Played for 6 years.
Like everone said it was a bit of feel and sound. You knew when you didn’t hit the right note, if you had the ear.
Early I used my finger to judge second and 4th position, Unfortunately when I had to play eighth notes my finger against the bell slowed me down quite a bit and my finger got really sore. Also my teacher didn’t like the clanging sound.
And yes we can be goofballs and please we are not trombonists we are boners.
The trigger would have given you the 6th in 1st position most likely as it would make it an F horn.
As for the positions it depends on a lot of things. Each horn has its own differences as do brands. My King’s 2nd is only about 1/3 of the way to the bell. As has already been said most of it is feel/listening to pitch but each note is also slightly different as the higher you go the more the position changes.
Most of that’s theory as I use my lips to play the right note most of the time and don’t always worry if I’m in the “correct” position.
Because we sit right in front of the drummers?
Thanks for the insights so far.
I’m assuming that with only 7 positions, you have to use your mouth to form variations of the notes (sharps and flats) rather than finding them on the slide (sort of like halfway between postion 4 and 5 would be Csharp and the like).
I’ll stick to the radio. I know I can play that well enough.
Many folks whose primary instrument is the euphonium decide to take up trombone as a secondary instrument - mostly out of a desire to eat, as euph jobs are far more scarce. A euphonium plays in essentially the same range, and uses essentially the same size mouthpiece, so the choice is natural enough.
I happened to see a survey of euph players who’d learned to double on trombone, and one of the questions was something like “what was the hardest aspect of learning the 'bone?” As it turned out, the most commonly reported answer was “getting used to the higher back-pressure” - slide manipulation was a bit down the list. This would seem to imply that, as a group, they didn’t find it that tough to learn.
Each of the seven positions on a trombone corresponds to a valve combination on any of the other brasses - once you get that distinction out of the way, there’s really no difference. Since valves add tubing in discrete amounts, the trombone actually has an advantage in terms of intonation since they can slightly alter the length of the horn on the fly. If a given note likes to run sharp, for example, the player can position the slide out a tad farther for just that note and solve the problem. With valved brasses, it requires a bit more wrestling.
In the hands of a good player, the trombone is one of the easiest brasses to play in tune. I’ve spent perhaps 15 minutes in my entire life fooling around with a trombone (I play tuba), and I was starting to get the hang of it even then. Not that I sounded good, but any means, but I could get the slide at least close to where it needed to be. As others have said, though, 6th and 7th positions were largely guesswork.
plnnr, actually the valved brasses only use about seven valve combinations with much regularity. While higher-order corrections (usually for intonation) are often made, there’s basically a one-to-one mapping from a trombone slide position to a valve combination.
Not really, actually. With any valved instrument, you won’t resonate exactly at any note, no matter what the position. The trick is that it’s designed so that you can almost resonate at any of them, and you can make up the difference with your embrou-- oumbr-- embrau-- Mouth shape. A 'bone, on the other hand, can resonate at any note you want, if you know your positions well enough, which makes it much easier, not harder, to hit the right note.
brad_d, you’re another tubist? Way cool. There’s almost enough of us on the boards (you can never have too many tubas :D).
I was all set with a great smart ass answer, and Balance made me laugh so hard I forgot what it was 
When I first started playing, I had to use my foot to reach 6th and 7th position – let go with the fingers, move the slide with the toes.
Interesting how many ex-tromboners there are - count me as one, too. In fourth grade I was dragooned into it: the band instructer took one look at my arms (I’m longer fingertip to fingertip than head to toe) and said, “Trombone.” At nine I had no trouble getting to sixth position, and seventh was just a slight stretch.
But there’s kinda a limited repertoire, y’know? Especially in school band music, which relegates bass clef instruments (euphonium, trombone, etc.) to a really boring oom-pah line. You really don’t get to do anything remotely interesting until you’re quite good, and I didn’t have the patience for that.
You get oom-pahs? Lucky stiffs. Tubists get stuck with just "oom"s, with Frenches picking up the "pah"s. I had entire songs that I could have played with no hands.
I imagine that the 7 positions that are being discussed are half-steps, so you would be getting sharps & flats as you moved up and down through the positions. Once you get to the last position, you’d tighten your lips and pull the slide back up. All brass instruments only allow a small range with the keys (or slide in the trombones case), you have to change the tightness of your lips for bigger changes of pitch. I used to play trumpet when I was a kid, in normal playing you usually have to use 3 or 4 variations in how tight you keep your lips, I had a really good range though and could do 6 or so, better than one of my teachers.
I find it amusing that the Mod chiming in on this thread is not TubaDiva but Ukulele Ike…
I’m an ex-sackbutter as well, though I’ve recently bought one and am beginning to play again.
One thing I always had a problem with: brass band music was written in treble clef and keyed in C. All other music (orchestral, jazz, concert, whatever) was written in bass clef and correctly keyed in B flat. (I don’t mean “in the key of C”, I mean keyed in C. You work it out.) How did you make the translation?
This means that a middle C in treble clef brass band music was played in first position, and actually sounded as a B flat.
Middle C in bass clef orchestral music was played in sixth position and actually sounded as a C.
My brain used to melt - sometimes a C was a C, sometimes it wasn’t.
I had lots of stuff to say, but Chronos and brad_d already said most of it. The most important point being that you can’t just push the buttons on your trumpet or tuba and get the right notes; you have to push it sharp or pull it flat with your mouth all the time because valves lengthen your instrument by exactly the same amount every time you push them, which (depending on your octave) is often slightly too much or slightly too little. (In fact, sousaphones – the round, marching tubas – actually have the tuning slide right near the player’s left hand so he can whisk it out, not unlike a trombone slide, when he has to play certain notes that use the third valve. Of course, the tuning slide on every sousie I ever played was stuck shut!) A trombonist, OTOH, can do the same thing just by sliding out to a slightly different length on a low D-flat than he does on an F-sharp.
As a tubist, I fiddled with 'bone on a few occasions and while I couldn’t ever play at speed, it was pretty easy to get the notes down. (And I was never even that good on the tuba.)
–Cliffy
When I was a trombonist in a high school with relatively few trombonists, they would occasionally pull in other low brass performers to play the 'bone as needed. They would always use one of the school’s ancient valve trombones- http://www.antique-horns.com/images/GK01.jpg -basically a trombone which could be played like a trumpet.
They never seemed to be particularily more in tune than those of us with normal trombones, although this may be due more to the fact that it’s hard to keep a straight face while playing on a valve trombone.
Regarding the “goof balls” comment: it does seem like the trombone attracts mostly the class clowns and/or D&D geeks of the school. My only guess about that is because the trombone is such a funny-looking instrument, it has a nonconformist mystique for us.
The other stereotypes were these, at least at my schools:
Drums: the stupid kids.
Flute/clarinet: girls and effeminate boys.
Saxomophone: like the tromboners, except a little more ordinary.
Trumpet: boring, boring, boring!
You forgot the tuba section, which of course attracts the handsome, witty, suave, debonair, breezily-intellectual, studly, yet surprisingly modest fellows.
I believe brad and Chronos will back me up on this one.
Boy, you folks are all about some brass playin’, ain’t you?
Hey, Ike, did you get the tapes?
Well said!
Wow…there really are a lot of us here…
Do I have to come over there and smack you? In my experience trumpets have always been the fun-loving, band-disrupting, class-clowns. Actually, all of the brass were those types, whether it be trumpet, trombone, or tuba.
It’s those damn woodwinds who were boring! Especially the male woodwinds (saxophones excluded, they are closer to brass, IMO.)
There is a great piece written by Garrison Kellior of Lake Woebegone fame called ‘A Young Lutherens Guide to the Orchestra’ in which he desribes the various personalities of the players of the instraments. It is hysterical, especially if you have ever played in one.
He describes trumpets as too proud and that they would like to wear capes and play so loud that birds fall down dead from the sky. The conductor is usually telling them to not play so fucking loud which does not sound coarse in Italian.
I was a sax player myself.
Trombones I think attract the class clown types because of the sound from the glissando (sp?). You know the sound when you throw the slide all the way out and then draw it up slowly into first position other wise known as ‘the clown sound’. Then of course they can squirt the french horn player with their ‘water bottle’ which, excuse me, is just a squirt gun. Then there is the fact that they always seem to enjoy cleaning out the spit valve, preferably on some flautist shoes.
