It’s not exclusive to jazz trombone playing, however. This technique is useful for jazz trombonists and was used extensively by Frank Rosolino, Carl Fontana, Jimmy Knepper, and others. For this reason, sometimes this is called “against the grain” technique. Note that every pitch in this example crosses over partials, which is what allows trombonists to cleanly articulate each note without needing to tongue anything, excepting the initial attack. This technique is sometimes called “fretting” because you can move every position down and transpose this type of phrase into different keys like a guitarist might transpose a phrase by moving up or down a fret. Here’s another example.īy playing the above passage using the alternate positions I’ve marked a trombonist can slur every pitch without needing to articulate with the tongue.
Remember that most music is made up of scale and chord fragments so by practicing these things carefully with the alternate positions you will be able to more easily incorporate alternates while playing music.Īlthough not what I would consider a “rule of thumb,” the above Ab scale also shows an example of another situation where alternate positions can be quite useful. These two rules of thumb (keeping half steps in adjacent positions and moving your slide as little as possible) are easily practiced with scales and chord arpeggio patterns. While I’m at it, I would also recommend that you practice playing the high Bb in this example in 3rd position, so that you can simply stay in 3rd between the Abs and Bb up there. Playing the F in 1st position and the G in 4th forces you to move your slide much further and is wasted motion, slowing you down. Playing the F also in 4th position in the above scale is an example of my next rule of thumb – move the slide as little as possible. One of the simplest rules of thumb for using alternate slide positions is to strive to keep half steps in adjacent positions. Always listen carefully and adjust your slide to correct out of tune notes. I’m also not going to cover intonation adjustments here, so keep in mind that when I suggest using a particular position for a certain passage you will want to know how that particular partial needs to be tuned. Rather than go over what positions can be used for every individual note, I’m going to focus here more on why I use alternate positions and offer strategies for when to use them.
There are a variety of techniques that I began practicing to help me with this, but one thing that has helped me quite a bit has been to become familiar with and comfortable using alternate slide positions. Compared to those instruments, the trombone is such a difficult instrument to get around on in faster tempos. When I was a high school and undergraduate student I always felt a little frustrated trying to keep up with the “fleet footed” trumpet and sax players I was jamming with.
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