Sometime between, oh, around 1995 and this past summer, I learned to play the trombone.

Let me clarify.  I’ve been playing the trombone since I was 10 years old.  When I was 12, I joined the City Band.  I played all through high school.  I played in the jazz band.  And when I went to Acadia University for my music degree (majoring in piano), I continued playing in the University Band and the jazz band and even took a year of lessons, for credit.

But I was not, what you would call, a great trombone player.  I was decent.  That’s all.  I enjoyed it to death.  I could count and figure out complicated passages, but I was not a “clean” player, I didn’t have great tone at all.  One band conductor, who shall remain nameless (but he knows who he is if he reads this!) once said to me in frustration, “Heather, you have to forget that you are a shy, skinny, teenaged white girl, and play like a 40-year-old large black man.”  I got the point.  But I still didn’t have the sound.

At Acadia, I was flying through all my courses with A’s and A+’s.  Trombone lessons, however, were frustrating.  I just couldn’t do the things my prof asked me to do.  My lips just didn’t work that way and my lungs would not cooperate.  When I barely managed to squeak a grade of B, that was the end of that. I’d still play in the bands for fun, but any notions I had of becoming a “trombonist” fell by the wayside.

I took one more stab at it, playing in the Music Festival back home one spring.  The adjudicator happened to be one of my profs at Acadia.  After my performance, he said to the audience, “Let me reassure you that this young lady is a very fine pianist.”  So much for that.

For the next 12 years after getting my BMus, I barely touched my horn.  My life took on other directions, and I just didn’t have the time to play in bands, as much as I would have liked to.

This past year, when we decided to move back home, I wanted to get back into it.  I knew I would be working less, and so I would join the City Band once again.  I knew I had a long road ahead of me of getting my chops back, but I missed it so much, I knew I could do it.

From the beginning, as expected, I had low endurance and some serious trouble in the middle range notes.

What I hadn’t expected was that — other than a bit of muscle fatigue — I would have gotten so much better.

I could play the high range notes more clearly.  I had a full, round open sound.   Within a few weeks of getting back into it (and not even practicing all that much), I was coping with all the band music just fine, and finding it easier than ever before.  Endurance would come with time.

What I also did not expect, was getting called for gigs.  As a trombonist.  As a pianist, sure, that’s how I make my living.  But when a local choir (one of the good ones too) needed a brass quartet for one of their Christmas pieces, I was called.  The other trombonist was my old junior high school and city band director, and one of the trumpets was my old high school director.  NO PRESSURE!

I felt terribly out of my league… but I did fine.

Then over the holidays, I was contacted by a local chamber orchestra.  They needed some trombones for spring concerts, a Schumann Symphony and Mozart’s Requiem, and had heard that I was a “fine” trombone player.

Well, then.  How could I say no to that?  After all, this is MOZART’S REQUIEM, only the single greatest piece of music ever composed…

I was in for yet another surprise.  It turned out they were giving me the alto trombone part.  For me and my tenor trombone.  In other words, I’d have to play very, very, very high notes.  In the alto clef.

The first rehearsal was an adventure in sight-reading and cacked notes.  Honestly, at that point, I wondered if I was in over my head.

But after a bit of practice at home, I started feeling much better about this super-high range.  At today’s rehearsal, I nailed 90% of the high Bb’s, 75% of the high C’s, and well… none of the high D’s, but there are only 2 of those.  Everything up to the high A was just fine.

I’ve decided to make an investment and get a couple new mouthpieces that are designed for playing in the high range.  It should help the consistency of those high notes.  I’m even contemplating getting an actual alto trombone, but they’re expensive and we’re, well, broke.

But even though the accuracy of the high notes is still a bit sketchy at times, this fact remains true:  they sound good.  The whole brass section sounds great and I’m soaring out on top of it all, oftentimes even higher than the trumpet parts.  The other orchestra members are frequently leaning back and commenting to us how great we sound.

And I feel comfortable up there.  I feel confident.  And competent.

How did taking over 12 years off, improve my skills so much?  When did I become a trombonist??

Photo credit: gregor-y via Creative Commons

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