Just for fun after I finished my finals, I put together a quick little recording with my Trombone. I found music to simple old instrumental piece by Björk called Glóra, and it sounded cool, so I went and pretty much sight-read the music with Garage Band running, mixed it, and put it up on YouTube. The little mic in my MacBook is crap for high-pressure sounds like brass instruments, so I'm hoping to get access to some decent equipment and record it again and also some other stuff. There are some timing issues in the recording, and a couple out-of-tune notes (I only hear the flaws when I record), but I'm happy with the result until I make a better quality recording. Anyway... enjoy. Or don't. That's fine, too.

You broke it.

I think it would sound better with higher audio fidelity; I think the microphone plays hell with the trombone notes.

Oh, and great instrument, I played it for 7 years. You a music major?

Definitely right, skelbley; I was just having fun with my MacBook and figured what the Hell, I'll publish it. Later I want to make some better recordings with some real equipment. Plus, I was pretty much sight-reading that piece, and for all but the melody that was the first take.

No, not a music major, a geology major who plays music as a hobby. I've played since fifth grade, but there were about six years or so after high school that I didn't play at all. I picked it back up about a year and a half ago, and don't intend ever to quit it again.

Very cool. You in any bands at your university, or just more of a personal thing? Haven't touched mine since high school. Really ought to dust it off :-p

You really should! I'm extra glad I did. Now that I've got my chops back, it's great. And yes, I'm doing bands and lessons at the university, as well as personally. I've got some ideas floating around my head of making brass arrangements of Björk, Pink Floyd, The Cranberries, and others. It'll be a long-term hobby. I did "What's This?" from Nightmare Before Christmas at the Geology Department Christmas Party last year, and it was great, but the recording is even crappier than this Björk song. One of these days....

Hmm... a brass arrangement of Pink Floyd would be pretty interesting to hear. You should definitely post it if you do one, I'd be curious to listen to it.

It will certainly be awhile... I went and bought some Pink Floyd books, and I have good ideas in my head, but while I've wanted to do a Björk tribute for quite some time now, I've been inspired by her Voltaic tour, for which she has brass involved in everything, and it is awesome. I may well start there! I'm thinking Hyperballad.

truthfully prof chaos it was a good attempt your pitch was a little off which led to some out of tune chords but the phrasing was done well. Also the attack on some of your notes was a little much but other then that it was enjoyable.

Well, I know we can't judge your tone based on a recording done with a built-in laptop mic, so that isn't what I was commenting on.

The timing was horrible. Do they not teach kids to count music independent of a drumline these days?

And while I'll concede that Glora would be a difficult harmony to play in-tune on a trombone, that doesn't mean you should abandon any attempt at it. When the music uses semitone harmonies, it is especially important to keep each note precisely in tune.

EDIT: I hate to be brutally honest, but if you didn't want brutal honesty you would be asking your IRL friends, not us.

Yes, ladron. Yeah, especially halfway through, the melody gets away from the harmony quite a bit... I took some artistic liberties with the tempo when recording the melody, then paid special attention to rhythm with the off-beat harmony, so while the second, third and fourth parts are pretty well timed they don't always match the first part. Most of the tuning is... okay... the high note is a bit flat. I thought about re-recording it, but decided it was good enough until I get access to a decent mic.

As for the attack, peytros, are you talking about the slightly sinister off-beat harmony notes? Maybe... the original flute version (which is in a slightly different key) doesn't sound nearly so sinister, that's a side-effect of using brass instead. I kind of played off that... I can see what you mean, but I'm not certain I agree or not. Some experimentation is worthwhile. I do want to get a cleaner drop down from the second note to the third in the melody, too; I'll have to practice it just a bit before I do something more than a practice demo.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the beep halfway through... Someone had left their stuff in the room I was practicing in, and I guess they got a text message or something.

Thanks for the comments!

[EDIT]: ladron, as far as a harmony being difficult to play on Trombone, there really is no such thing. The out-of-tune chords in this quick and dirty recording are all my fault, not a limitation in the instrument. In fact, as my instructor is so fond of telling us Trombone students, of all the wind instruments, we have the least excuse to be out of tune, since we essentially are holding a giant tuning slide in our hand. It's more difficult on euphonium (which I started playing this past semester), since you have to lip up or down certain notes unless you have one of those fancy tuning slide levers. As any trumpet player will tell you, playing a low C with the first and third valves is always out of tune; on a four-valve euphonium you can just use the fourth valve instead and it's fine. A weakness in modern music education is that elementary school music teachers usually don't know much about the Trombone unless it happens to be their native instrument, and so kids grow up learning very rigidly "Eb is in third position, D is in fourth...", and by college this bad habit is very firmly in place and it is difficult to re-teach Trombone players that Eb is where Eb is. "2nd position" for a high G is quite different than "2nd position" for the E below it. A few inches different. Anyway... that's a lot of gibberish if you don't play Trombone....

I don't play trombone, but it isn't gibberish. I've been in a number of bands through the years, so I've had a good deal of exposure to brass instruments, even though I play percussion.

While the trombone has the ability to play any note in perfect tune, in practice that rarely happens for certain notes. I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you were hitting a few of those.

after listening to the original flute version I understand what you where trying to achieve but I still think the attack was a bit much on the harmony. Although you where using a lap top mic to record. If you where to record it again I would recommend starting each not very soft and adding a slight cresendo to it insted of biting the note really hard at the beggining.

Peytros, that would be an interesting effect. I will definitely play around with it... the trick right now is that it's Christmas break, so while I have all the time in the world this week to do this sort of thing, no one's around to give me access to decent equipment, which sucks.

Ladron, that's exactly what I mean. It's the way most Trombone players (including myself) were taught that is responsible for this. Instead of listening on every note and tuning accordingly, most just say "G! 2nd position! I am in tune!" and that's that. My instructor pretty much never moves his tuning slide ever, even for recording gigs. He's just so practiced at which partials are sharp, which are flat, hearing which tone he is in a chord and knowing if it's one that tends sharp or flat, and adjusting on the fly according to those factors and how those around him are playing. I'm nowhere near that skill level, but with some practice on the piece the notes would be more in tune.

I've nearly finished preparing Jóga as a Trombone quartet plus voice, but I don't like how I sound singing... it's a much more difficult piece, but hopefully this coming semester I will get it polished and a decent recording made. Maybe I can even convince one of my friends to sing it... though most of them can't stand Björk.

I'll do the vocals for ye!

Haha! Well.... you're welcome to try.... if I get a satisfactory recording I'll send you the Garage Band file and you can do what you want, I'm at least curious to see what I'd get back!

Garage band? You'll have to use a proper program, or just send me the raw audio files. But yes, I'll give it a shot. My interpretation of those vocals would be significantly different than bjork's, though.