Trombone Mastery with Natalie Cressman
COURSE DESCRIPTION AND GOALS
This three-session course is designed to fully integrate the many skillsets needed to be a well-rounded musician, focusing primarily on technique, improvisation, ear training, and historical/stylistic considerations. Learn how to be a musical chameleon as we cover the way the trombone is used in countless genres! We’ll focus on improvisational styles, including jazz, funk, and rock&roll, but also explore the basics of balanced trombone technique and apply these concepts to the improvising process. We’ll spend a lot of time on the ear-to-horn connection, as a developed ear is the key to a full understanding of the trombone’s role in the music of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.SYLLABUS
Session 1: TECHNIQUE
The aim of this session is to develop playing with healthy technique, building good habits that will enable rather than hinder us when we go on to improvise. I will be drawing from established techniques, including Remington, Arban’s, and Caruso methods, as well as things that I’ve found to work well in my own experience. We will cover:- Daily warm-up routine: long tones, slurs, tonguing are the basic topics here. Kill two birds with one stone: Using exercises that work your brain and your chops: using scales and patterns that you can later apply as solo vocabulary!
- More advance topics, including range-building, large-interval leaps and calisthenics.
- Slide Speed exercises
- Section playing: blend and intonation. We will also talk about time “feel” and attack as it applies to playing in a horn section.
- Sight-reading – I’ll bring in a fun etude for us to play that elaborates some of the techniques we’ve worked on.
- Warming down
- A short time period at the end of the class will be reserved for specific questions or concerns.
Session 2: IMPROVISATION
Now that we’ve established a healthy approach to playing the instrument itself, we can go on to look at jazz basics and fundamentals. All theoretical information will be delivered in a “hands-on” way, exercises that make you conceptually understand, hear, and physically execute the topic at hand. We will start with the 12 bar blues as a jumping off point, though if the students are more advanced, we can apply the same lesson to more complicated tunes.- Chord Symbols: How to read them, identify the corresponding scale, arpeggiate the chord tones. Students will learn to identify a chord quality by ear and learn about why 3rds and 7ths are typically the most important tones to be aware of.
- Interval ear training. A quick ear training game in recognizing intervals.
- The 12-Bar-Blues: Examining this building block of modern music through understanding the defining structural elements.
- How to Learn Tunes: Bass notes, walking bass line, arpeggios, guide tones. We will apply this to the blues, and hopefully by the end of the session will have the class split up into groups, doing these exercises simultaneously while people solo over it.
- Solo concepts: Motivic Development, Pacing, reacting to other players. We will play a game of musical “telephone”, trading 4 bars over the blues, where each soloist is prompted to react to the previous phrase when soloing.
Session 3: TRANSCRIPTIONS AND STYLISTIC CONSIDERATIONS
In this last session, I’ll stress the importance of listening to and transcribing the greats in order to develop vocabulary and a historical context. We will:- Listen to the work of some of my favorite trombone players (including J.J. Johnson, Fred Wesley, Frank Rosolino, Slide Hampton, Barry Rogers, etc.)
- Look at how the trombone fits into the music of many cultures and styles.
- Learn how to go about transcribing someone’s solo.
- Transcribe a phrase from a few of these trombonists by ear as a class.
- I will save 10 minutes at the end for final questions from the students.
MORE ABOUT NATALIE CRESSMAN
Trombonist, vocalist, and composer Natalie Cressman defies the expected. Her vocal agility and crystalline delivery, paired with her expressive range on trombone, offers audiences a fully three-dimensional experience. Hailing from an illustrious musical family, the San Francisco-raised trombonist, vocalist, and composer has been adopted by a disparate cast of masters, and at 21-years-old she’s honed a preternaturally worldly conception of her own.
From Carnegie Hall to the House of Blues, from the Apollo to Lincoln Center, her versatility and enthusiasm for new music has propelled her into a richly diverse musical career. An accomplished improviser who has performed with Nicholas Payton, Wycliffe Gordon, and Peter Apfelbaum, she’s gained her widest exposure through four years of touring with Phish’s Trey Anastasio.
At the same time she’s managed to earn a degree from Manhattan School of Music and perform at top New York venues with her own band. Her debut release Unfolding captures her rapidly blossoming sensibility, a sound shaped by her love of Cuban, Brazilian, and West African music, indie rock, funk, and the post-bop continuum. Whether playing an original or reinterpreting a standard, Natalie fully embraces the imperative to render the music in her own image. What her music reveals is an utterly contemporary artist steeped in several traditions, an artist who sees no barriers between the incalculable accomplishments of the past and the urgent demands of the present. Natalie is an artist endorser for King Trombones.
From Carnegie Hall to the House of Blues, from the Apollo to Lincoln Center, her versatility and enthusiasm for new music has propelled her into a richly diverse musical career. An accomplished improviser who has performed with Nicholas Payton, Wycliffe Gordon, and Peter Apfelbaum, she’s gained her widest exposure through four years of touring with Phish’s Trey Anastasio.
At the same time she’s managed to earn a degree from Manhattan School of Music and perform at top New York venues with her own band. Her debut release Unfolding captures her rapidly blossoming sensibility, a sound shaped by her love of Cuban, Brazilian, and West African music, indie rock, funk, and the post-bop continuum. Whether playing an original or reinterpreting a standard, Natalie fully embraces the imperative to render the music in her own image. What her music reveals is an utterly contemporary artist steeped in several traditions, an artist who sees no barriers between the incalculable accomplishments of the past and the urgent demands of the present. Natalie is an artist endorser for King Trombones.
WHEN AND WHERE
Three sessions on Wednesday July 9, 16, and 23, from 3-4 pm EST. Lessons take place live and online over high performance video conference, broadcasting live from Michiko Studios in Times Square, NYC. The sessions are also recorded for later viewing by enrolled students.
MATERIALS NEEDED
A trombone, pencil and staff paper.
HOW IT WORKS
These are live classes that are taught from Michiko Studios in midtown Manhattan. Students attend over the Lessonface high performing video conference platform. Online participants have the option of actively participating or auditing. Active participants, or attendees, will have the opportunity to submit work for feedback, and ask questions and demonstrate to the class. Auditors will watch and listen online, but not ask questions or submit work for feedback. Students can connect to the online platform using a tablet or computer with reliable internet. To actively participate students also need a webcam. The live sessions are recorded so that all enrolled students and auditors can review the class sessions following the live class. Class recordings will be available for viewing within 48 hours of the live class.
LESSONFACE GUARANTEE
This class is covered by the Lessonface Guarantee - if for any reason you do not like your first session, let us know within two days of the class and we will refund you 100%.
CONTACT
If you have questions, please contact us by emailing [email protected] or by calling 1-800-211-7058.