TromboneChat

Does anyone here mix trombone warmups and calisthenics with vocal warmups and calisthentics?

sometimes if I feel like my air and ear are really just... asleep, I'll sing some to get things moving and hearing. You can't sing with any quality without consistent air and relative pitch, and it's easier on the chops than playing badly. I usually find some tension that way.

I sing scales over drones. Helps my ears get intervals/intonation better.

Don Lucas advocated humming or singing softly along with a drone, and carefully and steadily moving the sung pitch up and down a half step and listening for beats. You are supposed to make the beats slow and stop at a controlled steady rate. Very hard to do.

I’ve only recently begun the repeated cycle of listen/sing/buzz/play to learn anything by ear without using sheet music, be it rochut or standards or excerpts or bebop or exercises.

I wish I had begun this way as a kid alongside reading, developing both from the very beginning. The ear/voice/instrument connection is/was not nearly the priority that reading is/was given. Personally I believe it’s a glaring weakness of our traditional pedagogy and methods, one which leads to too many players whom can’t even “sing” a Rochut on the instrument that we’ve played hundreds of times unless the sheet music is in front of us.

It also provides more assurance for resting as much as I play for longer sessions, increased endurance.

Ear training is great, but I am thinking for my purposes more in terms of developing vocal technique along with trombone technique. Consider it a New Year's goal. It's often enough that I end up singing background vocals anyway, and aside from having a decently good ear, I'm not particularly good at it.

Understood, and I had that feeling about your OP. I’ll just share that I’ve been blessed to be around my very active vocal coach/Mother who’s 80 and going strong. I’ve learned so much by simply witnessing lessons focused on ease and efficiency in tone production, many of these lessons with some of the greatest, most famous singers on our planet whom are working through various problems or issues. A traditional, almost institutionalized mantra of “more air” is simply not usually the problem. “More vibration” (and easier, more resonant, stronger…) is what it’s about…for me. Sure, air and vibration of our “vocal chords” is fundamental, but maybe the pedagogy has skewed too far and too often toward the air part of the equation. I could go on…

I applaud you and this thread!