The Optimists Alumni Drum & Bugle Corps
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Brass & Percussion Goodies
Brass Studies, Hints & Other Cool Stuff
Here are some useful sites for brass players. Some offer downloadable or printable brass exercises and information. Have a look around and try some of the materials you find here. Your lip will thank you for it.
- a primer created by Gord Neill of the De La Salle /Oakland Crusaders Alumni who have allowed us to post it.
http://mailer.fsu.edu/~bgoff/tpt-tips/tips.html
- A fabulous resource from Bryan Goff, a professor of trumpet at Florida State. This site is loaded with great ideas, practice hints, exercises, and other good stuff. It's well worth the visit
http://abel.hive.no/trumpet/exercise/
- Good site - although designed for trumpet players, the exercises, tips and other information are valuable to all brass players
http://www.tsmp.org/band/bandindex.html
- Tips for Trumpet, Trombone, percussion, etc (Texas School Music Project)
- lots of topics by Clint Pops McLaughlin
- Trumpet Studio is a great resource site for all trumpet players.
http://www.shout.net/~jmh/clinic/science_of_breath/summary.htm
- a summary of the "Science of Breath", by Yogi Ramacharaka (high note specialist Maynard Ferguson identified it as an early influence on his decision to adopt yogi deep breathing techniques)
http://www.juliashornpage.com/jacobs.html
- Arnold Jacobs Master Class Notes
http://www.windsongpress.com/jacobs/breathing%20exercises%20master%20.pdf
- Acrobat file with breathing Exercises for Brass Players by Donald Little
- The International Trumpet Guild is a non-profit organization, founded in 1974 to promote communications among trumpet players around the world and to improve the artistic level of performance, teaching, and literature associated with the trumpet. You'll find lots of info here.
Information, hints, etc from a variety of professional trumpet players
- This is a 1.5 megabyte acrobat file
- it was created from a file I found at Seeley Music (http://www.seeleymusic.com/)
Rudimental Studies & Other Cool Stuff
Here are some useful sites with downloadable or printable percussion information — much of it is not available from normal sources.
www.marklewis.ca/music/optimists
- Mark Lewis' fabulous site with computer playable scores for both percussion and brass
http://www.vicfirth.com/education/rudiments.html
- All 40 Percussive Arts Society's essential rudiments and videos of each performed by Dr John Wooton.
http://www.cyberus.ca/~pauljohnston/drumputer/
- The Flamtastic Drumputer site. You gotta give it a try.
Special thanks to:
Bob Cook, Mark Lewis, Al Murray and Bill Ukas for the suggestions, warm ups, exercises and other resources.