Various Trombone Slide Grips and their Importance

Hello and welcome. Luke Malevich here again. Chicagojazztrombone.com. I wanted to take the time to talk about a topic that's been on my mind for many, many years and something that I don't really hear people talk about too often, and that's the various slide grips that trombone players use. I'm talking specifically about jazz trombone players because I do think that's very important, at least to me, kind of seeing physically how things are done. And I thought about this for, it's been a long time, maybe 10, at least 10 years, where I've kind of, you know, whenever I'm watching somebody just checking out how, you know, how they're moving the slide, how they're holding the slide, and how it kind of relates to the lines that they play. And, you know, no matter what we do, we're always going to sound like ourselves, but I think it's kind of important to, you know, to see the physical aspect because for me, you know, as much as I'm, you know, I hear the music that I want to play, a lot of it is physical as well. So, you know, for example, if I'm trying to transcribe a Carl Fontana solo or a J.J. Johnson solo, Frank Wesleyan, you know, Jack Teagarden, Slide Hampton, whoever it might be, you know, somebody once told me, well, not one person, I've heard this from several different players, which is true for me, and it's true for anybody really, as you're trying to transcribe a solo, the goal is to, you know, not only get the notes, but also to get the accents, to get the, you know, the flow, the spirit, the intensity to get it, you know, mimic it as much as possible to really get into the mindset of the player that you're transcribing, and why not, you know, use the same grip. That would make sense to me if you're, you know, again, let's say you're doing a Carl Fontana solo and you're holding your slide with a lot more tension or intensity, because, I mean, you can hold your slide with, you know, with more intensity than Carl does, and a lot of players do, but to play his lines, it makes more sense to hold it the way that he does, and I think it's kind of important to experiment, find out what works for you as a player, because everybody's going to be different. And as I kind of, as I'm looking at this sheet, too, of the various grips that I have, you know, I haven't really even transcribed a lot of these players. Like, you know, I've transcribed some Mark Nightingale, I've transcribed Carl Fontana, John Allred, but I've never transcribed Conrad or Frank. I've practiced Frank Rossellino solos, I've practiced transcriptions, but I've never transcribed by myself. And on the other hand, you know, the one that's not on here, J.J. Johnson, well, a few J.J. Johnson slide Hampton, you know, that I probably must have transcribed at least, I don't know, 15 J.J. Johnson solos, but his grip isn't one that really, you know, that I really think about that's made it into my playing for, you know, whatever the reason might be, because I've transcribed more of his solos than actually anybody else that's on here. And some of these, you know, I can just picture the player, whether it's Conrad Herrig, Andy Martin, I can picture him playing and, you know, their lines, for me, are really related to how they hold their slide. And, you know, I'll sometimes catch myself, I try to be consistent, you know, if I'm using one grip, I have switched, you know, currently I've been messing around using the kind of Jack Teagarden, Paul McKee grip. And, you know, there's things that I like about that. And I've used the Andy Martin grip. And sometimes on a performance, I'll find myself switching without noticing, you know, I'm playing, whether it's a written line, or even sometimes before a solo, my hand will just do something else. I don't know if it's my brain's thinking is like, oh, you know, the solo you're going to play is going to be kind of this style or that style. So my hand just naturally goes to, you know, whatever place that might be. And the other part about it, too, is if I find myself stuck practicing, and, you know, maybe I just want to vary something I'm doing, or try to get myself in a different space, I'll purposefully switch my grip, just to, you know, maybe try to get a little bit of a different line or, you know, seeing what else might happen, because it is very physical, just like anything else. So, you know, and this is, we're even just talking about the slide grip, we're not even talking about the left hand, how you're holding your, you know, the actual trombone, like where the, you know, where everything happens here, if there's any tension, because this, the grip here has a little bit of to do with it as well. But for me, it's, you know, it's just an interesting topic to kind of mess around with various grips. And as, you know, the short video that's going to follow, it's not really meant as a video to show that, oh, I can play like Conrad, I can do, because that's not really, because I, you know, I've never really transcribed Conrad, but I've seen him play a lot and, you know, his grip has this, you know, a sort of fluidity to it that Frank's doesn't, or, you know, John Allred's doesn't. There's, it's a little bit of different way I can, you know, I can hear the language, at least the spirit of language in each one of those. So, you know, I'm kind of curious to, you know, what you think about, you know, about the video. It's just going to be like a short demonstration of the different grips. You'll be able to see the picture on my stand. And I think as I'm looking at it down here, I switched the Frank Rossellino and the John Allred. For some reason, I was just playing through, and I think I went to John Allred first and then Frank Rossellino. But in any case, you know, I would encourage you to spend some time, you know, checking that part of it out, especially if you're transcribing a specific solo. I would take the time, you know, if it's Carl Fontana, you know, whoever it might be, J.J. Johnson, Slide Hampton, Frank Rossellino, try to hold the instrument the same way that they do. And I think that's going to go, you know, kind of the next step into being able to perform that solo as close to the way that they're doing it as you can.