonata Nr. 1-6._trombone, SCORE.pdf

scanned manuscript: https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/5/56/IMSLP35298-PMLP79372-Galliard_-_cello_sonatas.pdf

6 Sonatas for Violoncello, Giraud, François-Joseph (? – 1788)