Johnny Briggs

It's a old law, or charter, or something, that if you're going to learn to play the trombone, you have to learn to play the Johnny Briggs theme tune (that being the very epitome of trombone composition over the ages, for people over a certain age) as soon as possible.

Here's my bash at it, took me a few goes to get it this far and it's probably wrong as I worked it out by ear, and I obviously didn't get around to working out the 2nd phrase before I started playing (there's my brick-headedness again).

The theme is actually taken from a piece called The Acrobat by J.A. Greenwood.

It's a fun piece to play, from the huge glissando right at the start (which is a challenge in itself - I'll sometimes drop a partial half way through the slide for added cringe-effect), the next few notes in the interleaved descending run can all be played at the same position which feels like it's good practice for getting a bit of control over my embouchure/partials, and the the middle up/down section is pretty fast and is a real stretch to tongue that quickly, ooo-er missus, and that second phrase where I don't know where I'm going has some notes that are [currently, for me at least] very high.

It's too easy to get drawn in to doing this stuff, both from the house renovation work that I should be focusing on, and from other chores like learning scales and doing my theory work etc.
Gonna need to find some discipline from somewhere (yeah, right). At least I did manage to start on my Trombone Essentials book at the weekend; grade 1 watch out - here I come...  one day.


Here's my transcription of the theme, all errors are my own (click to embiggen):