hhjelle
You would actually be surprised at how much I've been told by instructors not to listen to myself when I sing. I have always been impressed by trombonists. How do you know where to stop when you're sliding the bar out and back? Forgive me, I'm sure it's not called a bar.
Huh. That's... backwards. My teacher kept getting frustrated with me for practicing with headphones, because you can't hear yourself properly.
Close! It's just a slide, and the bar across the middle where you hold it doesn't really have a name. There are 7 positions, and you learn them based on approximate visual cues. It's a bit difficult, since you're looking down the slide and depth perception gets fuzzier the farther out you go, but you also feel it in your arm. (At least, that's how I was teaching kids the difference between fifth and sixth positions, since those are way past the bell, and they were getting it with consistent success.)
Then you fine tune with your ear, not your embouchure -- that makes your face tired really fast, and it's hard to maintain constant tone.
For me, it came down to the feel in my elbow, after learning the general visual cues. It helps if you know the harmonic series, as well, since each position can reach several notes, based on embouchure and airspeed.
The neatest trick I learned? How to keep yourself from mashing the bloody thing into your face every time you're racing from a position back to closed (or first position). You just bend one of your left fingers a tiny bit so your right thumb contacts it before the slide hits the end of the line, and it's your very own suspension rig! That, and the instrument isn't built to be in-tune when the slide of all the way in, but that wasn't something I learned until my class, last term.
200
200
200
