Brass Performance and Pedagogy

Book excerpt: This complete book presents an approach to playing and teaching brass instruments that is based on the fundamental skills of good listening and good respiratory practices. It emphasizes the importance of developing these and other traditional skills--such as embouchure development, articulation, tone quality, range and stamina--through musical ideas rather than isolating on individual muscular behavior. Careful attention is paid to the natural way in which learning takes place in other skills and shows how such processes may be applied to learning to play a brass instrument. Chapter topics cover the art of teaching, listening, developing a concept of sound, posture, breathing, mouthpiece playing, the warm-up, slurring, intonation, endurance, taking auditions, playing high pitched instruments, performance anxiety, and professional ethics. For teachers who deal with brass students at all stages of development.