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Rochut (trombone) Book 1, #1
(one - no: not two - octave lower than it appears in the trombone book)

Very few have uploaded it to youtube.

It's terribly revealing, isn't it?

Dave Zerkel did a nice job.

As fine a player as he is, I suspect he worked on this etude considerably more than many of the others he recorded and uploaded (which feature much "trickier" passages in much "trickier" key signatures).

Nearly fifty years ago, an Emory Remington protégé (professional bass trombonist) represented it to me as the most challenging of any of the 120 in the three books.

Of course, it can be played, but to play it better than merely "good for a trombone player" or "good for a tuba player" is another matter.

I just played through it a couple of times (with my super-slippery-slurring, and easy-to-control-tuning 5/4-size C tuba.
I thought (??) I did pretty well...but - getting down to the nitty-gritty and actually RECORDING something, for others to critique - is quite another matter, is it not?

#1 is a weird one.

Every trombone (or euph/tuba) teacher I've ever studied with has skipped #1 entirely and started students with #2. #2 is much easier and more digestible musically so it makes sense, but #1 never gets returned to later. What makes it more interesting is that while every other etude in the book is the same one across all editions (Rochut/Bordogni/Raph), #1 is different. My Bordogni edition does not have the same #1. It's shorter and easier...but nobody plays that one either!

It's too difficult, to exposing, and too discouraging to (when introducing a book to them) toss in the faces of intermediate/up-and-coming students.

It's a bit reminiscent of the old "compulsory figures" which were required of contestants as preludes to figure skating competitions.

For those looking for videos...

I think one of the hardest things in any of these is to make the dotted eighth sixteenth NOT sound like some sort of triplet pattern. Or to make the grace notes into something they'l aren't.

With this one, it's
- the completely exposed connectivity (or not) of each of the pitches
- the do-or-die tuning
- the phrasing

With this one, it's not necessarily
- the time

For pieces like that, I like to work out an imaginary accompaniment to pretend I'm playing along with.

hhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh......... Rochut. I still play these after 40+ years of playing them. I've got all 3 books. It's hard to find anything that replaces them for what they are. People tend to not get that worked up about the first one, but the challenges in #1 are present in most of the rest of them as well.

The first recording is probably close to the marked tempo, but it feels slow. Especially on a tuba. At that speed, the phrasing on those ascending lines about 3/4 of the way through is really hard to pull off. The second recording plays the whole thing a lot faster (1:26 vs 2:05), but he does the phrasing different for each line, which I'd try to avoid. Playing it faster makes it so much easier, but he wastes the opportunity and phrases it wrong. The first guy takes the more difficult path and comes closer to the way I prefer to hear it. It's so hard to keep the breath from interrupting the rise and fall of the lines of 1/8th notes.

bloke wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 1:13 pm With this one, it's
- the completely exposed connectivity (or not) of each of the pitches
- the do-or-die tuning
- the phrasing

With this one, it's not necessarily
- the time

^^^THIS^^^

One is certainly taken to task with legato/connected playing and with intonation, but it is most challenging, at least for me, to phrase this so as to make real music out of it. Even singing it presents challenges to playing each phrase musically, playing the entire arc musically, being consistent throughout, and determining what you want to say with it. Then you have to do all that through the instrument.

I'm of the opinion that, if you can sing it/think it musically, you simply play it that way (singer in your brain/song & wind thing, focus purely on the song aspect), and the rest tends to work itself out with repetitions as the body responds to the mind. You essentially think it into existence. But you have to have a musical thought first. Even though it isn't technically demanding, you might have to work on different technical aspects required to play this thing and work out certain spots. Some pieces (some more than others) seem to demand that the musical concept almost solely drives the ship so that everything else falls in line, and for me, this is one of those.

Doc (noting that "music" should drive them all, but some especially so)

jtm wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 1:25 pm For pieces like that, I like to work out an imaginary accompaniment to pretend I'm playing along with.

I do the same, especially with "The Art of Phrasing" section of Arban's. Glad to see that I'm not the only one!