TromboneTrombone · the listening room

the listening room

The horn that slides

Before you learn to play it, learn to hear it. This room is about the one thing the trombone does that nothing else can — bend smoothly from one note to another — plus the players who found what it was for, and six hundred years of an instrument that has barely had to change.

where you've heard it

The only brass instrument that can bend.

Every other horn in the orchestra has valves, and valves move you from one note to the next in jumps — like walking up a staircase. The trombone has a slide. The tube itself gets longer in your hand, so the pitch can travel smoothly between two notes instead of stepping. It is a ramp, not a staircase.

That is why it sounds so much like a voice: warm, vocal, and powerful. It is the sound of the big-band section, of ska, of the New Orleans brass band. And it has an enormous range of manners — the same instrument can whisper a hymn or roar over an entire orchestra.

the players who shaped it

  1. iJ.J. JohnsonShowed the slide trombone could play fast bebop lines with the agility of a trumpet.
  2. iiGlenn MillerBandleader and trombonist of the swing era.
  3. iiiBeethovenTrombones were used in opera and church music long before Beethoven brought them into the symphony in the finale of his Fifth Symphony (1808).
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What to listen for

One gesture tells you a trombone is in the room: the glissando. The smooth slide between two notes that no piano and no guitar can make. Press both buttons below and listen to the difference — same two notes, two completely different journeys.

the glissando — hear it, then hear what it isn't

174.61 Hz → 123.47 Hz
FBthe slide — every pitch in betweena jump — nothing in betweentime →

the slide, travelling

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Position 1 is the slide pulled in; position 7 is the player's arm at full stretch. The glide is that whole journey — and the ear hears every pitch on the way.

Here is the trick your ear just played on you. Both buttons start on the same note and end on the same note. The second one leaves a hole in the middle — a jump. The first one fills the hole in, and suddenly it isn't two notes at all, it's one long sound that moves. That is the trombone's signature, and it is the reason a cartoon disappointment, a ska horn line and a New Orleans parade all reach for the same instrument.

where it came from

It began as the sackbut in the 15th century — the same slide principle, with a smaller bell. That makes the trombone one of the oldest instruments still played in essentially its original form. Pick one up today and you are holding a design that has needed almost no improving for six hundred years: a tube, a bell, and a hand that makes the tube longer.

and if you want to make that sound yourself

You have heard what the slide can do. The next step is putting your own arm behind it.

▸ Start the beginner course →∑ Why the slide works — the maths →