My daughter has been learning the trombone for a year. She has a tendancy to stop the breath between each note, rather than separating the notes with her tongue. Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can help her understand physically what she is supposed to be doing?

I would regard stopping the note with the breath as normal, using the tongue to stop the note as a special effect, considered ugly in most circumstances.

Isn't the problem how she starts the notes rather than how she stops them. I'm taught to play three notes as "doo doo doo" or "dah dah dah". The last note in a phrase is then stopped by taking a breath. (Always supposing your breath can last that long - not always possible in my case! I take extra breaths where I'm not supposed to.)

I obviously haven't explained myself clearly and am now struggling as to how to reformulate it. I am talking about notes within a musical phrase, not the very last note of a phrase, and it is a slide trombone rather than a valved instrument so that slurs in the pieces she is playing are very rare.

Although she does sort of do a "t" with her tongue what she also does at the same time is a sort of "ha." She doesn't actually breathe in between each note but she doesn't have a continuous air-stream. I don't know if this is any clearer.

I think I know what you mean, kerioboe, it's something I've tried to beat out of (no, not literally, honest!) a couple of flute students. IF I can remember what helped them I'll let you know just in case it's useful for a trombinist too.

I think imagery can help, things like imagining squeezing a hosepipe full of water rather than turning off the tap??!

How about getting her to hold a single note for as long as she can, which should help her to feel her diaphragm. Then on the same note do some tonging, perhaps a long note (to get the diaphragm going) followed by shorter ones, e.g. minim, crotchet crotchet minim, making sure the airstream is constant.

Once she gets the hang of that she can play the pattern on each note of a scale.

She could even practise this without the trombone. And to get the feel of a steady airstream she could imagine trying to blow out a hundred candles on a huge cake with one breath.

HTH

Hi

If I understand your point correctly - she is stopping between every note like she was breathing on every note; so four notes would almost sound staccato or certainly disjointed.

If I am correct - try this. Ask her to say sentence ' The cat sat on the mat', how do you say that? Ask her 'Do you say it like, The, Cat, Sat, On, The, Mat? - answer no! Why?

So how do we say 'The cat sat on the mat' - we take one big breath, and then we move our teeth, lips tongue etc and that in simple terms is how we make the sounds.

Then tell her that is how you should play, you take one breath, and then keep blowing and let your tongue start every note.


In simple terms this normally works - hope it does.

I'm not sure how old she is (you may have said; sorry if you did!) so if she is on the young side then my advice may make no sense at all, for which I do apologise.

When I was starting playing my cornet, I had a similar problem. What you should do is let her listen to people play who do this technique very well, so that she knows what her own notes should sound like. Make sure she knows that the tongue action she should be doing is 'tu tu tu tu' rather than 'fu fu fu fu' which is what I did as a beginner.

Also, place your finger and thumb on her chin to make sure that she doesnt start to move her chin up and down whilst trying to tongue (I know the chin has to move slightly, but I had the problem in that I moved my chin too much, and its easier to correct now than later)

In most cases, practice makes perfect, and as she is a beginner, I'm sure she'll get the hang of it :]

Good luck!