: Clinician,
International Trombone Soloist, Teacher, Orchestral/Chamber Musician, Adjudicator
Faculty: Boston University, Gordon College, Wenham, MA
Clinician Artist: Michael Rath Trombones, Honley, England at the
10:30 A.M. Friday Morning January 16, 2015
Waterside Meeting Room #5, Tampa Convention Center, Tampa, Florida
The First Note
Production or Emission: 3 Things:
1.
Hear the Tempo in Your Head Long Enough to be Even
2.
Have a Breathing Plan:
Exhale Old Air for How Many Beats/Inhale Fresh Breathe for How Manny Beats
Write it in the Music
3. Hear the Note in Your Head Before You Start.
The Timing of our breath support and set corners: A Grace Note Before
Brhythm! (c): Breathing-in-rhythm!
FIRST on Time and Comfortable,
THEN take in more air without sacrificing “On Time” and “Comfortable” Breathing
Exercises with Metronome: first without the instrument and then with the instrument.
*Brhythm Breathing Exercise, learning to inhale over 1 beat, ½ beat, 1/3 beat, ¼ a beat without sacrificing comfort ability and being on time.
The breath is on time, if the note after the breath is on time.
Breathing Exercises: Don’t inhale through the Aperture. Inhale through the corners and exhale through the Aperture.
Beginning Trombones.500 and .508 small bores trombones are BETTER for young students.
Let them stay on these instruments for 3 years.
Unless the student has a really wide mouth, start them on smaller mouthpieces. Let them develop staying on them for 3 years, unless they become a lot wider. Let them develop,

THEN “they can always go bigger”. Many Trombonists never “woke up the center” of a smaller aperture by starting too big or too fast to to bigger and bigger mouthpieces.
Intonation Tendencies
Steady Air: 4 Airflow Exercises
Corners Set
Temperature: Cold/Flat and Hot/Sharp
Learning both the Harmonic Series AND the anomalies of our particular brand of trombone we play.
The Use of the Tuner
Low Range Play Long Notes Slowly in Octaves in the same position without moving the slide, starting from middle Bb to low Bb, then down chromatically.
Tenor Trombonists Should tune their Trigger to C…not F.
In the future they will need that low Trigger C in bbbb7th position
Debunking Ideas about Fast Air
Yes Fast Air is a Result and should not be a cause:
The Garden Hose Analogy: One aspect left out.
Turning up the volume of the Inner Metronome
Playing the Subdivision with a Legato Tongue has 9 Benefits:
1. Hearing the Subdivisions in our head louder
Makes the subdivisions 2. more even in our head.
Improves the timings of 3. The Slide, 4. The Valve, 5. Of Lip Slurs.
6. Develops a much more even rate of accelerandi and ritardandi
7. Helps to “thread” the musical direction of line.
8. Teaches us Rhythms particularly in crazy combinations of tied notes.
9. Teaches us exactly where that breath is rhythmically: “the e of 4”.
Leave space for the breath.
Taming the Slide
On time at the right place at the right time, where the notes are written
Slide Grip: One Consistent Slide Grip Positions 1-6. NOT “Heinz 57 Varieties”
Outward push with the Thumb
The wrist is a shock absorber not a hinge.
2 Main Problems of Slide Movements: Leaving Early/Arriving Late and continuous slide
Developing Technique and Clarity:
“Mr. Spock’s School of Rhythmic Development and Slide Cleanliness”
Build-a-Note

Play into a Note and Hold it
Slurring/Legato
Definitions or How we use these Terms?
Natural Slurs=Slurs over the Partials
Slurs on the Same Partial
Are the Corners Really Set?
“Mouthpiece Pull Aways and Returns”
An Efficient Aperture
Usually Achieved as a byproduct of “Mouthpiece Pull-Aways and Returns”
Daily Personal Practice of Airstarts is such a Great Thing!
Hah…not Pah
The Tongue Coming Up Early in the Mouth
It Should Stay Down:
At the End of the Inhalation: Causing
At the end of a longer Note: Tongue Cutoff
At the end of a short note: “Tut” Disease.
We need “Tut” in Jazz and Contemporary Music, but we need to control it in “Classical” music Styles.
Neck Angle
Come from the Opposite Direction
The Music Stand in Relation to Tall Players
“Dancing Jaw” When Articulating
Place the student’s index finger on chin and play articulating notes in 1 st position
Daily Systematic Practice of Chromatic Expanding Intervals: BOTH DIRECTIONS
Go 2 beyond what you need.
Only After Consistent Steady Air is Achieved: Practice Vibrato
You Develop Vibrato Ears: How Wide or Narrow & How Fast or Slow
V=> 1 beat
A Double Buzz is When the Lips are Vibrating at 2 different frequencies in 2 different Places

This is usually caused by a player who all of a sudden is trying to play a lot louder than they had previously than before:
Case in Point: If a student actually learns to use the abdominals and consistently improve the “Flow” of their air, and they never did it before. The lips here are “arguing” when they don’t know how to adjust suddenly to this much airflow.
*Start at a real comfortable volume and SLOWLY get louder coming to the place right before it starts to “Double Buzz” (The Frontier).
*If this is not possible, then slowly gliss into the trouble area and back from the good buzzes below and above.
A word about slow glisses: Great, Just Great! On The Trombone and On the
Mouthpiece
1.
Steady Airflow and 2. The Sound evens out.
So much is improved in every way by practicing slow controlled transitions:
Glisses, Glissy Mouthpiece Buzzing, Scales, Lip Slurs, Intervals, Teeth Brushing 
We CAN Open Our Throat During Inhalations:
Words: “Yawn” and “Suddenly Astonished”
Denis Wick Practice Mute exercise: Long Low Loud (enough to Growl) successive inhalations.
Get a Slide Rod with Muslin Cloth, from fabric store or fabric department
(about 7” wide by 1.5 yards long. ). The Rod can be ordered from Dillon
Music, Woodbridge, NJ.
Swab out the inside of the outer slide at the end of the day, leaving it dry. The next day re-lubricate your slide. Cleans out corrosion and stops or slows down corrosion buildup.
Questions???????
Don Lucas, international trombone soloist, orchestral/chamber musician and teacher, originally from Falls Church, Virginia, U.S.A. was educated as a Fulbright Scholar to London’s Guildhall
School of Music (“Premiere Prix” and Advanced Solo Studies Diplomas), Texas Tech University
(M.M. & B.M.), North Texas State University, The University of Houston (DMA work) and The
Berklee College of Music, MA. Principal teachers include; Denis Wick, Robert Deahl, Al Lube,
Carsten Svanberg, Phil Wilson, Michel Becquet, Allen Barnhill, John Marcellus, Phil Wilson, Leon
Brown and Dave Maser. Major Musical influences also include Robert Boudreau and Joe Alessi.
Mr. Lucas has performed regularly with The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Santa Fe Pro Musica
Chamber Orchestra, the American Classic Trombone Quartet (founder) and also with The Empire
Brass, Minnesota Orchestra, Rhode Island Philharmonic, North Carolina Symphony, New Mexico
Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, New England Brass Band & others.

Internationally, Mr. Lucas has appeared frequently as a recitalist, adjudicator and teacher in engagements in the United Kingdom, Russia, Korea and China including: Wigmore Hall (London),
The British Trombone Society Festival, The Repton Brass Festival, The Royal Northern College of
Music and Cheathams School of Music (Manchester), The Royal Academy of Music (London), The
Guildhall School of Music (London), Trinity-Laban Conservatory of Music (London), The Royal
Welsh Academy of Music (Cardiff), The Royal Scottish Academy of Music (Glasgow). The
Tchaikovsky Conservatory (Moscow), The Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory (St. Petersburg), The
Fine Arts Institute (Vladivostok), the JeJu International Music Festival, Korea Trombone Festival,
Yonsei University, Seoul & Four South Korean Summer Trombone Festivals, Central Music
Conservatory, Beijing, Shenyang Conservatory, Xinghai Conservatory, Guangzhou and the Hong
Kong Academy of the Arts.
Other international engagements include: Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest, Hungary, Two
Brazilian Trombone Association National Festivals (Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia), University of Rio
International Trombone Festival, the Conservatoire Superieur de Music a Rayonnement (Paris,
France), Trombones de Costa Rica International Brass Festival (San Jose), Melos Brass Festival,
(Corfu, Greece), nine I.T.A. International Trombone Festivals (Paris/France, Feldkirch/Austria,
Aarhus/Denmark & USA) & The International Trombone Symposium (Melbourne, Australia).
International Adjudications include: Moscow Conservatory International Solo Competition for
Trombone, Two Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory International Solo Competition for Trombone and Trumpet, Je-Ju Festival International Solo Trombone Competition, Je-Ju Island, Korea, UK
National Solo Trombone Festival, Repton, England, UK and many ITA International Trombone
Festival International Solo and Quartet Competitions.
In the United States, Mr. Lucas has appeared frequently as a soloist, recitalist, adjudicator & clinician. Past engagements include: Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie, Terrace Theatre at the Kennedy
Center, The Julliard School, The Eastman School of Music, Rice University, The U.S. Army Band and Orchestra "Pershings Own”, The U.S. Naval Academy Band, The West Point U.S. Military
Academy Band, the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic, the Masterworks Festival the Eastern
Trombone Workshop (Wash. D.C.), Harmony Ridge Brass Festival (VT), 76 Trombones+4
Trombone Festival, Las Vegas, College Band Directors National Association Convention, The
Texas Music Educators Association Convention, Las Vegas Music Festival, Texas Bandmasters
Association Convention, Interlochen Arts Academy, Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute, the
New York Conference for Brass Scholarships as well as over a hundred appearances at U.S, festivals, conservatories, universities, schools & camps.
Mr. Lucas' honors included the only Premeir Prix Diploma ever awarded to a brass player in the history of the Guildhall School of Music (London); Bronze Medal L’unamite & Finalist, Toulon
International Solo Competition; First Prize Winner ITA Frank Smith International Trombone Solo
Competition; 1st Prize "Fellow", Harmony Ridge Brass Festival; First Place Solo & Group
Competitions, National Christian Artists Seminar; & 1st Prize The American Classic Trombone
Quartet in the Summit Brass International Brass Chamber Group Competition and 1 st Prize in
Honors Section with New England Brass Band at the North American Brass Band Championships.
Many past students have achieved numerous successes including: winning positions with Honolulu
Symphony, HI, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Boston Baroque, BBC Philharmonia, Manchester,

England, UK, Austin Symphony, TX, Chicago Civic Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony, FL, Elgin
Symphony, IL, U.S. Army Band, “Pershings Own” U.S. Naval Academy Band, U.S. Army Field
Bands, “Tales and Scales”, “Blast” touring show, Cruise Ships as well as performed frequently with prestigious early music groups (sacbut) the St. Louis Symphony, Mo, BBC Philharmonia,
Manchester, UK, Jacksonville Symphony, FL etc. Past students are teaching in universities and schools throughout the world and the US.
Past student honors include 2 1st prizes in two ITA Emory Remington Trombone Choir
Competitions, 1st place in the ITA “Gilberto Gagliardi” International Trombone Solo
Competition, 1 st
Kong, China, 1 st
Place in the “Slider Asia” International Solo Bass Trombone Competition, Hong
place in the National Tenor Trombone and 2 1 st Place National Bass Trombone
Solo Competitions, 1 st Prize in the National Jazz Trombone Band Competition, Finalists in two
ITA International Trombone Quartet Competitions, finalist in the 2015 “Slider Asia” tenor
Trombone Competitions, finalists in two National Trombone Quartet Competitions, semi-finalists in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, Semi-finalist in NYC’s Tilden Prize as well as acceptance into international and national summer music festivals, Orford, Montreal, Canada,
Graz Contemporary Music Festival, Austria, Aspen, Tanglewood, Spoletto.
Mr. Lucas has served as the President of The International Trombone Association from 2008-2011 and previously as First Vice President from 2006-2008.
He has performed under the baton of many distinguished conductors including: Ivan Fisher,
Leonard Slatkin, John Adams, Hugh Wolf, Christopher Hogwood and Giancarlo Guerrero.
Mr. Lucas has recorded with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the American Wind
Symphony. Solo and Brass Chamber Music selections were recorded on two C.D. s for North
South Recordings & Warwick Music Publishers, U.K. and Two Solo C.D. s: Hymns for Trombone and Cantabile.
He has premiered/commissioned many compositions from composers including: Fisher Tull,
Jacques Casterede, Derek Bourgeouis, Adam Gorb, Elena Roussanova Lucas, Franz Cibulka, Alun
Hoddinott, Theodore Antoniou, Mary Jeanne Van Appledorn, Gary Belshaw, William Porras and
Daniel Schnyder.
Mr. Lucas is Trombone Professor and Chair of Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion Dept. at Boston
University, Instructor of Trombone at Gordon College in Wenham, MA and Guest Professor at
Zhengzhou University, China. Previous teaching appointments include Texas Tech University,
Lubbock, Texas, Guest Professor at Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea, Eastern New Mexico
University, Sam Houston State University & the public schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, Wake
County, North Carolina, Brenham & Southland, Texas.
Mr. Lucas is the founder of the annual Big-12 Area Universities Trombone Conference and is a
Performing Artist/Clinician for the Michael Rath Trombone Company of Honley, England, U.K.