Taught by renowned trumpet player
Brandon Ridenour
Brandon presents a comprehensive flexibility training course for all levels, beginning with pitch bends and simple slurs, progressing through articulation exercises and more extreme patterns, and culminating with advanced concepts in flexibility. Scores and exercises are taken from his personal teaching collection, as he demonstrates dozens of exercises in all seven valve positions.
Bends and Simple Slurs
Brandon begins by defining flexibility as not just the ability to perform lip slurs, but being able to bend notes. Here, Brandon presents simple bending exercises that he starts his day with, and gradually transitions to some simple flexibility exercises. Always remain within a range that allows you to play comfortably, and take the speed gradually faster.
Skipping Partials
As we become more comfortable with simple lip slurs, we must eventually tackle the subject of skipping partials. Brandon explains why this is so difficult, how we can practice this gracefully, how to think about vowels and tongue placement, and much more, all with guided exercises and demonstrations from the Bai-Lin book and more.
Flexibility with Articulation
As we practice flexibility, it's important that we incorporate plenty of articulation to keep our tongue invovled and engaged. Brandon shows how we might practice alternating slurring and tonguing our flexibility exercises, and working to make each feel just as smooth.
Flexus Patterns
Patterns in music are often angular and don't match the neat up-and-down motion of the flexibility exercises we usually play. Brandon shares a variety of exercises from Laurie Frink's Flexus book which challenge even the experienced lip slur aficionado!
Advanced Concepts in Flexibility
If you struggle with the upper register, it may be due to closing off your aperture. Brandon discusses practicing the upper register via flexibility, navigating very wide interval leaps, and how to troubleshoot issues.
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Unlock Course →Brandon Ridenour, faculty at Juilliard and member of the American Brass Quintet, is stylistically diverse trumpet soloist, collaborative artist, composer, and arranger also known for his time spent with Canadian Brass.
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