Need help setting up a practice routine

[americanbozo]

Hi! im a High School bass trombone player I think my practice routine isn't efficient or isn't helping me. I spend around 5 minutes doing long tones and flexibility studies and the rest of the time is playing scales and my main music(solos and concert music). Id say I'm pretty good player since i got a 1 got at S&E but I haven't seen any improvement in my skills since S&E. My goal is to make the all state band next year but I don't think I'm improving fast enough. This is my schedule, I have 30 minutes where I usually just play random warm ups in the morning and around 4 hours after school along with 2 band periods where I really cant do any individual work. If someone could send me tips on making my routine better or a good practice routine that would be helpful. Thanks

[Vegasbound]

Talk to your trombone teacher would be the first suggestion, if you do not have one then get one would be the 2nd.

[Trombonic]

"'Tain't What You Do (It's the Way That You Do It)" ......

You can even practice 4 hours a day without improvement.
You can search a street for days without a map.
So, I agree: get yourself a good trombone teacher who shows you the basics and you will find your way...

[Bach5G]

There’s a Remington warmup compiled by Jimmy Clark floating around the Internet. Track down a copy of Kopprasch for trombone. And book 1 of Bordogni/Rochut. And a metronome.

And find out who is the best trombone teacher in town and take a lesson or two.

[norbie2018]

Get a good teacher, record the sessions and/or take notes when you're immediately done with the lesson. You'll have good information to refer back to. Also, you may wish to purchase the Buddy Baker Tenor Trombone Method which outlines in detail a good warm-up and daily routine.

[imsevimse]

What helped me most is:
1. Short warmup (5 minutes) followed by 20 minutes of stuff you think you need, like long tones, scales, flex and arpeggios (or you skip that part and go next in this list)
2. About 20-30 minutes of different sweet tunes. I like to play/ learn swedish folk songs. Play them without the sheet music as early as possible. Play musically. Use vibrato. Choose stuff with long phrases. As soon as you know one, you add another which means you increase your repertoire.
3 About 20-30 minutes of music-minus-one music. There are many good books with classical repertoire out there. Different levels: elementary, intermediate to advanced. Personally I only buy intermediate and advanced books. Lern them too without sheet music as early as possible. First you might just work on one and later you might just play the whole book with accompaniment (and no sheet music)
3 You could add 20-30 minutes of etudes/solo music. Personally I like Tommy Pederson etudes, Bach Cello suites or other classical sololitterature for trombone. Learn them without sheet music too.
4. Add 20-30 minutes of jazz improvisation from real book with audio or Aaebersold play-a-long.

With rests this is approximately 3 hours. It's way more than I play every day, but I think i should do this as it would be to do more of what have made me able to reach the current level, especially important is to listen. Listen to yourself as you play. When you relax you can listen to recordings of other tromboneplayers. Find a raw model you like or several is even better. Other thing is don't forget all opportunities to sit in and sub with better players.
It's also a good idea to record some of your practice and listen to it afterwards. It can be hard to listen. I usually pretend it is some other guy who's playing, this makes it easier to analyze what I hear.

/Tom

[VJOFan]

Those suggesting to get a teacher are giving you wise advice. People who are serious about things get coaches. Ideally a teacher will have been down a similar road to the one you want to travel, and can help you be more efficient in the journey. A teacher also helps with accountability: “the stuff” has to be ready by lesson day. Different ears also hear different things than you might.

Now old man talk… if I had it to do over again my practice would have involved playing more music, especially music from ensembles I was in or would like to be in. I also would have spent far more time finding the things I didn’t do well and fixing them. It is easy to get in the zone of playing beautifully all the time because that is the goal, right? But if everything always sounds great, then the material is probably not hard enough.

[harrisonreed]

It probably involves getting a teacher, but my advice is for you to focus on:

1. Using your 5 minutes of "warm-up" to do something simple, and exactly the same every time. Long tones aren't a very good warm up, but they are a great thing to actively practice. A warm up should literally be that -- some lip slurs and low, simple stuff to get your lips and ears going. Doing the exact same thing every time gives you info about how the rest of your playing is going to go for the day. If you "warm-up" on long tones, instead of practicing them, they just become some boring task that you don't focus on and don't get better at them because you're not "warmed up" yet. You shouldn't need more than a few minutes to warm up. You need all the practice time you can get, though.

2. In your actual practice, especially as a newer player, you should focus on melodic playing, lip flexibilities, and using long tones and glisses to play in the slot. Playing Blue Bells of Scotland or whatever is easy, but getting someone to care about the melodic theme in that piece, the slow part, and playing that well is hard. If you can play melodies on the trombone and they don't sound like quavery, out of tune imitations of music played on a trombone, you're a pretty advanced player. This kind of stuff:





Even in Moore's video, you can hear he's is not quite there yet, cutting notes short. Some choppy legato playing. And we all know where he wound up -- kid was working on the right stuff.

[jthomas105]

I see you are in DFW. What part? Ft. Worth, mid-cities, Dallas? What size school or school district (not your specific school)? 4A, 5A, 6A? Does you band program have a private lesson program where teachers come to teach during your band period? I know one of the guys that played with Maniacal 4 that teaches private lessons in 2 or 3 districts in DFW. Depending on where you are he might be able to work with you. There are many fine bass trombone teachers in DFW. Location would help.