David Bremner
1st Trombone New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (full time job for 17 years)
Director of Education for New Zealand Brass Band Association
Musical Director for Wellington Brass (A Grade National Champions)
The purpose of every practice in David's words is to "make us a better brass player"
On the weekend 10-11 August our band had a wonderful opportunity to spend time with the amazing David Bremner. He shared the wealth of his knowledge with us. It seems, if David doesn't know it, it isn't worth knowing! Ha! Although, in saying this, David freely admits he is always in the pursuit of making himself a better player and he also travels internationally to lessons from international experts. - There is always something to learn.
Big lessons from the sessions:
LISTEN TO A RANGE OF MUSICIANS - GENRES
- looks to Amazing players for inspiration to be able to make ourselves better players
- Analyse what do other players do that we can do to emulate their playing and be better players ourselves?
- Fun - we enjoy our music more as better players
- Well rounded musician - listen to a range of styles/genres and experiment playing a range - never be bored with music
- Go to imslp online - free music to play - mixture of tunes you can try.
David shared some of his music heroes with us and asked us to think about what it is about these players that makes them stand out:
- Wynton Masalis, Dave Childs, Richard Marshall, Upbie Green, James Morrison, Christian Lindberg, Joseph Alessi
- We were also given tips from David's friends from NZSO and other bands he has played in... one of the quotes I remember: to learn a note higher in the scale aim to go a semitone a month... Then you've done an octave in a year. In other words... good things take time!!
AIRFLOW
- Playing a brass instrument is all about the air!!! - every issue players have is air related... breathe well, have the range and confidence and air will work well for you.
- Have good posture when paying - upright, good warm air and take deep breaths - fill up the lungs from the bottom to the top
- Don't force the air out - let the air work for you - let the air do the work
BREATHING ACTIVITIES
BUZZING
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| One example of David's exercises taken from his slide show |
BUZZING
- The instrument amplifies the buzz
- Hold with two fingers
- Buzz in the low register will help your sound
- Focus on the buzz - use air to support it
- Practice in front of a mirror - mouthpiece in the middle
- If you have a red face you are putting too much pressure, you should not have pressure or force to buzz
- Warm up using scales, no tongue, lower notes, legato, concentrate on air flow
FLEXIBILITY
- This is possibly the most neglected part of playing
- We have to be able to negotiate up and down without using our tongue in the same position
SCALES
- Use a drone to support development of listening to your notes
- Articulation - all scales from memory
- Start slowly - hear all the notes, even bite notes out and build up speed eventually you will get them out faster.
RANGE EXTENSION
- To play high notes you have to play low notes.
- Stay in a quiet dynamic
- Feel comfortable up then go to 'out of range' and go back down
- Build register semitone per month
WORK (rough practice order David follows when practicing)
- Try not to do the same music every day
- Try not to hurry
- Push yourself
- Do some band some solo
- Do some crazy - try something else - have fun i.e. play music written for another instrument
- Warm down - low notes - remember your lips are muscles (athletes warm down their muscles so should we)
NERVES
- They're a fact of life - it is up to us how we cope with them
- We can use the adrenaline to have some fun
- If we know we get nervous we have to start our routines earlier and work through them. The more prepared we are the better we will play.
- If we have practiced our tunes and know them really well we have no 'need' to be nervous, that's not to say we won't be nervous, but we have done all we can to be prepared.
- Do breathing activities and these will assist in getting oxygen to your body and help eliminate nerves
WRITE A DIARY
- Write a diary of your practices then you know what you have worked on
- When you have a diary you will be able to see how much improvement you have made over a period of time.
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| David gave a demonstration of his playing |
Some strategies he got us to do included: Breathing exercises, buzzing exercises, singing exercises and playing. If in doubt about the piece you are playing, sing it... as you sing it... so shall you play!
Many thanks again to David Bremner for sharing your wonderful expertise... Also, thank you to Richard Lummus for sharing your photography skills and allowing us to use your photographs for our blog.
