Anyway, here’s Julian Treasure reminding us how important listening is in general, and gives us 5 suggestions to listen better. It’s a short talk and a good reminder to be grateful for the ability to hear, and to listen, mostly to each other, but these thoughts can be applied to music, too. Hope you enjoy it.

Related articles

• Deaf musician Evelyn Glennie:  How to Listen to Music With Your Whole Body
• How Not To Write About Female Musicians: A Handy Guide (blogs.villagevoice.com)
• Proactive Listening – Julian Treasure Demonstrates How to Improve Retaining What We Hear (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)

~ Osho

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Several months ago I spoke with the fantastic jazz trumpeter Ingrid Jensen about practice. She mentioned that one thing she liked to do was practice with drones, using an Indian instrument called a tanpura (also tampura). She said that playing against a drone was a great way to train your ear/horn coordination. Practicing with a drone allows you to really feel how it sounds to play every note against the tonic, throughout your range. It’s meditative.

Image via Wikipedia

When I hear a great practice idea, I try it, and I’ve been using this one for a while and absolutely love it. I almost immediately noticed a greater ability to match pitch (my fellow musicians mentioned it in rehearsal), and a deeper awareness of sound in general. Part of the reason for this is that playing with the drone makes me aware of where the horn is naturally out of tune, whether because of the way a horn is made or because of the quirks of the harmonic series. But doing this has made playing just one note a meditative experience, even more so than it usually is. And by meditative, I mean it makes it easy to lose the “self” in the sound. Hard to explain, but a fantastic feeling.

Check the comments for more information about the developer of this great app, Prasad Upasani. He’s also created iTanpura Lite, a free app. I used that for a very short time before I knew this was a great thing to have, so I upgraded to the $25 version, called  iTabla Pro. It’s got the drones on the Tanpura, but adds many tabla rhythms and other instruments, like the Swar Mandal, and the Manjira. All future updates are free, and according to the comments, this is frequent and fast if there’s ever a problem.  I’m having a blast exploring this great app.

Might seem like a lot of dough to dish out for an app, but oh, man do you get some great stuff! It’s been a totally engaging way to help me learn more about Indian music, especially the taals used for tabla (which I’m trying to play and failing so far). You can set iTabla Pro to tell you the syllables used for the tabla and this is helping me learn more quickly.

Here’s a tanpura (you can see a set of tabla in the lower left):

You can set the iTanpura to any pitch and can change those pitches by cents (there are 100 cents in a half step). This is wonderful as it allows me to tune the device to my didgeridoos, none of which are close to standard tuning. It’s a fantastic program and has given my practice a real shot in the arm. I’m incredibly grateful to Ingrid for sharing that information. You can hear the interview in the link below. Anyway, here are a couple demonstration videos of the software. First is the iTanpura (with just the drones and you can get it for free) and then a demonstration of the iTabla pro:

Apple’s App store links:    iTanpura Lite     and      iTabla Pro (has the drone and tabla)

Have fun, and good luck with your meditation, er…, practice.

iTanpura

iTanpura Pro (with Tabla)

Related articles

• Interview: Ingrid Jensen on Practice (talkingtrumpet.wordpress.com)
• Photographs : Pt. Ravi Shanker alongwith Tabla player Pt.CHATURLAL IN USA : DECEMBER 1956 (kps0715.wordpress.com)
• Fire and Light… Sangeet Natak Akademi award for young performers (imcradiodotnet.wordpress.com)

Related articles

• Interview: Ingrid Jensen on Practice (talkingtrumpet.wordpress.com)
• Photographs : Pt. Ravi Shanker alongwith Tabla player Pt.CHATURLAL IN USA : DECEMBER 1956 (kps0715.wordpress.com)
• Fire and Light… Sangeet Natak Akademi award for young performers (imcradiodotnet.wordpress.com)
• Sultan Khan (guardian.co.uk)
• Baajaa Gaajaa Music Festival Kicks off in Pune (eftimes.wordpress.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Marian McPartland was married to jazz trumpet Jimmy McPartland. She’s had other trumpeters on her fantastic show Piano Jazz, a longtime staple on NPR. She’s re-releasing her talk with Clark Terry, the fantastic jazz trumpeter who said about practice, “Imitate, emulate, innovate.”

…………..

Clark Terry on Piano Jazz

……………….

Related articles

• Marian McPartland Stepping Away From Keyboard on Her ‘Piano Jazz’ Radio Show (artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Trumpeters to be Thankful For (talkingtrumpet.wordpress.com)
• 1982 Interview with Dizzy Gillespie (talkingtrumpet.wordpress.com)

The bigger the hat, the smaller the property
~Australian proverb

________________________________________________________________________________________

Didgeridoo is a great instrument and it’s pretty easy to make a sound on if you can play trumpet. However, to play like Ondrej Smeykal in the video below will take lots of practice.

You can find cheap instruments made from plastic, and some of them play quite well. Didgeridoos are also made from wood (especially the bloodwood eucalyptus from the land of the instrument’s origin, Arnhemland, Australia), yucca, and even fiberglass. These usually sound much better, and louder, than plastic instruments. If you do buy one, please consider a Fair Trade version, since the people who are the custodians of this instrument could use the cash.

A great place to see some great selections (most of them Fair Trade), is LA Outback (laoutback.com).

I use a didj to warm down after a long practice sessions. They are also great for practicing circular breathing, and if  you snore, playing one for a couple months may cure it.

Have fun and good luck with your practice.

Related articles

• Listen to Didgeridoo-aborignal musical instrument. (izitso.net)
• Chat With Emma Watson About Fair Trade Fashion! (fabsugar.com)
• A New Instrument to Practice: Asalato (intentionalpractice.wordpress.com)
• Pixound Turns Photos Into Musical Instruments (gizmodo.com.au)

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Image via Wikipedia

This is an excellent musical performance, and interesting to boot! The frame drum solo at the beginning drew me right in, and when Michel Godard began to play the serpent I was entranced.  The serpent is an ancient low-voiced instrument similar to the Medieval cornetto, and  it produces a mesmerizing sound in the hands of a master like Godard (see below).

Godard’s ear and lip control put him completely in tune with the singer. A haunting mix of sounds. Vocals are provided by Linda Bsiri, and the masterful tef playing is by Jarrod Cagwin . According to the comments it’s both a sephardic tune, La Rosa Enflorese and is also known as Los Biblicos, traditional. I don’t know how accurate those comments are. Facts on the Internet are like notes on a trombone: Infinite in number, but most of them are wrong.

What is most certainly a fact is that this piece uses the D Phrygian mode. There are at least two ways to think about this pattern of notes.

• Easiest: It’s a scale from D to D, with the notes D-Eb-F-G-A-Bb-C-D. The half step comes between the 1st and 2nd degree- and 5th and 6th degree of the scale. Another easy way to get this in your ear is to play E to E using only the white keys of the piano. It’s the same relationships of whole and half steps.
• If you know your major scales, start on the third degree of the major scale and play an octave using the key of the scale. You’ve just played a Phrygian mode. The concert Bb scale from D to D works for this tune.

Play along w/the tune. Try to learn the melody. It has only two main phrases, each one repeated (AABB). The serpent voice states the full melody, and then is joined by the vocalist who also sings the full melody. Then a mad serpent solo by Michel Godard over the  rhythm pattern laid down on the tef by Jarrod Cagwin; the full form of the melody is sung again by Linda Bsiri (w/ Godard riffing in the background) and it’s over.

Masterful.

Related articles

• Improv Game of the Day: Gregorian Chance (improvinsights.com)
• Godard: amazing 8 bit music from Indonesia (sertopbands.com)
• Music Theory Crash Course 1 [More Than Scales] (thesongwritingblog.wordpress.com)

_________________________________________________________________________

Check out Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth. She’s been playing for sixteen years, (since she was 7) and it shows. She’s got a lively, bright tone, and in the vid below she plays the Rachmaninoff beautifully.  I just found out about her, but clearly she’s been around for a bit. From her site (snip):

In recognition of her outstanding performing abilities Tine has been the recipient of various awards including the 2009 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, “Newcomer of the Year” at the 2007 Norwegian Grammy Awards (the first classical artist ever to be nominated), second prize in the 2006 Eurovision Young Musicians Competition, the Luitpold Prize as the most outstanding and interesting young artist of the year at the Kissinger Summer Festival, and the prestigious Prince Eugen’s Culture Prize in Stockholm.

It’s so great to discover new stuff. In one listen to the video below I learned about both a new trumpeter and a new piece of music, both of which have been around for a while, though Tine is a bit younger than Rachmaninoff.

Thanks for the  music, Ms. Helseth!

Tine Thing Helseth on mp3 and CD

Related articles

• Sergei Rachmaninoff: Champion of the Romantic Era (trickyessential.wordpress.com)
• Rachmaninoff and hypnotherapy (chargord.wordpress.com)
• Ingrid Jensen, jazz trumpeter interview
• Trumpeters Natalie Dungey and Adam Rapa play Charlier #6 duet
• Thumb Piano Project (silencethencrashing.com)

Click to buy it from Prof. Hickman

Trumpet Pedagogy: A Compendium of Modern Teaching Techniques, by David Hickman

• 503 pages
• 369 photos
• 89 illustration
• dozens of music examples
• Hardbound
• 8.5 x 11 x 1.75 inches.
• $69 (soon to be $95)

If you play or teach trumpet, you have to have this book. In fact, I’m glad I didn’t discover this book until several years after I’d put out my own trumpet book, because if I’d seen this, I wouldn’t have bothered. The book is fantastic, and packed with so much information it’s going to be difficult to summarize. But it’s worth the challenge. Here we go:

David Hickman is a well-known player and teacher, currently at Arizona State University. Here’s a snippet from his web site:

David Hickman is considered one of the world’s pre-eminent trumpet virtuosos and has performed over 2,000 solo appearances around the world as a recitalist or guest soloist with nearly 500 different orchestras. His tours have taken him to Japan, Korea, Thailand, Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Canada, Mexico, Switzerland, and virtually every major American city.

As a noted clinician and author, Hickman has presented workshops on over 300 major university campuses. He has taught (13 summers) at the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), Bremen Trumpet Days (Germany), Rafael Mendez Brass Institute (18 summers), and dozens of music festivals.

Don't try this at home.

If you have any question about the trumpet, you’ll find it in Hickman’s doorstop of a book (Table of Contents). It’s got loads of pictures of great players, many of them closeups so you can see their embouchures, postures, and other details; there are dozens of pictures of instruments from ancient times to cutting edge trumpet makers. The illustrations are great and clear. The musical examples are numerous. And the amount of information is prodigious. You get the idea.

My favorite picture is this one of Louis Armstrong’s mouthpiece rim. It’s got grooves carved into it. The grooves grip his chops so that when he gave the horn a slight twist, he was able to play higher. This, btw, is not a recommended way to increase your range. Louis used to play 77 high Cs in a row at the end of a tune (I think it might have been St. Louis Blues, but am not sure). At a show England when he did this, he split his lip so badly that the front of his shirt was drenched in blood and he had to stop playing for a long period. It’s not clear whether he was using this twisting technique, but I’m guessing he was.

The chapters in Trumpet Pedagogy I found most interesting were

• Chapter 5: Efficient Practice
• Chapter 8: Advanced Range, Power and Endurance
• Chapter 9: Common Problems and Suggested Remedies
  • air in the tone
  • double buzz
  • upper register inconsistency
  • attacks
  • nose air leakage
  • dull, dead tone
  • “quacky’ low register
  • trills
  • dry mouth
  • inability to play softly

Whether you need to know about different embouchures, like the floating jaw embouchure versus the fixed jaw embouchure, or how Bell’s Palsy or other medical conditions affect trumpet playing, or are curious about trumpet music, trumpet players, trumpet mutes, or really anything else regarding the trumpet, you should buy the book. Also, chat up your local librarian and as her or him to purchase a copy for the library. It’s pretty expensive ($69 now, but for a limited time. Will go to $95 apparently), so a library might be able to afford it if you can’t.

There are few things about the book that could be improved upon, but here are some ways in which the book didn’t measure up for me. The price is high, but that’s understandable given the size, scope, and binding, but the price puts it out of range for all but the most serious players and teachers. Available only to trumpet players with a good job. I was surprised and disappointed with the quality of most of the images. The images are not so poor as to be ineffective, but many are pixellated, and nearly all of them would benefit from a few minutes in Photoshop adjusting curves.

But these are minor, piddling concerns. Honestly, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. Take advantage of Hickman’s vast expertise, his research spanning decades, and his contacts with trumpet luminaries who provided pictures galore. Buy the book.

Have fun, and good luck with your practice.

Here are links to Professor Hickman’s talk at the 2005 ITG conference (7 parts). Loads and loads of great information in these talks. (beginning of 6 deals with practice)

Hickman lecture 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Professor Hickman performing:

He’s not a trumpet player, he’s a trombone player, but Steve Turre is up in trumpet range when he plays his conch shells. Here’s a fantastic Afro-Cuban version of All Blues, the jazz standard written by Miles Davis. Hot stuff.

Sample/buy Steve Turre’s music

Related articles

• Conch: It’s What’s For Dinner on the Island of Bonaire (timesunion.com)
• Jazz Party at Sea combines cruising with star-studded live music (examiner.com)
• Mnozil Braaaas (talkingtrumpet.wordpress.com)

_______________________________________________________

I’ve just discovered Mnozil Brass. These guys are phenomenal players and are also pretty hilarious. The following video will show you both. The group is named after a pub in which they used to meet while attending the Vienna College of Music. The oddly-shaped trumpet you see in the video still below, held by the group’s founder, Thomas Gansch–I think he’s the chicken in the beginning of the vid–is a horn he developed himself, known as a Gansch horn.

Sample Mnozil Brass recordings here

Mnozil Brass is:

• Thomas Gansch (trumpet)
• Robert Rother (trumpet)
• Roman Rindberger (trumpet) (since 2004)
• Leonhard Paul (trombone & bass trumpet)
• Gerhard Füßl (trombone)
• Zoltan Kiss (trombone) (since 2005)
• Wilfried Brandstötter (tuba)

Related articles

• Trombone Shorty & Wynton Marsalis: Trumpet Battle (talkingtrumpet.wordpress.com)
• Ben Crosland Brass Group: An Open Place – review (guardian.co.uk)
• Hello Pops! (A Tribute to Louis Armstrong) By Wycliffe Gordon (harlemworldblog.wordpress.com)

And here’s my favorite Kenny Dorham tune, Afrodisia from my favorite album, Afro-Cuban. You can’t go wrong with this album….

Check out more samples of KD’s music here

Related articles

• Interview: Ingrid Jensen on Practice (talkingtrumpet.wordpress.com)
• Duane Eubanks Quintet @ Cornelia Street Café (ineskuusik.wordpress.com)