hyperbolica wrote: ↑Sat Nov 24, 2018 1:23 pm
When you are 25, weight is not an issue. When you are 50, 60+, or have an injury, and you've been doing it your whole life it becomes an issue. In fact, it can be the single issue between playing into your senior years or not.
I've been tracking various health issues faced by trombonists for many years, and that research forms a chapter in one of the books I'm working on.
There is a cumulative effect on health when one does anything for long periods of time. But we should not underestimate the fact that we often THINK we don't have a problem when we actually do.
I could give you names of a dozen superb trombonists whose names would be recognized by everyone on this forum and who are experiencing serious problems with their playing at this time. These are friends, professional players who range in age from their 20s to 70s. They love playing the trombone. But various things are at work that are making playing more challenging for them.
We live in complex times. Not more complex than times past, but the TYPE of complexity is unique to our time. Trombone playing has evolved since the fifteenth century. So have trombones themselves. As JohnL said below, "Do not discount the importance of weight." We have seen changes in the last 50 years - and particularly in the last 20 years - that are just now beginning to show their consequences. Weight is one of them.
Consider this:
The first double valve bass trombone was made by F.E. Olds in 1938. It was a smallish instrument by today's standards, with a nine-inch bell and two valves (dependent) in F/E.
Edward Kleinhammer was among the great number of orchestral bass trombonists who used a single valve Conn bass trombone (with a 1 1/2G mouthpiece) for many years.
David Monette was very influential with his excessively heavy trumpets that caught on for a time for a variety of reasons (including their cost: his instruments fed into the "Well, if it's more expensive, it must be better" ego stroking). Today, Monette's experiment can be seen as mostly a failure, as orchestral trumpet players have largely gone away from his heavy instruments. While he made only a few tenor trombones (five, if I recall) and five bass trombone bells, his work influenced makers like Edwards and Shires who followed his lead to heavier bells.
Bach followed suit with their "megatone" mouthpieces; Denis Wick added his "heavy top" mouthpieces. Many tenor trombone players began playing a Bach 42B size bell section with a 50B slide and a 4G or 3G mouthpiece. On
Bolero. Some players added screw bell attachments that in addition to helping make the instrument more compact, added weight.
All of these changes had an effect on players. Not just their elbows and hands and backs, but also on their embouchures. Heavier bells and more dense mouthpieces required more air to vibrate the instrument. Embouchures began to fail as a result of bored out mouthpiece throats in heavy mouthpieces. This "musical arms race" toward larger bore, heavier weight instruments allowed players to play louder - for sure - but not much else. There was a loss in the ability to play softly. And slowly, players' bodies began to show the physical toll.
We tend to lump any physical problems with instruments into the "dystonia" pot but that is a complex term that should not be bandied about. In the "old days" (not really so long ago, actually), we used to say, "John Doe lost his lip." It usually happened because of an injury to the embouchure caused by playing too loudly. Later, it came about from playing oversized and heavy equipment.
Orchestra seasons have gotten longer; players have much more time with the instrument on the face than in the past. Pops concerts are usually of the "higher, faster, louder" genre. The pace of pops concerts is very fast; there is little time to recover between pieces. Much "contemporary music" makes tremendous demands on players in terms of dynamic and tonal range. Faces are getting beaten up at a rapid rate.
We are just now beginning to see the results of all of this and it will take another generation of players whose careers are shortened or compromised before the body of peer reviewed science is large enough to begin to influence habits. One of the problems is that of image, as players usually hide their problems, or don't want to be seen as a "wimp." When Ravel wrote
Bolero, he had in mind a narrow bore trombone with a .460 bore and a 6 inch bell. I used to own Joannés Rochut's trombone that he brought with him from Paris when he joined the Boston Symphony as principal trombonist in 1925 (when I retired from the BSO in 2012, I "entrusted" the instrument to Toby Oft, with the proviso he pass it on to another BSO player when he retires and so on). Have a look at Rochut's mouthpiece, photo below, next to a Bach 6 1/2 AL mouthpiece:
With the right tool, you can do any job. When I hear a rare performance of Bolero when the principal trombonist plays an instrument like a King 2B, I hear a beautiful, sexy, and rather effortless performance. But this is rare indeed. And it is not enough just to switch equipment. It requires a commitment from the conductor and the orchestra as a whole to moderate its dynamics in a way that does not drown out the solo.
The escalation of dynamics in symphony orchestras (and big bands) has been driven not by changes in the instruments themselves. There have not been significant changes in string instruments since the change from gut to steel strings at the beginning of the 20th century (over 100 years ago). There have been no changes to woodwind instruments in 100+ years that have significantly altered their timbre or dynamic range. These kinds of changes have been mostly been made to brass instruments, and to trombones more than trumpets, horns, trumpets, and tubas. This unilateral change in the way brass instruments deliver sound - louder and "more efficient" - became the orchestral equivalent to listening to music with earbuds on a noisy subway, with the listener needing music louder and louder not simply to hear the music, but to get the "excitement high" that became associated with loud music.
Culturally, we are reaching the tipping point where the "excitement high" is not enough. It is like a drug. You use more and more to get the same "rush" and eventually, there is no more that can be used unless suicide is desired. We are busy flipping the channel of our lives hundreds of times a day, afraid of a moment of quiet or contemplation, needing more and more excitement to get through the day. Eventually there is no more excitement to give: the music cannot get faster or louder or higher. What then?
There is a lot at play here, and I wrote about some of it in my article "Me, Myself and I: Are Orchestral Brass Players Losing the Concept of Being Team Players?" It has been reprinted in many magazines since it first appeared in the ITA Journal in 1997. You can read it here:
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/text/teamplayer.html
All of this is to say that the carbon fiber modifications to my trombone that Dave Butler made work for me. They allow the trombone to be more comfortable in my hands and still sound like me. Yes, I am 63 years old, closer to my end than my beginning. But the effects of 20th/21st century trombone playing do not come upon a player all of a sudden. This is an important discussion. New developments in instrument making, such as using carbon fiber, titanium, and other materials, is part of this. Talking about how we play, balance in ensembles, the role of various instruments and groups of instruments at particular moments in various kinds of music, and an openness to saying "enough" is another part of healthy change and understanding.
-Douglas Yeo