Play along trombone duets part 2

Confession time: I haven’t played a horn in over a year. From August 2020 to November 2021, my trombones sat in their cases while my wife and I went about our lives watching our child grow from an infant to a toddler through the pandemic. The “long story short” version is that I simply didn’t have the time or need to keep up practice. No gigs, no teaching, and no outside childcare for a full year. It was just us, really.

When I finally started practicing again, it was in short bursts and fits from November 2021 through early 2022. Things were still unpredictable and when your childcare isn’t reliable, nothing else will take root.

As I finally began to have more time to play again, I thought it would be a good idea to add another addition of these play along duets to my YouTube channel as an educational resource for students, as well as for me to have a project. Practicing alone in a room to get your chops back is a rather boring and arduous undertaking, so the act of recording helped me improve faster and face all the frustrating little details that I was willing to overlook before.

Here are “Eighteen Duets ” from various composers as featured in Selected Duets for Trombone or Baritone, Volume 1. Once again, I’ve recorded each duet back-to-back with panned L/R audio so that you can play along with the accompanying part using only one earbud or audio channel.

I encourage all musicians to start playing duets (sight-reading as much as possible) whenever they can. It will help your overall musicianship so much! This is why I used to always finish my private lesson sessions with a selection from this book. I hope you can do the same with these.