Announcing “Combination Drills, Volume 1” by Bryan Davis

A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog post entitled “Combination Drills” in which I postulated collating a series of exercises to work on multiple areas of technique at once, in order to get better value from our practice time. Today, the book is out!

Both the Trumpet (i.e. treble clef) & Trombone (i.e. bass clef)  eBooks of “Combination Drills, Vol. 1” are now available from the new Airflow Music Online Store.

“Combination Drills” is a collection of Developed Scale Exercises I originally wrote to familiarize myself with Odd/Asymmetric Meters I was struggling to sightread. Volume 1 has the patterns in 5/8 and 7/8, exploring the various rhythmic divisions in those meters; e.g. 5/8 is often felt in an asymmetric 2, with ‘big’ beats of different lengths.

In addition, if practiced according to the enclosed instructions, they will work out a Combination of technical and musical skills, including:

  • Scales (fully notated Major, “Jazz” Minor, Harmonic Minor, Whole Tone and Diminished versions in all 12 keys)
  • Finger/Slide technique.
  • Slurring.
  • Tonguing – particularly developing a gentle single-tongue approach which rides the airstream throughout long phrases and across different registers.
  • Unifying the airflow approach between slurring and tonguing.
  • Connecting low and high registers.
  • Stabilizing the embouchure throughout register changes.
  • Developing breath support throughout long phrases and register changes.
  • Use of Breath Accents, both while slurring and tonguing.

They’ve been so beneficial for me and many of my students, I wanted to make them more widely available. It’s been a trip setting up a publishing company and preparing an entire book. I hope you’ll think it was a worthwhile endeavour!

Visit AirflowMusic.com to get your immediate PDF download today!

(For those who prefer printed books, those will be available via Amazon in the next week or so. Announcement post to follow!)

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