Over the years I’ve created a few handouts on brass instrument techniques: warm-ups, drills, exercises, etc. Some of these are geared towards younger students (beginner & intermediate), which school music teachers have found useful; and some are for more advanced players, which I’ve used with university students. All of the beginner/intermediate exercises are also applicable to advanced students; the basic concepts can simply be expanded or adapted.
One of my goals was to fit the content for each topic into one page only; as a result, there is a lot of information packed into some of these. The student will benefit the most from:
- reading the instructions;
- learning and understanding the concepts;
- being creative in applying these concepts to:
- develop their own exercises/patterns;
- develop a daily routine that progresses in a logical sequence.
I’m making these PDFs available here as a free resource; please help yourself and photocopy as needed for your students. Let me know in the comments what you find useful, or if there is anything else in particular that you would like to see added. I will periodically add new materials as they are created, so feel free to bookmark this page and visit again!
Printing tip: These PDFs are formatted in US Letter size (8.5 X 11). For best printing results, make sure scaling is set to 100%. Do NOT choose your printer’s “Scale to fit” option.
Beginner/Intermediate:
- Warm-up Exercises
- Long Tones – for all brass – (Remington warm-up)
- Warmup – Trombone – A basic warm-up incorporating long tones and lip slurs.
- Flexibility Exercises
- Range Exercises
- Fingering (Slide) Exercises
- Fingering Workout – quickly covers all possible fingering (slide) combinations:
Intermediate/Advanced:
- Warm-up Exercises
- Warm-up Slurs – from Vincent Cichowicz’s Flow Studies – (treble clef)
- Warm-up Slurs – from Vincent Cichowicz’s Flow Studies – (bass clef)
- Flexibility Exercises
- Scale Studies
- Diatonic Scale Patterns – Includes all the scale modes:
- Scale-Chord Routine – Diatonic, major, minor, and various arpeggios:
- Scale Patterns – Various melodic and intervallic patterns:
Advanced:
- Range Exercises
- Freebuzz Exercise – Trombone & Euphonium (Baritone) – Adapted from an exercise shared at a masterclass given by Peter Sullivan, principal trombonist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
- Embouchure Builders
- Lessons 1 & 2 from Carmine Caruso’s Musical Calisthenics for Brass
Information for Teachers:
- Harmonic Series – A brief primer for understanding.
- Trombone valve – Information about the F-attachment.
Fingering Charts:
Without question, chromatic fingering (or slide position) charts are the best for beginners, in terms of being able to find notes (and the most common fingerings) quickly and easily. However, fingering charts that show the notes in the harmonic series (i.e., all the notes for a particular fingering), are useful as well; they help students understand the construction of the instrument, and also show any alternate fingerings available. Mine are set up vertically – each column shows all the notes in the harmonic series for each fingering – with the low notes at the bottom, which is visually intuitive.
- Harmonic Series Fingering Charts
Scale Sheets:
- Generic scale sheets for the whole band
- Scales Major – Treble Clef
- Scales Major – Bass Clef
- Scales Melodic Minor – Treble Clef
- Scales Melodic Minor – Bass Clef
- Scales Diatonic Thirds – Treble Clef
- Scales Diatonic Thirds – Bass Clef
- Scales Sequential Thirds – Treble Clef
- Scales Sequential Thirds – Bass Clef
- Scales Diatonic Fourths – Treble Clef
- Scales Diatonic Fourths – Bass Clef
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