Director shot

Stigma, stigma, stigma ... After the myth of the slide-shooting-firecracker-trombone, we have this. From my experiences trombone players are very pacifistic and they wouldn't hurt a fly. But I must say that it looks great fun for the audience and brings in some nice variation to a concert.

Super Mario Bros.

My dad gave me a NES console when I was about 6 or 7 years old. And off course the first game I played was Super Mario Bros. The main tune from this game is an evergreen among all the other video game songs. I still love the game today for its nostalgic charm and character. My NES is a piece of antique now, but playing it brings back warm memories.

The embedded video is from a preformance by the Maniacal 4 Trombone Quartet. They have their own website at http://www.maniacal4.com/live/ and have recently won the quartet competition at the International Trombone Festival in Denmark.

This post I also want to link to an arrangement for trombone written by slick07 on Youtube.
http://sites.google.com/site/hotbrainwash/Home/SMB_Trombone_Duet.zip?attredirects=0

http://www.jacobgarchik.com/

The trombonist from whom the website in the title is, caught my eye in the tromboneforum.org. Most of the music he makes is not very open to the whole public, not even to me. But it grabbed me in a certain way, enough to share it on my blog. I think jazz is someting I want to explore more and has to be seen in a broad musical context. It is good that there are "experimental" and daring composers out there to try to expand the vocabulary of music, and this not only in jazz! From a musicians perspective you have to appriciate this. In the embedden song, the parts for the drums and piano make the playing an interwoven object where every instrument knows his place.

Futomomo Satisfaction - Girl Bikini Trombone Band

This Japanese trombone trio preforms in bikini and plays their own pop/indie like music, as well as covers. The three girls are the main performers off course, but they are accompanied by 7 other good musicians. They myspace profile is www.myspace.com/futomomosatisfaction and some videos can be found on youtube. I must that they play the trombone better than they sing. It sounds like true japanese karaoke english. It is quite obvious that some off their fame is simply accorded to the fact that they dress only in bikini, but I can relate that it gets quite hot when you are standing beneath those heat radiating spotlights on stage.

Youtube profile: http://www.youtube.com/user/futomomosatisfaction
For people who can read japanese, their website: http://futomomo.nomaki.jp/suzu.html

What I find more musically interesting is the "solo" project of Suzuyakko called suzumiki, where she plays more integer music with only a guitarist as accompanist. Still she wears a rather silly costume which she changes with every new performance.

Bob Beecher: Variation on the trombone

A nice site that has been in use since 2000-2001 is the site of Bob Beecher where he describes the historical variations on the trombone that are made by men during the ages. It's worth checking out. The picture shows trombones in Syntagma Musicum (1614) by Michael Praetorius

http://home.att.net/~bobbeecher/trombone/trombone.html

Clipart

If you ever need some clipart/pictures of trombone and trombonists to spice up booklets, articles, etc., than use the first two who are part of the public domain. The rest below is for personal use only. They are taken form the site: http://www.clipartheaven.com/. For the more graphical talented among us: its also fun to draw some yourself and scan them. I'm planning to explore how good I'm in doing this!

Bayrische Polka

Yesterday my teacher spoke of a polka called the "Bayrische Polka". He said that is was a very challenging solo to play for trombone and that it still will take a while for me to get to a level high enough to play such music. Indeed I must say that he is very right, the bayrische polka is a nice song but difficult for a (beginning) student like me.

The Bayrische polka is an Austrian-German folk dance that is related to the Schottisch and the Rheinländer. Its related to the area of Bavaria. The polka my teacher was talking about is the one written by Georg Lohmann. My first search for information regarding this composer was without result.

Score: https://www.notenbuch.de/displayimage.aspx?img=images/FWF222-POS-SOLO.jpg


Bayrische Polka on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUv76QcT_5c&feature=related - Very funny because the director slides the trombone for of the musician who keeps playing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZXA5TJ7mN0&feature=related - Only brass. Nice solo playing, but not as good as the previous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfVyqNOXcqY&feature=relate - Nice playing, but bad recording

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxwlXmtheNU&feature=related - Good recording, fooling around at the end :-)