Another Try

[tbdana]

This is the one I was going to use in place of Body and Soul as a better tribute to Watrous. So here is La Zorra. Bill wrote this tune. On the first chorus I tried to play as many of Bill's licks as I could remember. However, at 300 bpm there just aren't that many Dm7 licks to play on trombone.

[Doug Elliott]

Great! You sure have a clear, almost percussive doodle tongue.
Where did that low D come from? (2:59)

[imsevimse]

Wow! You should be doing gigs right now all over the continent both days and nights. What's the plan? This is fantastic. :

/Tom

[tbdana]

Great! You sure have a clear, almost percussive doodle tongue.
Where did that low D come from? (2:59)

lol! Faked the low D. I practice those notes a lot.

[tbdana]

Wow! You should be doing gigs right now all over the continent both days and nights. What's the plan? This is fantastic. :

/Tom

I’m at a gig right now.

The plan is to win the lottery and then keep on gigging until the money runs out.

[harrisonreed]

Dayummmm

[Doug Elliott]

If you can afford that studio time just for fun, you must have already won the lottery.

[harrisonreed]

Lottery? She recorded it in her studio inside her balloon/casino.

[hyperbolica]

Yeah, that's some playing.

[CalgaryTbone]

Great playing!

[LeTromboniste]

This is absolutely fantastic!

[johntarr]

Yes, amazing!

Thanks for sharing,

John

[tbdana]

Doug, I wanted to take a moment to properly respond to your insightful comment.

Great! You sure have a clear, almost percussive doodle tongue.

Thank you. But it's confession time. I tell people I'm going for that wonderful Marshall Gilkes articulation, but the truth is that I just do it wrong.

Yes, it's clear because I work hard on doodle scales and patterns, and it's "percussive" (cool word) because that's the only way I can make it clear. It's a conundrum. I would love to have that light, buttery smooth doodle like Bob McChesney does. And I can do that when it's just a few notes at a time (as I do the last six notes before the bridge on Body and Soul). But when I try to string long 16th note runs together with a light tongue, the phrases just turn to mush (as you can hear in a couple spots in La Zorra). So in order to coax some clarity from my recalcitrant tongue, I have to flap that mutha like I'm slapping politicians. Hard, forward in my mouth, and less of a "doodle" than a "DidDle," "DehDle," or "DawDle," with hard articulations up near my teeth and on the roof of my mouth.

Also, as I've posted before, I will mix in double-tonguing when going across partials depending on direction and register. Like, if I'm playing an F major scale up to a high F, I have to switch to double-tonguing around Bb or C.

But boy do I wish I could do it liquid smooth like others are able to. You went right to a shortcoming I'm self-conscious about. To me, the whole point of the doodle is to get that soft, light, jazzy articulation, and I just suck at that when I have to string more than a couple beats of notes together.

Where did that low D come from? (2:59)

I gave a flippant answer before because I know you're gonna disapprove of me. LOL! I can play those false notes with a big and natural sound, but in order to do it I have to make a weird shift on the mouthpiece. It's a parlor trick; a gimmick. Like playing the Pledge of Allegiance on trombone.

To get those notes to bark like dogs, I have to move the mouthpiece down on my chops to a lower set and simultaneously do weird stuff with my upper lip and tongue that's hard to describe. It's a cheat. People who hear me do it in my "public warmup" say they can't tell the false notes from the real ones, and I'll sit next to someone with a trigger and bark those notes bigger than they can. But again, it's a parlor trick.

I can feel the judgment now. LOL!

[Doug Elliott]

We can talk about that shift if I ever see you on Skype.
I have known just a few players who could play trigger range on a straight horn and sound huge. Side story: Jerry Johnson was amazing at that. He played 2nd trombone in the Airmen of Note approximately 1969-73, then played with Maynard for a few years along with Randy Purcell (who he knew from DC because Randy was in the Navy Commodores about the same time). After that Jerry lived in Toronto, and died much too young. One of those players who should be better known.

As for doodle tonguing, I think it requires a certain balance of teeth structure and tongue shape and size to do it well. I've never been able to doodle, and opted for developing a very legato double and triple tongue instead. But as you mentioned, there are certain intervals, directions, and ranges that work better one way or the other, and it must be nice to have the choice.

[harrisonreed]

I think the "Put up or Shut up" debate is closed. Why on earth did you stop playing trombone? You rule at it.

[tbdana]

If you can afford that studio time just for fun, you must have already won the lottery.

I don't have a lot of money. I'm retired on a fixed income. But it was important to me to document my progress from my first day back when I couldn't even get a note out of the horn, to the one year mark. Could I do it at all? How far could I get in a year? Could I ever get back to where I used to be? I needed a goal, and putting tunes down "on tape" seemed a good one, which was my spouse's idea.

The cost of recording mostly wasn't bad. We did the small-group tunes in one 4-hour session on a Saturday afternoon. Not that expensive. Actually costs more to mix them. I also have four more tunes with a big band to get done, but that has to wait until I have the money to mix them.

The next video I'll post will be "Interlude/Alone" by Burna Boy from Wakanda Forever, which was more expensive. For that, in addition to the small group, I brought in a string section, an acoustic guitar, an alto flute, a bass trombone, and African percussion, all of whom I had to pay, so that added to the cost. But that cut is in tribute to my amazing spouse, who is responsible for me playing again and for the recording, so I didn't mind spending the cash.

The story: After we had retired and moved to the country in late 2022, we got buried in snow our first March. We're at an altitude where we're supposed to get "an inch or two" a year, but we got five feet in two days, and more the following days in what the locals now call "Snowmageddon." We were snowed-in without power, heat, water, internet, or phones for three weeks. I was retired with nothing to do, no friends, no social circle, no purpose in life, when suddenly I was camping in the snow, unable to leave the house or even turn on a light. I got very depressed. In frustration I told my spouse, "I didn't sign up for this and I don't like it. I want to sell the house and move back to L.A." Her response was to buy me a trombone instead, saying, "Here. Play this." I did, and it changed my life.

It was my spouse's idea to do the recording, and it was "Interlude/Alone" that she wanted me to record. So I had the great Australian jazz saxophonist Jacam Manricks write the arrangement and play alto flute on it, and used that as my excuse to record the other tunes.

[tbdana]

I think the "Put up or Shut up" debate is closed. Why on earth did you stop playing trombone? You rule at it.

It seems I'm in a storytelling mood today. LOL!

One day I was on a movie date. The pinnacle of L.A. playing, right? It should have been awesome, but it wasn't. It was terrible. I was sitting next to an idol of mine, a staple of the studio scene for 30 years. The gig was so bad that he lamented, "Word of this is going to get out and I'll never work again!" (He was a tad over-dramatic.) I looked at him and thought the best I had to look forward to was to be in his shoes 30 years from then (today, ironically), and I didn't want that.

I took stock and realized that I had already done everything in music I ever wanted to do, and all I had to look forward to was more of it, forever. And I wasn't happy. I was jaded and frustrated. So that movie date motivated me to change. I went home and that very day applied to go back to school to learn a new career.

I continued to play through school, and had started my new career when I had the most fantastic time playing on the Tonight Show one night, and decided to "go out on a high note" so to speak. I knew the day was coming when I would have to devote all my efforts to my new career, so I made the decision to give up playing right then. The next day I sold all my instruments and didn't play another note for over 30 years, until after that snowy day I described in the post just above this one. Didn't even listen to music. Didn't miss it at all, or so I thought.

The decision to leave music was the right one at the time. But I quit when I was still young and just starting to really get going, and I often wonder where I would be today if I had kept playing. The guys who were my contemporaries are now some of the best and most successful musicians in the world. They have thousands more credits to their names than I do. Would my career have paralleled theirs? Maybe, maybe not. At the time I was still immature and painfully shy, which came off as aloof, and I did not have the networking chops they did, so who knows where I would be now. Some questions can never be answered.

But none of that matters. I'm having the best time of my life now, playing trombone again. It doesn't matter whether I'm playing in a community band or on the best gig in the region, I just feel so incredibly blessed and privileged and grateful to have a trombone in my hands again, with no egos, no expectations, no pressure to keep a roof over our heads, and nothing to spoil the joy of it.

I was so fortunate to get to play with the best musicians in the world. I was never one of them, but was so blessed that I got to play with them. Do I wish I could still do that? Sure, sometimes. The thing is that when you play with the very best it's incredibly easy and the musical reward is unparalleled. It's a high you can't get anywhere else. I'll always cherish the opportunities I had when I was young. But there are some damn fine musicians where I am now, including folks who used to play in the studios and L.A. orchestras, so I still get to feel that amazing high. And my life and attitude are far better, now.

I thought I had quit music forever and didn't miss it. Stupid, stupid me...

[pompatus]

…It doesn't matter whether I'm playing in a community band or on the best gig in the region, I just feel so incredibly blessed and privileged and grateful to have a trombone in my hands again, with no egos, no expectations, no pressure to keep a roof over our heads, and nothing to spoil the joy of it...

There is so much philosophical depth in this simple exclamation of joy. I have had similar realizations in my own life; and especially now that I can no longer perform at that same level, look forward to the day I may get back on the horse, as they say, and simply enjoy playing with one of the local community bands.

Thank you, so much, for the simple reminder of finding the joy in what we do!

[imsevimse]

...
I thought I had quit music forever and didn't miss it. Stupid, stupid me...

Very interesting reading!

Hope you forgive I take some space here, but this just reminds me alot of my story. Another try? Yes, it is!

My story is similar to yours. I too switched my carrer and stopped to play, unexpectedly to some, at a point when I was very active. I got to play gigs with the best in Stockholm at the time, not the best in the world like you did but these were the top professionals in our capitol, the ones who were my raw models. I also began to do some studio work with these pros, but just like you I realised this life wasn't what I wanted. What also helped in the decision was I had a beginning family as well as I came to realise competition for feature jobs were going to be very tough for me because there were so many players around much better than me, and jobs were also getting more and more rare in the 90ies. Another thing was my family needed to relay on a better, more steady income from me. It all summed up. I felt I just had to change things to be more about what my family needed and less about me. I made a plan and set some goals and told all contacts I quit playing and then I went back to school. Some asked if they could call agan but I said not to call me because I had no plans to ever play again. I felt pain to do this but thought it was best thing to do to end things promptly. It spread quickly so phone became very silent. I stopped to play completely for four years and sold 2 of my 5 trombones. Happy I did not sell all and leave music for 30 years like you did, because after I got my first job as a programmer a friend encurraged me to start to play again. I was lucky I then had saved my Bach 39 alto, my Conn 88h and my Yamaha YSL 612R bass trombone. I started to play 2:nd trombone in a brass sixtet at community level. Unfortunately I found myself unemployed again four years later and then had to quit to play yet another four years to instead do more serious studies, this time at college level. After I graduated 2008 and got another job as a system developer I was convinced by a retired professional player, to start to play again. This time in a kick start band, a Jazz Big Band. I bought a King 2b+ and as I got more and more comfortable in my role as a system developer I also got more back into serious playing, espescially after my kids became grown adults and I'm no longer in a relationship. Now I can play as much as I want, and I do. I've started to play with the Johan Stengård Jazz Big Band and I have done more than 150 gigs with them. It just continues. It is absolutely another try.

I'm looking forward to read more of your post, experience as well as to hear more from you playing. Your recordings are very enjoyable.

/Tom