TromboneChat

Hi! Has anyone already written out Shostakovich 10 on 2nd Trom either to Bass or Tenor? If so, would you be willing to share the file? Happy to make a donation!

Do what my friend used to do: take the part, add a line below the staff, white out the top line, and voila -- tenor clef.

Eventually you can learn to read alto clef. Get some viola books and start practicing

Gee, thanks

Believe it or not, I recall someone asking for this very thing and they found someone who had transcribed it on musescore. I can only find the 2nd movement now though:

https://musescore.com/user/155314/scores/879991

It seems you have to be a member or something to join now? I'm not certain of the details but you might want to do a little investigation there to see if that would be useful. You should be able to swimply swap the clef out if you get the musescore file.

Thanks Matt, it's a good start. Appreciated!

Yorkssteve wrote: ↑Sun Sep 11, 2022 12:37 am Hi! Has anyone already written out Shostakovich 10 on 2nd Trom either to Bass or Tenor? If so, would you be willing to share the file? Happy to make a donation!

Hate to be that guy but why not just learn alto? It isn's as difficult as most make it out to be and it will help in the long run.

I'll also jump in and say that writing out the part on some manuscript paper is a really good first step towards learning the clef. It could be a win/win.

Jim Scott

Agreed Jim. But judging by the OP’s first response, “Gee, thanks,” I’m thinking he’s looking for the easy way out.

Yeah - easy is good, but it leaves you in the same situation next time.

JS

CalgaryTbone wrote: ↑Mon Sep 12, 2022 7:32 pm Yeah - easy is good, but it leaves you in the same situation next time.

JS

Absolutely.

To be fair, for a lot of players, the “next time” may be a LONG time. I can think of a handful of mostly Russian works where alto is even used on 2nd/3rd. Principal there are obviously more but even still… going through my undergrad and grad coursework I can think of maybe 20 works where I needed it. And maybe half of those were actually on alto.

Matt K wrote: ↑Tue Sep 13, 2022 7:44 am To be fair, for a lot of players, the “next time” may be a LONG time. I can think of a handful of mostly Russian works where alto is even used on 2nd/3rd. Principal there are obviously more but even still… going through my undergrad and grad coursework I can think of maybe 20 works where I needed it. And maybe half of those were actually on alto.

To be fair the best way for someone to actually learn something is to actually do it themselves. Or it used to be.

Diminishing returns have always existed. I don't think I've read alto clef since 2019 and at this point, I would probably need a few days to get comfortable with it to feel comfortable sight reading it on a gig. If I were trying to make a career out of playing classical music... yeah, that's definitely something you want to eventually be comfortable with at the drop of a hat, but I have no delusions of grandeur. And it's happened so infrequently that based on how infrequently I encountered it when I WAS on my A game, I would feel 100% comfortable with having enough time to convert alto to tenor clef for the amount of alto clef I'm likely to ever see again in my lifetime. I'd bet the total list of common rep that has alto clef is less than 50 works (if you count things like Russian Sailors Dance which has all 3 parts in alto as a single work).

Matt K wrote: ↑Tue Sep 13, 2022 10:51 am Diminishing returns have always existed. I don't think I've read alto clef since 2019 and at this point, I would probably need a few days to get comfortable with it to feel comfortable sight reading it on a gig. If I were trying to make a career out of playing classical music... yeah, that's definitely something you want to eventually be comfortable with at the drop of a hat, but I have no delusions of grandeur. And it's happened so infrequently that based on how infrequently I encountered it when I WAS on my A game, I would feel 100% comfortable with having enough time to convert alto to tenor clef for the amount of alto clef I'm likely to ever see again in my lifetime. I'd bet the total list of common rep that has alto clef is less than 50 works (if you count things like Russian Sailors Dance which has all 3 parts in alto as a single work).

Ahh I see. The “learn the bare minimum approach.” I get it.
No I don’t. I’m primarily a bass trombonist who reads alto clef once every ten years. And I do it because I learned how!
Expand your horizons people!!

Well, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him use his time efficiently.

Matt K wrote: ↑Tue Sep 13, 2022 2:51 pm Well, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him use his time efficiently.

????????????????

Learn alto. If you already know tenor alto is easy. You're always going to wind up handing better parts to someone else if tou don't just learn it. I know a great pro who can't (won't) read tenor or alto, so he winds up playing 3rd while less talented players get the 1st and 2nd parts.

Any "hack" is going to take as much effort as just learning it. If you just transcribe the part from alto once, you're half way there.

hyperbolica wrote: ↑Tue Sep 13, 2022 3:51 pm Learn alto. If you already know tenor alto is easy. You're always going to wind up handing better parts to someone else if tou don't just learn it. I know a great pro who can't (won't) read tenor or alto, so he winds up playing 3rd while less talented players get the 1st and 2nd parts.

Any "hack" is going to take as much effort as just learning it. If you just transcribe the part from alto once, you're half way there.

While I agree that OP should certainly learn alto clef, as it's not that difficult if you know tenor clef and it's quite useful, we don't know how long they have to learn the piece. If they need to play it within a few days, that's not enough time to learn alto clef beforehand. They should absolutely learn alto clef for the future, but that doesn't solve the problem of now.

mahlertwo wrote: ↑Fri Sep 16, 2022 10:48 am While I agree that OP should certainly learn alto clef, as it's not that difficult if you know tenor clef and it's quite useful, we don't know how long they have to learn the piece. If they need to play it within a few days, that's not enough time to learn alto clef beforehand. They should absolutely learn alto clef for the future, but that doesn't solve the problem of now.

It is, however, plenty of time to write out the part which would be a good start on learning the clef.

JS

What do you do when you walk in to rehearsal and there sits an alto clef part on your stand? Do you just refuse to play it? Do you frantically start writing in notes? Do you come down with sudden onset dengue fever? Do you hand it to the 2nd or 3rd trombone player? Do you explain to the music director that you can't play alto?

I've been in this situation, and I just figured it out, and fast. Get your first note and play by intervals from there. You might hit some wrong notes. Danger. That's why you learn it before hand, but if you don't have that choice, a couple of misread notes are better than admitting you never took the time to learn alto clef. It might be ok for a small potatoes community orchestra, but for anything else, just learn alto clef.

A lot of trombone players can't even read treble clef (as in- reading the hymnal). That's another thing that just comes with the territory.