Tips for remembering which notes equal which slide positions?

[u/anime_3_nerd]

Hello friends! So I used to play trombone throughout middle and high school and recently picked it back up at 21. Back I school I neglected truly learning which notes were which slide positions. I can read the notes but I just can’t always tell which position I need to be in. I used to often refer to my position sheet and would just write in the slide position. Any tips? Any resources to practice putting the two together?

[u/shoffman099]

I honestly think it’s just straight-up memorization. Work in small increments, but there’s no substitute for just memorizing. I have students who resisted the temptation to write notes or positions in when they were younger and they have no problem as middle and high school students. The students who never really learned and wrote it all in, they struggle still as older students. Contact time with the horn and I always tell my kids “say it before you play it”. Maybe talking through the piece with the slide positions and notes in tempo could be helpful before you play.

[u/anime_3_nerd → u/shoffman099]

Yeah it’s one of my regrets from school band. Even while playing Baritone in marching band I wrote my fingerings down. I’ll start saying the notes as practice to memorize them with the position!

[u/x_thehype → u/shoffman099]

I picked up trombone for the first time this year as a senior in college for marching band and I can confirm, while I did write in some slide positions on my music, I learned pretty much my whole show by singing the slide positions and it set me up for success when I transitioned into Jazz and Concert settings so now I pretty much only write in the occasional alternate fingering two months later

[u/waluigi-official → u/shoffman099]

I can corroborate that writing the positions down makes it harder to learn. In my college orchestra, one of the other trombone players was still learning to read tenor clef for all 3 years we played together. He wrote the position for every single note in his part. Meanwhile, I learned alto clef in 6 weeks by throwing myself in the deep end, writing nothing down, and forcing myself to try to sightread quickly.

[u/Salt-Idea6134]

I think trombone is a great instrument for learning this, only because the slide is so visual. If you know what the notes of the chromatic scale are, you can easily find it. If you are at G, 4th position, then one step up, G#, more commonly known as Ab, is one position in, at 3rd. If you’re reading your music, you see G, then you see Ab, you know to come up one position. Likewise, you see G, then go to Gb, aka, F#, you know it goes to 5th position

[u/ChadGippidy]

Do you practice chromatic scales?

I'd work on small steps. Just focus on very beginner exercises that only use 4-5 notes. And keep going until you're comfortable with only those few notes. Then the exercises would probably progress to an octave range (probably Bb to Bb) and only do those until you're 100% confident where those positions are.

It's like if you were learning tenor clef - you'd only be learning a few notes at a time until you felt relatively fluent

[u/Firake]

1. Only write in slide positions if you mess up a note twice in a row and even then, only if the error was because you thought it was in a different place.

Once you stop making an error, erase it.

1. Play through music at the piano (or on a piano app) first so you know what it should sound like and can tell when you play something wrong.

If you have good audiation skills, you can optionally skip this step.

1. Play something short and new every day. A Rochut or some other kind of short lyrical piece would be perfect.

The reason you never learned before was because you always wrote in the positions so you never actually were looking at the note heads, very likely. I’d wager that you’ll be pretty comfortable with it within two weeks if you do all of the above.

[u/JKBone85]

Learn the relationships between the partials. Each first position to seventh, contains 7 notes. As the partials get closer together, you start to notice overlaps. I think this helps develop the idea of visualizing the slide positions as matrix.

[u/aftiggerintel]

My 6th grader made flash cards to remember the positions in order to force memorization. That’s what my middle kid (18) did when she learned trombone and then F attachment later. I’m pretty sure they both got it from oldest (20) because that totally sounds like a him suggestions.

[u/Pandolphe]

scales

[u/TheRealLinkwitzRiley]

I personaly think you shouldn‘t LEARN this, you should INTERNALIZE it.
There shouldn‘t be an extra thinking step between reading the note and pulling to the position.
My advice is practice A LOT of scales and arpeggios, music is 95% scales and arpeggios.