Jurgen Faisst that shows approximate positions and harmonics for the B flat trombone, the trombone with the F valve depressed and the trombone with a D valve engaged (notice that with the D valve the trombonist can only get a major third): See below for a slide position chart by Dr. One common system is one valve in F, the other in D (or the combination of the first and second will give D). Generally, they all have an F valve and some other valve that will give them that low B. There’s no real standard for what keys their valves are pitched in. You need to decide whether your occasion is special enough to ask a trombonist to do this.īass trombonists generally have two valves available to them and here’s where things get really wild. For special occasions they can pull the tuning slide out on the valve section and lower the pitch of the valve to E giving them the E harmonic series down chromatically to the B harmonic series. Now tenor trombonists are only missing one note: the B below the bass clef. You guessed it, that lowest C will probably not be playable by your tenor trombonist. Professional bass trombonists should be able to play at least up to the D below that F: Most professional tenor trombonists can reliably produce notes from the fundamental (B flat below the bass clef) to the twelfth harmonic (F at the top of the treble clef). This means if you blow through the instrument with the slide all the way in you will get a note from the B flat harmonic series. Know what key they are pitched in and you are well on your way to figuring out how they tick.Īs I mentioned, the vast majority of tenor and bass trombones are in B flat. There are plenty others: alto trombones, soprano trombones, contrabass trombones, piccolo trombones. You’ll generally be dealing with one of two types: tenor trombones and bass trombones. Octave, fifth, fourth, major third, minor third, flat minor third, etc. If you don’t know anything about the harmonic series take a second to digest that info (particularly the section “ Frequencies, Wavelengths…”) I’ll wait here. To know what gliss a trombone can do you have to first understand the harmonic series, then understand the layout of the trombone. The Harmonic Series (You Should Know This) Tl dr: scroll down to the “Exhaustive List” below. But 99.9999% of trombones today are pitched in B flat bringing us to the question of “what makes a trombone glissando possible?” More than likely he was writing for someone playing a bass trombone pitched in F which would make this lick most playable. To his credit, Bartók probably knew what he was doing when he mocked Shostakovich. See our Mp3 TRACKS, SHEET MUSIC, SCORES for Trombone.Excerpt from the third trombone part of the Fourth Movement of Bartók’s “Concerto for Orchestra.”Ĭan’t do it (for reasons I’ll explain in a bit) but ugly little things like this keep turning up in my parts, maybe because one popular orchestration book calls it “perfect.” (Cough, Adler, cough.) These are supplemented by MP3 recordings allowing the student to hear what the compositions sound like and to use as play-along accompaniment pieces.
These collections are for Low Brass Ensembles or for any of the three low brass instruments (trombone, euphonium or tuba). Low Brass Ensemble scores and sheet music compositions of popular melodies
Go Here for the slide position chart for a tenor clef trombone with an F attachment trigger.Go Here for the slide position chart for a treble clef standard straight trombone.Go Here for the slide position chart for a treble clef trombone with an F attachment trigger.Go Here for the slide position chart for a bass trombone Bb-F-Gb.Go Here for the slide position chart for a trombone with an F attachment trigger.Slide Position Chart for Straight Trombone.(T = the F attachment trigger plus the slide position number, TT = both triggers plus the slide position number, Gb = the Gb second trigger plus the slide position number.) This is the slide position chart for a Bb-F-Gb independent double trigger bass trombone. BASS TROMBONE SLIDE POSITION CHART – Bb-F-Gb BASS TROMBONEįrom “ Trombone Tips for Players & Students“