- In this video, I will learn the trombone in 30 days,
or at least I'm going to try.
Whoa
I'm reading sheet music over here
It's only giving me chromatics scale.
This is nonsense.
(Trombone noises)
(Upbeat Rock Music)
- I'm sort of giving myself the task of learning
the trombone in 30 days.
My ultimate goal is to learn every instrument
that would be in a high school band.
There's something about playing an instrument
that is really really challenging.
It's very expressive, and I have always wanted to play
the trombone.
Trombone is the coolest brass.
It's so dope.
There's like cool,
like swing bands.
You get to go mwahhh
And it's the only brass that I can't just pick up and play
all brass valves, they're like the same.
There's three buttons,
you push the buttons in the same combination,
for the most part, you get the same results.
But trombone, it's got no valves.
I have no idea how to play that thing.
So I am going to get myself a trombone,
find myself somebody to teach me how to play.
Hopefully at the end of it,
I will be able to play a standard classical piece that a
high schooler who plays trombone
might play at a real recital.
And I'm going to do it at a recital here.
- My name is Christopher Bill.
I've been making trombone videos on YouTube
for about a decade now.
Lots of loops, playing popular tunes
and like kind of like, chamber music versions of pop tunes,
and making them kind of funkier and cool.
- He does what I think I would have done
if I had kept playing French horn.
I tell him I need to, I wanna do this,
I'd like you to teach me, and he's like, great.
And I'm like, hey, I found this trombone on Amazon,
I'm thinking of buying it,
he's like,
I have a better trombone,
that is the exact same trombone
that I play right now,
it's just an older one.
He offers to send me this trombone-
Guys it's here,
the trombone is here.
It came, finally,
it's in this box.
I'm going to unbox it.
We're going to pull it out,
we're going to put it together.
And we're going to take our first stab at playing with no
idea of the positions of the slides,
but just (laughs) put it together,
we're just gonna guess and see how it is with no training.
So we can see our starting place.
This is exciting.
This is day one of the learning process.
Alfred's here too.
He is equally excited.
He is going to play the trombone as well.
Look at fuckin' thing
look at it
Whoa
This is, this is everything I think you want to do,
and look at this,
this is a thumbnail right there...wow!
Let's take a stab at a note.
(Trombone Plays)
Pretty good? Pretty good I guess.
(Trombone Noises)
Maybe we should have a call
with the guy I got this horn from.
Mr. Classical trombone himself.
- So there are seven positions.
- Yes
- What are they?
(laughs)
- There are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and seven.
- Okay. Okay.
- We were really inventive with the naming
of the positions.
So first position all the way in.
If you're, if you're,
you have a tuning side up here,
if that's in tune with the first position, you're there.
Everything else, we have all of the leeway in the world
to change and go like a little bit higher
than second position, or a little bit lower.
So you want to just make sure your first position
is in tune.
- Are there like, slide position charts for scales?
- [Christopher] Absolutely, yep.
- Where can I find those?
- I just typed in trombone slide position chart,
and there's a whole bunch of them.
I have a whole bunch of courses.
I have, we have range building,
which takes you from literally your first note to beyond
where I am.
I have music theory courses,
and for you,
I would just look at the fingering to
slide position chart.
- Mhmm
(Gentle Music Plays)
Through a couple of YouTube videos,
I have found that how I'm going to hold it is you
take your hand like this.
I'm going to put the trigger under my thumb,
I'm going to put my finger on this little mouthpiece
and then just tuck these three in here,
'cause this one's the one that moves, right?
So it can't hold that one, so,
we get that, and then, we play.
(Trombone Sounds)
It's really awkward to hold,
and what I learned on the first day was
my hand felt terrible after 10 minutes.
- I wanna show you something
- It felt awful.
- This is just what my hand looks like.
- Oh God
(laughing)
- Don't make that face
(Cheery Music)
- [Keith] Now I know how to play brass instruments.
So I already know how to buzz, but if I didn't,
you basically put your lips against this and you go
(Blowing Noise)
so it's kind of like when you're making a horse sound like
(Puttering Noise)
but much tighter.
(Puttering Noise)
So basically you just sort of put your lips
kind of tight together and try to force air through
a tight little opening between your lips,
and I, the more I talk, the more it sounds like
I'm starting to be sexual with what I'm saying.
I'm really trying not to,
but anyway,
you put this up against your mouth and you blow
a real sweet- oh boy.
(Trombone Noise)
(Music Beats)
(Trombone Sounds)
- [Christopher] Its uh, about like
not puffing out your cheeks and keeping control
and actually lowering the corners of your lips
as you go down.
- Like you're sad.
(Trombone Plays Descending Notes)
- [Christopher] Yeah, that a-
exactly, exactly, try that, try that.
make that face while you-
(Trombone Plays)
- Don't forget the face.
- Wow! Look at that. We did it.
All we had to do is be sad.
Had a great lesson with Chris, you know,
we went through a lot of things: slide positions,
I've learned a few more things.
We tried playing together.
I looked at some of his online courses and they were
really helpful, but for me, honestly,
I want to go back and learn the way I first learned
a brass instrument.
And that is with "Essential Elements For Band."
It is the best book for learning.
It literally starts at the beginning,
tells you this is a staff.
This is a note. Here's how you play it.
Okay, so we went to the music store.
It was a very tiny store run by some very quiet people.
So I did not film.
It felt like they were not going to like that.
In fact, I had a knock on the door
and they came and let me in.
That's the kind of store this was,
but I did buy my slide grease.
I bought myself a
jazz and blues solo book.
That's fun.
A little Queen book, so I can play Queen songs.
And then a classic:
"Essential Elements For Band."
Let's head home!
Essential elements, baby.
It has all your favorites; "Hot cross buns",
(Trombone Plays)
"Go Tell Aunt Rhodie"
(Trombone Plays)
We're fuckin' crushing it over here.
"Lightly Row"
(Trombone Plays)
That's a stupid song.
We got "When the Saints"
(Trombone Sounds) I need a tuner.
Okay. So after playing with the tuner,
I realized that I was just playing everything sharp.
So we're going to play "Camptown Races"
Also the tuner is trying to tune my voice right now.
♪ keep your voices, all over the place ♪
(Plays "Camptown Races")
(Celebratory Music)
Fuck it! Right? Doh! We're getting there.
How 'bout "Michael Row the Boat Ashore"
which I always thought was "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore"
but I guess he doesn't own the boat anymore.
(Plays "Michael Row the Boat Ashore")
- I asked Chris to give me a piece to work toward
for the recital,
and he gives me this classic piece.
He says every high schooler plays this piece.
I bought a music stand, no more of this
trying to prop my music up on my computer.
Now I can play real stuff.
Oh God, it's all falling.
I got my sheet music for the Concertino right here.
I just gave it a listen for the first time.
And it sounds hard.
And I,
but I like, looked at the music and it's not so high in
range, at least where it starts.
Uh, so we'll see.
(Trombone Plays)
So that's where I am.
(Trombone Sounds)
You can hear that I'm not very good
at the high range.
That's why I'm working on it today.
So I'm just trying to play long tones
in the higher range.
(Trombone Sounds)
I've known this,
but I haven't really addressed it,
That there's a high B flat in this, and I just,
I can't play a high B flat. I mean,
I was trying and I was just trying to, and I feel like I.
I dunno, pushed my lips too hard and,
I think I just overexerted my lips, cause now they hurt.
I fucked up my lips.
(Emotional Music)
It's really hard. Hard to learn instruments.
So maybe, uh, becoming a high schooler,
uh, in a month is ambitious.
I feel like I'm a land middle-schooler.
I have roughly a week and a half to put something together
for this recital. I reached out to Chris and I'm like,
I can't do this piece.
- You're not thinking about how much you've been playing or
what you've been doing or just how fatigued you are on that
day, regardless of whether you've played or not.
It's like, if it's not happening, it might not be happening.
And can't use too much pressure or else
yeah, you'll hurt yourself.
- I asked for something a little bit more doable because my
poor lips they're doing their best.
So it gives me some other options.
This "Serenade Through the Flowers"
- [Speaker Off-Camera] "Serenade Through the Leaves?"
- Through the Leaves, thank you so much.
He gives me this piece,
"Serenade Through the Leaves"
(Trumpet Plays)
Not terrible, but not good.
I'm playing this next Thursday
for my office
in a recital.
- You are?
- Yeah.
- That's so soon. I didn't know that.
- Yeah, so,
this is crunch week. This is the week.
This is the week that I have to make the most improvements.
(Plays Excerpt of "Serenade Through the Leaves")
- That's was pretty good!
- [Keith] It was okay.
- That's a great starting place.
- Its a good start for
day two of playing the piece at all.
My band director once said to me,
it's better to play something that's not as difficult
very, very well, than it is
to play something that's really difficult,
not well, right?
It's a recital. It's a, you know,
it's a time to show how much you've learned.
Not how much you still need to go in learning.
I don't think I worded that right,
but you get what I'm saying, right?
(Dramatic Piano Music)
- Recitals. They're a big deal,
and he's taught himself this instrument 30 days I think,
so I am excited to see what he brings
to the table today.
- What I'm expecting here is
kind of a soothing classical concert.
And if it's anything less than that,
I want my money back.
- I really feel for Keith right now.
He's probably pretty nervous.
We can hear him practicing every once in a while while we're
waiting, uh and yeah, that's
- I'm kind of nervous.
- Why I asked Hughie to be my accompanist today.
And he doesn't actually play a ton of classical piano.
- Keith hit me up uh, not too long ago,
and was like,
can you do this? And I was like, no.
And then I was like, wait, I'm a piano player.
And all that I need to do is practice.
- I will make mistakes.
- [Hughie] I personally just hope that
Keith makes more mistakes than I do.
- [Keith] Yeah.
I mean, I'm hoping the other way around.
(Laughing)
(Applause)
Thank you very much. Thanks for coming out today.
Today I'll be playing a piece by Schubert
called "Serenade Through the Leaves."
Here's my accompanist, Hughie Stone Fish,
and I am Keith Habersberger.
I hope you enjoy it.
("Serenade Through the Leaves" Plays)
- I was 95% turns sure this was a prank.
Turns out it was just a beautiful
trombone recital, and I was very impressed
with what Keith did.
- He has my respect at the beginning
for just even getting up here,
and now it's like tenfold
because you did it successfully.
("Serenade" Continues)
(Applause)
(Cheering)
- Wow, thank you. Thank you.
Wow. We did it.
I'm very happy with how that went.
Got a standing ovation.
It wasn't obligatory because I'm the boss? Perhaps.
- He emptied his spit thing in front of us and now was a
little gross. But other than that, it was beautiful music.
And I think Keith really did a good job.
- Well done Keith. That was incredible.
(Claps)
I am a proud Papa right now.
You know, they grow up so fast,
but you like watching them along the way.
- I don't know why he couldn't just play baseball
like his old man, but
I'm proud of the guy.
- I encourage all like the,
elementary school kids, middle schoolers, high school kids,
college kids watching this to like try to instrument.
You might be surprised.
Maybe you've always thought the saxophones are cool,
but you can never learn it.
It's learnable.
I'd like to thank my private instructor,
Chris, who is amazing.
I'd like to thank Hughie Stone Fish
for learning this piece in only a week.
And I hope this inspires you to, to, you know,
pick up an instrument, try something new.
And, took me a lot of practice to be able to do that,
even that well, and hopefully
I'll give myself some more assignments and
keep getting better.
(Upbeat Rock Music)
- I was hoping for a Ska sort of
upbeat show and I didn't get
that.