Free live music and other cultural events in Las Palmas, May 2019

Another month, another great choice of live music and more.

• 1 May: Canarias FeelGood! by Arehucas @ Plaza del Pilar, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
  Sponsored by Arehucas (yes, the rum distillery), this one-day festival presented seven bands from seven Canary islands. I saw the last song Abel Cordovez & Benahoare Reggae Band (naturally, reggae, from La Palma), the complete performances of Barrabass Sound System (also reggae and dub from Lanzarote) and Guineo Colectivo (Afro-beat from Fuerteventura) and the first two songs by El Monstruo de Funkenstein (as you can imagine, funk, from La Gomera).
  

• 2 May: Aubrey Logan @ Auditorio Alfredo Kraus, Avda. Príncipe de Asturias
  Before playing two dates with Perinké Big Band, Aubrey Logan (of Postmodern Jukebox fame) gave an illuminating masterclass of jazz vocal and jazz improvisation.
• 4 May: Rocío Márquez @ Parque Doramas
  The cantaora from Huelva was accompanied by Canito (guitar) and Agustín Diassera (percussion).

• 16 May: Jonay González Mesa @ Teatro Guiniguada, Plaza F. Mesa de León
  I heard Jonay G. Mesa some three years ago as one-half of Touché! and last month with Althay Páez. I have to say that his masterclass, like the one by Javier Sánchez in January, was heavy on content — scales, harmony, rhythm — and light on interaction. There was very little of the latter. I loved the way Jonay plays samba/bossa nova and the fact he does not use any pedals or effects. In the end of the class, Jonay was joined on stage by his bandmates Ruiman Martin Leon (double bass) and Amilcar Mendoza Pros (drums) for a beautiful rendition of Someday My Prince Will Come.

• 18 May: Noche Europea de los Museos @ Museo Castillo de Mata, Calle Domingo Guerra del Río, 147
  We’ve never been to Castillo de Mata before, and this year the European Night of Museums provided an opportunity. It was a free event but we had to get the tickets in advance (two tickets per person only). Altogether, there was eight one-hour long shows/installations/whatever you call it, four on Friday (21:00, 22:00, 23:00 and 24:00) and four on Saturday, with up to 150 people attending the show. The programme included:
  • La compañía Pieles: Barco y Acequia
  • Ana Alcaide with Bill Cooley and Rainer Seiferth: Luna Sefardita
  • Arte corporal: Los esclavos en la Isla del Azúcar
  • Ludovica Rambelli Teatro: 23 Tableaux Vivants of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
  • Jeringonza & Ballet del Atlante: Danzas del Canario y de las Hachas
• 19 May: Moonlight Benjamin @ Auditorio José Antonio Ramos, Parque Doramas
  Last month I was wondering how better to call “the venue” in the Parque Doramas where I almost religiously go every week or so. Well, now it’s officially called Auditorio José Antonio Ramos, after the celebrated Canarian musician José Antonio Ramos (1969—2008). The Haitian-French singer (and Voodoo priestess) Moonlight Benjamin was the first to play in the newly christened auditorium. She presented her fascinating “voodoo-blues-rock” fusion in a company of Matthieu Vial-Collet (guitar), Yohann Marra (guitars), Quentin Rochas (bass) and Bertrand Noel (drums).

  

  More photos of Moonlight Benjamin @ Shutterstock

• 29 May: Cristina Ramos @ Plaza de Santa Ana
  Timur and I went to Vegueta to hear this by now world-famous Canarian singer and were not disappointed. It was almost like a night at the opera... with Bad Romance, Highway to Hell, I Will Always Love You, Love of My Life, Sabor a Mí, The Show Must Go On, Waterloo, and, pun intended or not, both It’s Raining Men and Hallelujah in quick succession.
• 31 May: La Noche de Cuba @ Auditorio José Antonio Ramos
  Originally scheduled for 11 May, this concert was postponed until yesterday. Absolutely fabulous night of son, guaracha, salsa, mozambique and timba performed by vocalists Diamela del Pozo, Edulman Aragon Gonzalez and Sofiel del Pino and the band of Totó Noriega (congas, vocals) featuring Yoriell Carmona (tres cubano), Osvaldo Hernández (timbales), Fofi Lusson (bass), Armiche Jonay Moreno Suárez (percussion), Josue Santana (piano), Arístides Sosa Benítez (trumpet) and Fran Suárez (saxophones).

And so, May is over.

Masterpieces: The Powerhouse Sound of the 70s

by Peter Herbolzheimer Rhythm Combination & Brass

I thought this name rang a bell. It turns out, I first heard RC & B on the very The Jazz Rock Album which introduced me to the music of Return To Forever. It’s funny that I went to become a fan of the band that was opening the album and completely forgot the guys who were closing it. However, I did remember the song names, Jive Samba and The Mixolydian Highlander; luckily, both of them are featured here on Masterpieces.

Even though I just started to (re)discover this amazing musician and bandleader, it’s clear that this 1995 compilation is far from presenting a balanced overview of Herbolzheimer’s music of the 70s. Nor is it “the best of” album: for example, five tracks (out of 11) are taken from 1976 album Hip Walk. Deservedly so, I should add, but still. Can one call this collection Masterpieces? Absolutely.

My favourite track is My Kind Of Sunshine, from the album of the same name, with groovy solos by “the fat man with the trombone” himself, Ack van Rooyen on trumpet, Dieter Reith on organ (ye fans of Deep Purple, listen up!) and Tony Inzalaco on drums. My kind of music.

TGI 90 Chromatic Tuner

by TGI

My chromatic tuner died this spring. At first I thought there was a problem with a battery, or the battery contact. I’ve changed the battery couple of times and added a bit of duct tape to keep it firmly in place. Still, it required me pressing on the battery compartment (squeezing the electrons out?) to make it go. And then, even that stopped working.

During my last visit to Cambridge I ventured to the very same music shop in a hope to buy a replacement. There are not selling Crafter tuners any longer. However, the shop assistant did show me a selection of gadgets and recommended this model as the one that works well both on string and brass instruments. (He said he himself plays trumpet and clips this tuner to the bell.) So I bought it.

It is a great little gizmo and so far it has been working just fine. The “pitch” button is used to calibrate the concert A between 430 and 450 Hz. The “item” button allows to switch between the instrument (guitar, bass, violin, ukulele) and chromatic (keys F, B♭, E♭ and, naturally, C) modes. Finally, the “flat” button makes the E♭ tuning and D tuning of guitar and bass a piece of cake. (It is not that difficult anyway.) The clip provides two rotational degrees of freedom and can be swapped between the left and the right side of the tuner. The LCD display looks as if taken from some vintage sci-fi movies. Last but not least: black is cool but metallic red is even cooler.

You can buy yourself one from Amazon for one-third of the price I paid in the shop.

Don’t give up trombone

I took up trombone in 2009, at the Duxford Saturday Workshop, and was learning it for two years. Then, after one-year break, I enrolled to the Fuerteventura School of Music (Escuela Insular de Música). You see, I never went to “proper” music school, so I thought it could be fun to try it at last — some forty years after my first attempt. Back then, the teacher who conducted an interview concluded that I was tone deaf and should not waste my time learning music. Now I know the old hag was wrong, but maybe that was a blessing in a very good disguise. And so, for the last nine months, every Monday I was travelling to Puerto del Rosario with my Steinbach.

Imprinting or not, I think that the Duxford system is superior to what they practice here — and, by extension, to the formal music education in general, be it in Spain or former Soviet Union. (I know! I hate generalising like that. Still.) There, after learning just a few notes I was able to play a simple melody. Every lesson, we were adding a new note and using it in a new song. It felt very organic.

Here, the method is like this: first you have to learn the five harmonics in the first position. You play some exercises with these five notes only. Then you learn how to play the five harmonics in the second position. You play some exercises with those five notes. Then you play some exercises that contain the notes from the first and the second positions. Then, guess what, you learn how to play the five harmonics in the third position. You play some exercises with those five notes. Then you play some exercises involving the notes from the first and the second, the first and the third, and the second and the third positions. Then you play some exercises utilising the notes from all three positions. I am not joking. After that, you proceed to the fourth position. And so on. It was incredibly boring for me, so I can imagine how boring this method must be for children.

By the end of my first year in Duxford, I was able to play, however badly, the Colonel Bogey March, making use of all seven positions. Here, I was not supposed to move beyond the fifth position.

So what. It was not that I forgot everything learned in England. Here I was able to concentrate on technique, playing some useful, if boring, exercises. My teacher (who, by the way, also teaches trumpet, flugelhorn and French horn) told me that I should work on my picado (staccato). The key, in his view, was to play each note as if pronouncing the syllable “tu”. He said that I tend to play everything ligado (legato), which sounded to him like “da-da-da” rather than “tu-tu-tu”. Are you still with me?

A few months ago, my teacher suggested that next year I join a brass ensemble he is leading. Until the last moment, I did not have a heart to tell him that there won’t be next year as I don’t stay on Fuerteventura. But this Monday, when he gave me my final paper (papeleta de evaluación final), I had to.

“Bueno”, he said, “¡mucha suerte! ¡No dejes trombón!”

More photos of trombone @ Shutterstock.

Steinbach Tenor Trombone STT-100S

by Musik Steinbach

When we stayed in London last Summer, I visited several music shops looking for a second-hand trombone. No such luck: I had a problem to find even a first-hand trombone. In Enfield, the shop assistant told me: “There’s no much demand for them... in this area”. True, I did not do my homework. Probably I could have found an affordable second-hand instrument if I started to look a few months before the travel. But I never do that.

Back to Fuerteventura, which I already knew to be largely trombone-free, I ordered this horn via Amazon.de for €141. A bargain, even with postage and packing (another €23). Then, I was not exactly happy that our own Canarian post office charged me further 30 euros, but I had no choice. At least and at last, I got it.

Good thing that STT-100S comes in an ABS hard case. Which, by the way, arrived with a cracked corner, but nobody would tell me when did that happen. I was not going to send it back anyway. For the time being, I mended it with duct tape.

The trombone itself so far feels decent enough. I was about to write “decent student model” but realised that I only played one trombone before, and it also wasn’t a pro model. Made in GDR, of all places. Methinks that Steinbach has a slightly duller tone, or, if we are optimists, that the GDR horn had a brighter tone. On the other hand, mine is lighter and looks nicer. That’s important!

In case you are thinking of buying one: Steinbach does not have them any longer. Ausverkauft. Nicht lieferbar. When I was ordering mine, there were only two instruments left. They have a similar model, with very good reviews, but it is not silver-plated.

More photos of trombone @ Shutterstock.

Backatown

by Trombone Shorty

I never heard about Troy Andrews aka Trombone Shorty until a month or so ago. I was actually looking for a real trombone instrument on various Amazon websites — you’d be surprised what a difference the extension (.com, .co.uk, .de and .fr) makes, especially on the budget side of the spectrum. If and when I manage to buy a trombone via Amazon, I will say more.

In the meantime, I bought this album because it was... one of those “smart” suggestions by Amazon, and for once, it was a good suggestion too. I did a bit of research before ordering it though. (You can hear the complete album on Spotify, for instance.)

Backatown is a pleasantly surprising impossible-to-categorise record. Andrews himself calls his music “supafunkrock”, where “supa” apparently is “shorty” for a mix of soul, hip-hop and Balkan brass with New Orleans jazz. The vocal numbers are not my favourites though; I would leave all of them but Allen Toussaint’s On Your Way Down out.

If the album is good, the live show of Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue must be mindblowing, as this performance of In the 6th and Neph demonstrates.

Cancan

by Jacques Offenbach

I was browsing through my LilyPond posts and noticed that all the examples I gave so far are in “common time”, i.e. 4/4. This is default time signature in LilyPond, so we had not worry about it — until now. But even now we should not worry much about it.

• To add any other time signature, use \time command, for instance \time 2/4, \time 3/4 and so on.

For the annual Members Concert at Duxford today, Timur played two pieces with Beginner Violins and Beginner Guitars; Yuri played two short pieces with Improver Violins; I played That’ll Never Happen No More by Blind Blake (customised lyrics) with Advanced Guitars; and, as Beginner Trombones, we did that pièce de résistance, Galop Infernal aka Cancan from Orphée aux enfers. (As I am the only remaining trombone student and the other player was my teacher, we also could have been called Advanced Trombones.) I think it went rather well, I managed to hit most of the notes.

Airplay

by Northern Lights

One day, Timur asked what was the music played in the car. There was no easy answer to that because the car’s MP3 server was showing “Unknown Album by Unknown Artist”. Funnily enough, I knew what it was, who the musicians are and where exactly the CD is buried at home; and yet I couldn’t remember neither album’s title nor the name of the band.

Back home, I took the album out. Here it is. I say, what an utterly unremarkable name for a most remarkable collaboration: that of jazz trombonist Annie Whitehead and Alistair Anderson, the master of English concertina. Now last.fm says: “Northern Lights can refer to at least six different groups”, after which nine different bands are described, none of them refers to Whitehead—Anderson project. As for the title, just check how many albums are named Airplay and you’ll see what I mean.

I wish British jazz/folk/experimental music was better promoted. I’m sure the musicians can do that themselves. Is it that difficult to put a couple of (complete) tracks on MySpace? (That would really help me to illustrate why this is such a brilliant record, by the way.) But no. After searching the web for a good few hours, I give up. The only professional review of the album I could find was at All About Jazz Italia (in Italian; and by now it’s gone). No review at allmusic. Pathetic.

Oh well. I suppose you just have to trust me: it is wonderful. My favourite songs are In All Languages and Midnight Reel; Timur’s (so far) is Dark Blue.

Airplay
Ancient Dreams In All Languages Crazy Midnight Midnight Twelve Midnight Midnight Air Midnight Reel Still Waters Dark Blue Hop Scotch Annie Whitehead: trombone Alistair Anderson: concertina Chris Stout: violin Ian Maidman: guitar Liam Genockey: drums

More trombone harmonics

On trombone, you can take the same note in more than one position. For instance, F3 can be played in both first and sixth positions, C♯4 (D♭4) in both second and fifth positions. Here’s the chart of trombone pedal tones and first five harmonics in seven positions:

The harmonic series go further than that but for a moment I constrain this chart only with those I can play.

Yesterday, I modified my blog template layout to enable the JavaScript-based SyntaxHighlighter by Alex Gorbatchev, with help of these instructions. SyntaxHighlighter does not understand the LilyPond syntax, but it is still useful. For one, it allows you to copy the code to clipboard in one click. Here’s how the LilyPond input for the above harmonic series chart looks like:

% ****************************************************************
% Trombone Harmonic Series / Positions
% ****************************************************************
\version "2.12.3"
\layout {
  ragged-right = ##f
}
\header {
 title = "Trombone Harmonic Series"
}
\score {
  \new Staff
  \transpose g bes 
 {
  \clef bass
   g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
 }
  \header {
  piece = "1st Position"
  }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Staff
      \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
      \remove "Bar_engraver"
     }
   }
 }
\score {
  \new Staff
  \transpose g a
 {
  \clef bass
   g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
 }
  \header {
  piece = "2nd Position"
  }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Staff
      \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
      \remove "Bar_engraver"
     }
   }
 }
\score {
  \new Staff
  \transpose g aes
 {
  \clef bass
   g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
 }
  \header {
  piece = "3rd Position"
  }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Staff
      \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
      \remove "Bar_engraver"
     }
   }
 }
\score {
  \new Staff
 {
  \clef bass
   g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
 }
  \header {
  piece = "4th Position"
  }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Staff
      \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
      \remove "Bar_engraver"
     }
   }
 }
\score {
  \new Staff
  \transpose g ges
 {
  \clef bass
   g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
 }
  \header {
  piece = "5th Position"
  }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Staff
      \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
      \remove "Bar_engraver"
     }
   }
 }
\score {
  \new Staff
  \transpose g f
 {
  \clef bass
   g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
 }
  \header {
  piece = "6th Position"
  }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Staff
      \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
      \remove "Bar_engraver"
     }
   }
 }
\score {
  \new Staff
  \transpose g e
 {
  \clef bass
   g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
 }
  \header {
  piece = "7th Position"
  }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Staff
      \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
      \remove "Bar_engraver"
     }
   }
 }

As you can see, I simply wrote the pedal tone and first five harmonics for 4th position (lines 065 through 081) and transposed it six times. The only new LilyPond trick here is \layout { ragged-right = ##f } which makes the staff length to be stretched to equal that of the line width.

Pedal B♭ and Jingle Bells

Last week I was practicing pedal B♭ on trombone:

Pedal B♭1 is an octave lower than B♭2, the lowest of harmonics in the first position. It is not particularly difficult to play B♭1. I found that the less I think of how to play it, the easier it is for me to hit it. The key is to relax my mouth as much as I can.

Today in Duxford we were playing the trombone duet of Jingle Bells. Just like last year, except this time I was playing the funky bass line (featuring, you may have guessed, pedal B♭1). I wrote it down with LilyPond. The only new embellishment here is glissando. (I say, there is no point learning trombone unless you get to play glissando.)

• To link two notes with glissando, put \glissando between them, for example
  c2 \glissando f2
• If these two notes are separated by the forced break \break, add the line:
  \override Glissando #'breakable = ##t
• Default glissando is represented by a straight line. Add a touch of style in the following fashion:
  \override Glissando #'style = #'zigzag

Here goes:

And the LilyPond file:

% ****************************************************************
% Jingle Bells (duet) in Bb major
% ****************************************************************
\version "2.12.3"
\header {
 title = "Jingle Bells (for two trombones)"
 composer = "James Pierpont"
}
\score {
<<
  \new Staff
 {
  \clef bass
  \key bes \major
  \override Glissando #'style = #'zigzag
   d4 d4 d2
   d4 d4 d2
   d4 f4 bes,4. c8
   d2. r4 \break
   ees4 ees4 ees4. ees8
   ees4 d4 d4 d8 d8
   d4 c4 c4 d4
   c2 \glissando f2 \break
   d4 d4 d2
   d4 d4 d2
   d4 f4 bes,4. c8
   d2. r4 \break
   ees4 ees4 ees4. ees8
   ees4 d4 d4 d8 d8
   f4 f4 ees4 c4
   bes,1 \bar "|."
 }
  \new Staff
 {
  \clef bass
  \key bes \major 
  \override Glissando #'style = #'zigzag
  \override Glissando #'breakable = ##t
   bes,4 f4 f,4 f4
   bes,4 f4 f,4 f4
   bes,4 f4 f,4 f4
   bes,4 a,4 g,4 f,4 \break
   c4 f4 f,4 f4
   bes,4 f4 f,4 f4
   c4 f4 f,4 f4
   c2 f,2 \glissando \break
   bes,4 f4 f,4 f4
   bes,4 f4 f,4 f4
   bes,4 f4 f,4 f4
   bes,4 a,4 g,4 f,4 \break
   c4 f4 f,4 f4
   bes,4 f4 f,4 f4
   c4 f4 f,4 f4
   bes,2 bes,,2 \bar "|."
 }
>>
}

See photos of trombone @ Shutterstock.

Duxford concert and Milton gig

At the annual Members Concert yesterday, Timur played The Moon Walk on the recorder, with Junior Music Club I. Yuri performed Pink Floyd’s Brain Damage with Intermediate Guitars and Inishere with Beginner Violins. And yours truly, as one half of Beginner Trombones, did the most embarrassing rendition of Colonel Bogey March (I think I hit less than half of the notes), to the rapturous applause of the audience. Still, I feel relieved about the whole thing.

This weekend Arco Iris played astounding four gigs! The gig today was to support Cambridge Oxfam Walk at Milton Country Park. We played two 30-minute sets. The sun was shining, the Oxfam people were dancing — and we’ve been even treated to free tea and ice cream!

Crafter TG-200H Chromatic Tuner

by Crafter

I bought this tuner together with my Parker PM-20 guitar and so far had no reason to complain. The habitat of the “headstock clip tuner” is, rather predictably, the headstock of the said guitar, but it works on pretty much anything you clip it on. I tried it on a trombone bell and even was able to see what its LCD screen was showing. (That I was out of tune, that’s what. Even that was not a big problem since the concert A pitch can be adjusted between 433 and 447 Hz.) It uses one CR2032 coin cell battery which lasted me for about 15 months. You can switch between microphone and piezo sensor; thanks to the latter, I could tune up in a very noisy environment!

The Crocodile

Now I learned how to create a simple song sheet using LilyPond.

1. The dotted notes are created by adding (surprise!) a dot (.) after a note.
2. The rests are indicated exactly like notes except with the name r (for instance, r1 for a semibreve rest, r2 for a minim rest, r4 for a crochet rest and so on).
3. To add lyrics to the song, type \addlyrics followed by lyrics within braces, {type some lyrics here}.
4. LilyPond will align one word under one note (presuming one word contains one syllable). To make alignment correct for polysyllabic words, insert “ -- ” (space, dash, dash, space) between the syllables.

Easy! I took the song that I am practicing on trombone, The Crocodile. For illustration purposes, notation for each bar is written on a separate line.

% ****************************************************************
% The Crocodile (traditional)
% ****************************************************************
\version "2.12.3"
\score {
 \new Staff
{
 \clef bass
 \key bes \major
  bes4 bes4 bes4 d8. ees16
  f8. g16 f8. d16 bes,4 d8. d16
  c4 a8. a16 a4 g4
  f2 r4 f4
  bes4 bes4 bes4 d8. ees16
  f8. g16 f8. d16 bes,4 d8. d16
  c4 f4 e4 g4
  f2 r4 f4
  g4 g8. g16 g4 g8. a16
  f8. f16 f8. f16 f2
  ees4 ees8. d16 ees4 f4
  d2 r4 d8. d16
  c4 c8. c16 ees4. ees8
  f8. f16 f8. f16 a4 f8. f16
  g8. bes16 bes8. g16 bes4 a4
  bes2 r2
}
 \addlyrics {
  One fine day as a la -- dy sailed a -- way
  on the back of a cro -- co -- dile,
  “You see,” said she, “he’s as tame as tame can be
  and I’ll ride him down the Nile.”
  The croc winked his eye as the la -- dy waved good -- bye,
  wea -- ring a hap -- py smile.
  By the end of the ride the la -- dy was in -- side
  and the smile was on the cro -- co -- dile!
 }
}

Here’s the result:

More LilyPond

The LilyPond Snippet Repository (LSR) is a database created by Sebastiano Vigna of the University of Milano. It contains LilyPond snippets, i.e. “small examples, short and to the point, that show a particular feature or a hack”. For example, here is a snippet explaining how to add fingering to a score. Which is easy: you just place dash and a number of the finger after the note!

Unfortunately I have not found the “correct” way to indicate trombone slide positions on a score, but why not to use the fingering notation instead? Here’s a file for the B♭ Major scale:

\version "2.12.3"
\score {
 \new Staff
{
 \clef bass
 \key bes \major
  bes,1-1 c1-6 d1-4 ees1-3 f1-1 g1-4 a1-2 bes1-1
}
 \layout {
   \context {
     \Staff
     \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
     \remove "Bar_engraver"
    }
  }
}

When I run LilyPond on this file, it complains:

Warning: Fingering notation for finger number 6
  bes,1-1 c1
            -6 d1-4 ees1-3 f1-1 g1-4 a1-2 bes1-1

(apparently, it is not quite happy with finger numbers more than five), but I still get what I want:

More harmonics

OK, I think I have mastered the fourth harmonic on trombone. For instance, in second position, I can play A2 (an octave up from the pedal A1), E3 (up one octave plus a perfect fifth), A3 (up two octaves) and C♯ (up two octaves and a major third), i.e. the A major chord:



Of course — and, of course, I did not realise it until now — this series is equivalent to a series of natural harmonics that I can play on 12th, 7th, 5th and 4th fret of bass string A, respectively:

Abracadabra Brass

by Dot and Noel Fraser

For a few weeks now, I had this book (bass clef edition) for my trombone practice. It also can be used for baritone and euphonium. Every new note introduced is accompanied by a handy diagram of slide position for trombone (or valve positions for euphonium). Best of all, it has a great selection of simple (mostly traditional) tunes to annoy thy family or neighbour.

Now that I’ve mastered the low A, I can play God Save the Queen. According to Wikipedia, the first national anthems of Russia (Молитва русских), Germany (Heil dir im Siegerkranz) and Switzerland (Rufst du, mein Vaterland), as well as Norway’s Royal anthem (Kongesangen), were all set to this tune. So was American My Country, ’Tis of Thee. Well done, anonymous composer.

Trombone harmonics

Before starting on trombone, I did not realise that on brass instruments one can play the whole series of harmonics in the same position, much like one can play a series of harmonics on a guitar string. That means I can play the first three notes of Also Sprach Zarathustra without moving a slide, just by changing the embouchure.

According to Wikipedia,

In the first or closed position on a B♭ trombone, the notes in the harmonic series begin with B♭2 (one octave higher than the pedal B♭1), F3 (a perfect fifth higher than the previous partial), B♭3 (a perfect fourth higher), D4 (a major third higher), F4 (a minor third higher), A♭4 (a minor third higher than the previous partial; this tone <...> is always 31 cents, about one sixth of a tone, flat of the twelve-tone equal temperament minor seventh <...> it may be avoided and played in an alternate position, though it has been the practice in Germany and Austria to play the note in position <...>), B♭4 (a major second higher), C5 (a major second higher), D5 (a major second higher), E♭ (a minor second higher, but almost exactly a quarter tone higher than it would be in twelve-tone equal temperament), F5 (a major second higher).

OK maybe in Germany and Austria they like their A♭ flat, but why it is flat? This page from the HyperPhysics explains that “the 7th harmonic shows the most severe departure from any equal tempered interval”. A♭4 is the seventh harmonic from the fundamental note (B♭1).

See photos of trombone @ Shutterstock.

Naked

by Annie Whitehead

Annie Whitehead is one of the greatest jazz trombonists alive, who jammed with likes of Bill Wyman, Elvis Costello, Murray Head, Robert Wyatt and Deep Purple, but how many people even heard of her? My first encounter with her music happened some 13 years ago, thanks to the Leeds City Library. I used to go there every Saturday and browse through the jazz section. Now, there are not many jazz albums with cover photos like this: I simply had to borrow it. And what a great record it turned out to be!

The opener, To Dudu (dedicated to Dudu Pukwana), is a tasty Afro-reggae number that one cannot help but hum along. Don’t expect more of the same though: each following track is something very different — except the closing theme, See You Dudu, which brings us back to the beginning. All together, the funkiest jazz-rock record of the 1990s.

The first five notes

Today we kept practicing the five notes shown below:



This is four notes more than two weeks ago, so now I can (more or less) play this exercise. Music for trombone is written in F-clef, which means that, in distant future, I can re-use some bass music I have.

How to do a few things with trombone

Yesterday, I had my first trombone lesson in Duxford. Within half an hour, I learned quite a few things:

1. How to blow a raspberry.
2. How to blow a raspberry into a mouthpiece.
3. How to assemble the trombone.
4. How to hold the trombone.
5. How to blow a raspberry into a mouthpiece when it is attached to the trombone. (The sound produced, I was told, is B♭. “Your family will love it.”)
6. How to disassemble the trombone.

Armed with all this knowledge, I practiced a little today when there was nobody around.