Monday, October 27, 2008

A Little Valve Thing...

Has anybody out there ever played Ewazen's Colchester Fantasy?
In the slow movement, you find this forte septuplet that calls for some serious faking.

I tried using my old "valve wiggle" trick....just keep blowing while you press/release the valve as quickly as possible. You can create some cool effects.

Then I thought it through a little more carefully and realized that by "articulating" with the valve, you could accurately play this lick.

Here it is (I'm working from memory here but you get the idea):







Play it fast without tonguing.

This reminds me of a Baltimore Opera gig I did years ago where we ran across this fast E major scale that was effectively unplayable on slide trombone.

It went something like this...






Through kidding around, we discovered that, if you just stayed in 2nd position and employed a healthy valve wiggle, you could simulate the run really well. In fact, when we tried it together, we both burst out laughing because it sounded like we had actually played it correctly.