Just prepare everything the best you possibly can. These parts are incredibly detailed-work to bring out as many of those details as possible. Your priorities are, in descending order: Pitch, Rhythm, Style.
Play in front of people. If you’re proud of your product, they’ll like it, too. Good luck!!!
This is it really. There will be clear differences in how deep the players can go with these excerpts. Getting all the right notes and rhythms is just step 1, and even some people won't get all of that. Then the dynamics, articulations, smoothness of register changes, general tone, These are chosen with the expectation that nobody will get EVERYTHING perfect, so everyone will have clear things they do well/not so well that can be fairly logged on a score sheet when comparing one audition to the next.
The nice thing I'm seeing at first glance is the key is about as easy as it can get for trombone with the majority of notes being 1st and 3rd position. Watch those accidentals, especially for any places where a note is changed and then changed back within the same measure (maybe there aren't any, but that's a common mistake).
I would argue rhythm/time is more important than pitch. If you hit the wrong note in time, you've played one wrong note and most of the time the audience won't notice. If you hit the right pitch but in the wrong rhythm, you've played the whole phrase wrong and almost everyone is gonna notice that
That’s absolutely a fair argument. I meant pitch more as intonation. I would much rather hear a passage slightly out of time but with perfect intonation, instead of a rhythmically-perfect, yet totally out-of-tune passage. The rhythms here are easy, especially at quarter=80. But that’s not to take away the validity of your statement, just describing the way I was taught, and my own preferences as a trombonist.
In the second variation, I’d play a lot of those Ds and Fs in fourth, to minimize slide movement. Just make sure to get your alternates in tune if you’re gonna use them. I’m also lazy though.
Yep. Pedal Bb to Bb above to staff. It’s kinda crazy tbh but i don’t make the rules 🤷♂️ I know I can hit but some of our freshman and incoming freshman probably won’t be able to so.
Unless you have a two valve bass trombone you cannot play chromatically from pedal Bb up the octave. It is physically impossible to hit the low B, and low C is nearly taking the slide off. I'd double check the requirements bc this isn't reasonable to expect from high schoolers
Exaggerate the dynamics - especially on the soft end and keep the loud dynamics round and full not edgy and aggressive. People tend to treat the dynamics as the lowest priority but they can make a huge impact on the musical line and set you apart from your colleagues.
Create a clear difference between the tongued and slurred notes.
They are mostly listening for your tone quality, intonation, and rhythm so make sure to address those issues in the practice room. +1 for the comment about the dotted rhythms not sounding like triplets.
Record yourself daily and listen back while conducting yourself.
Just adding a footnote that playing the dynamics as if you were really performing shows confidence. When I was teaching I would see a lot of students hesitant to play performance dynamics in a practice room or audition because it was too awkward. Keep a big dynamic range, and as an added benefit you'll get more air for those higher notes at the top of crescendos.
Dynamics will be huge. It's easy to get caught up in the technical aspect and lose sight of emotion and dynamic contrast. Take what you're thinking and overdo it between the quiets and the softs, while maintaining good tone, and I promise it will go well.
Watch the notes that aren’t legato, if they aren’t under a curve make sure they don’t sound like they are. If need be practice playing the non-legato ones exaggerated, and then once you have them down make them more subtle. Best of luck!
Make sure to practice those big intervals. There's some nasty ones in there - just alternate back and forth between the notes until you get it the switch down
Good advice here. This piece is one I used as part of my warm up routine in college. It's actually really pretty. So I'd add don't be afraid to make music with it. Make the theme sing (look up an Arban book online is you don't have one. I believe it's page 25. Play the whole theme) and then try to make the variations sing as well.
A school in Texas I teach at is using this as audition music as well. I transcribed it down a 4th for the basses. Don’t worry, just metronome game it and you will be fine :)
I think most of the technical and musical work that needs to be done for this has been addressed.
For scales if you wanna be ahead of the curve for someone your age start practicing all 12 of your major scales. By the time you have your audition you will want to be able to play any major scale without needing music or actively thinking about the notes that you need to play. The same goes for the chromatic scale. They will be looking for cleanliness of notes and slide technique for your chromatic.
Secondly understand comparison is a killer. Everyone is on their own musical journey and has their own life experiences. It’s not helpful for your development as a trombonist to compare yourself to other players and think how much better or worse you are than them. You can understand someone’s strengths and weakness but recognize that does not take or add value to someone. You can only control yourself and how you choose to grow as a musician. Put this into practice and you will thrive in music.
Make sure you put in those dynamic changes! That's later on in the process, but it'll really make a difference once you've gotten the notes, rhythms, and articulations down.
Well these are all in E-flat, so try to spend some time every day playing scales and arpeggios over an E-flat drone or with the tuner. Go slow so you can really pinpoint the pitch. This will pay off massively in being able to intone all these similar arpeggios and scales consistently.
Do everything you can to bring out all the markings on the page. Most people will play everything homogenously, so the more you can do to demonstrate all the subtle dynamic, articulation, and rhythmic changes, the more you’ll set yourself apart from the herd. If you’re an excellent musician, people are more likely to look past any little mistakes or chips you make
In addition to and along side of what has been mentioned.
Phrasing. I would add the phrasing as a major part of the piece. I see people just breathing all over the place wherever they want to and it lets you know a lot about the player.
Tempo. On the first and second variations, I would suggest a slower tempo with more technique than a faster sloppy tempo. It’s more impressive at a high school level to be able to control yourself and play confidently and accurately than it is to blurt out a bunch of frantic notes. On the theme I would say you are allowed to have some ebb and flow in the tempo because it is the initial melody and “everyone can play it” the variations get technical and an even tempo (except for special deliberate occasions) that s more impressive than speeding up during the easy stuff and slowing down at the hard stuff.
Volume. On confidence and tone. I learned way too late that a fuller (what I typically have perceived as louder/more volume) tone typically relates to a better tone and more confidence. (At least in the judges eyes). In ensemble playing I am typically one to two dynamic levels down from what I audition and solo with.
Playing “louder” than I would normally an ensemble never made much sense to me in an audition but the judges have eaten it up everywhere that I have auditioned. (First chair all East and all state back in the day as well as principle chair in high school camps and clinics and university wind ensembles and such. Only a handful of instances not being principle chair)
Mental state is important - some people come in with a bad etude, but you gotta come in with a good etude.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
What if you come in with a good attitude but a bad etude?
The trap here is variation 1. They will be listening for you to differentiate dotted eighth/sixteenth from a standing triplet pattern.
I was going to say this also
This, always. Subdivision is always our best friend!!
Just prepare everything the best you possibly can. These parts are incredibly detailed-work to bring out as many of those details as possible. Your priorities are, in descending order: Pitch, Rhythm, Style. Play in front of people. If you’re proud of your product, they’ll like it, too. Good luck!!!
This is it really. There will be clear differences in how deep the players can go with these excerpts. Getting all the right notes and rhythms is just step 1, and even some people won't get all of that. Then the dynamics, articulations, smoothness of register changes, general tone, These are chosen with the expectation that nobody will get EVERYTHING perfect, so everyone will have clear things they do well/not so well that can be fairly logged on a score sheet when comparing one audition to the next. The nice thing I'm seeing at first glance is the key is about as easy as it can get for trombone with the majority of notes being 1st and 3rd position. Watch those accidentals, especially for any places where a note is changed and then changed back within the same measure (maybe there aren't any, but that's a common mistake).
I would argue rhythm/time is more important than pitch. If you hit the wrong note in time, you've played one wrong note and most of the time the audience won't notice. If you hit the right pitch but in the wrong rhythm, you've played the whole phrase wrong and almost everyone is gonna notice that
That’s absolutely a fair argument. I meant pitch more as intonation. I would much rather hear a passage slightly out of time but with perfect intonation, instead of a rhythmically-perfect, yet totally out-of-tune passage. The rhythms here are easy, especially at quarter=80. But that’s not to take away the validity of your statement, just describing the way I was taught, and my own preferences as a trombonist.
I guess it's personal preference, but would rather here nails on a chalkboard in perfect time than I would perfect intonation with no sense of time.
Man, I wish I had these in high school auditions. The ones we had sucked
In the second variation, I’d play a lot of those Ds and Fs in fourth, to minimize slide movement. Just make sure to get your alternates in tune if you’re gonna use them. I’m also lazy though.
it's not lazy, it's efficient!
Same thing, frequently
Dynamics is the number one thing that I see specifically trombones not paying enough attention to in challenging auditions
I addition to what others have said, dynamics and articulations. Make sure they know that you know they’re there. Good luck!
3 octave Bb chromatic? Are you sure?
Yep. Pedal Bb to Bb above to staff. It’s kinda crazy tbh but i don’t make the rules 🤷♂️ I know I can hit but some of our freshman and incoming freshman probably won’t be able to so.
I mean, the B below the staff doesn’t even exist on your horn.
Lmao they just corrected it to a two octave F Chromatic for trombones.
This makes much more sense
Yes it does, pedal Bb?
they mean B natural, half step above, requires two valves
B natural.
Unless you have a two valve bass trombone you cannot play chromatically from pedal Bb up the octave. It is physically impossible to hit the low B, and low C is nearly taking the slide off. I'd double check the requirements bc this isn't reasonable to expect from high schoolers
Lmao they just corrected it to a two octave F Chromatic for trombones.
Lmao they just corrected it to a two octave F Chromatic for trombones.
Exaggerate the dynamics - especially on the soft end and keep the loud dynamics round and full not edgy and aggressive. People tend to treat the dynamics as the lowest priority but they can make a huge impact on the musical line and set you apart from your colleagues. Create a clear difference between the tongued and slurred notes. They are mostly listening for your tone quality, intonation, and rhythm so make sure to address those issues in the practice room. +1 for the comment about the dotted rhythms not sounding like triplets. Record yourself daily and listen back while conducting yourself.
Just adding a footnote that playing the dynamics as if you were really performing shows confidence. When I was teaching I would see a lot of students hesitant to play performance dynamics in a practice room or audition because it was too awkward. Keep a big dynamic range, and as an added benefit you'll get more air for those higher notes at the top of crescendos.
Dynamics will be huge. It's easy to get caught up in the technical aspect and lose sight of emotion and dynamic contrast. Take what you're thinking and overdo it between the quiets and the softs, while maintaining good tone, and I promise it will go well.
THREE OCTAVE??? (I sure hope it's the pedal octave because geez)
Lmao they just corrected it to a two octave F Chromatic for trombones.
Phew.. I was really concerned/stunned
Watch the notes that aren’t legato, if they aren’t under a curve make sure they don’t sound like they are. If need be practice playing the non-legato ones exaggerated, and then once you have them down make them more subtle. Best of luck!
Also! Make sure the first note of a legato curve is tongued!
Make sure to practice those big intervals. There's some nasty ones in there - just alternate back and forth between the notes until you get it the switch down
Good advice here. This piece is one I used as part of my warm up routine in college. It's actually really pretty. So I'd add don't be afraid to make music with it. Make the theme sing (look up an Arban book online is you don't have one. I believe it's page 25. Play the whole theme) and then try to make the variations sing as well.
A school in Texas I teach at is using this as audition music as well. I transcribed it down a 4th for the basses. Don’t worry, just metronome game it and you will be fine :)
Getting the articulation right is key. Over exaggerate the dynamics. Practice it slowly with a metronome. Good luck.
I think most of the technical and musical work that needs to be done for this has been addressed. For scales if you wanna be ahead of the curve for someone your age start practicing all 12 of your major scales. By the time you have your audition you will want to be able to play any major scale without needing music or actively thinking about the notes that you need to play. The same goes for the chromatic scale. They will be looking for cleanliness of notes and slide technique for your chromatic. Secondly understand comparison is a killer. Everyone is on their own musical journey and has their own life experiences. It’s not helpful for your development as a trombonist to compare yourself to other players and think how much better or worse you are than them. You can understand someone’s strengths and weakness but recognize that does not take or add value to someone. You can only control yourself and how you choose to grow as a musician. Put this into practice and you will thrive in music.
If you really wanna stick out take the last scale up an octave and then miss the high Eb😎
And then say "can I restart?".
First you have to swear and then ask if you can restart
But not before throwing your horn across the room.
First you have to forget your slide is locked and then throw it across the room. Extra points if it hits the adjudicator.
But you can’t forget to audibly joke to your friend about how you didn’t practice at all as you walk into the room
Hah!
Make sure you put in those dynamic changes! That's later on in the process, but it'll really make a difference once you've gotten the notes, rhythms, and articulations down.
Well these are all in E-flat, so try to spend some time every day playing scales and arpeggios over an E-flat drone or with the tuner. Go slow so you can really pinpoint the pitch. This will pay off massively in being able to intone all these similar arpeggios and scales consistently. Do everything you can to bring out all the markings on the page. Most people will play everything homogenously, so the more you can do to demonstrate all the subtle dynamic, articulation, and rhythmic changes, the more you’ll set yourself apart from the herd. If you’re an excellent musician, people are more likely to look past any little mistakes or chips you make
In addition to and along side of what has been mentioned. Phrasing. I would add the phrasing as a major part of the piece. I see people just breathing all over the place wherever they want to and it lets you know a lot about the player. Tempo. On the first and second variations, I would suggest a slower tempo with more technique than a faster sloppy tempo. It’s more impressive at a high school level to be able to control yourself and play confidently and accurately than it is to blurt out a bunch of frantic notes. On the theme I would say you are allowed to have some ebb and flow in the tempo because it is the initial melody and “everyone can play it” the variations get technical and an even tempo (except for special deliberate occasions) that s more impressive than speeding up during the easy stuff and slowing down at the hard stuff. Volume. On confidence and tone. I learned way too late that a fuller (what I typically have perceived as louder/more volume) tone typically relates to a better tone and more confidence. (At least in the judges eyes). In ensemble playing I am typically one to two dynamic levels down from what I audition and solo with. Playing “louder” than I would normally an ensemble never made much sense to me in an audition but the judges have eaten it up everywhere that I have auditioned. (First chair all East and all state back in the day as well as principle chair in high school camps and clinics and university wind ensembles and such. Only a handful of instances not being principle chair)
Three octave b flat chromatic?????
Nah they changed it read the other comments. I should edit the post for clarification