Trombone position chart trombone player full#

The fingering system for all saxes is also the same. The brass instruments you really have to know the capability of your players to give you your upper (and sometimes lower) ranges.Įvery saxophone has the same written range. If you’re working with half-way decent players, you can think of the range of the sax and rhythm section instruments a bit like the piano (to an extent) in that all the notes are laid out before you, you as the arranger just have to make sure they’re the right notes.

Trombone position chart trombone player full#

It’s worth noting that the full range of the sax is easily accessed by even intermediate players (tuning it is another matter!), whereas brass instruments like trumpet and trombone take years to develop even a passable upper (and lower) register. Assuming you’re working with good players or professionals, I’ve tried to create range charts that don’t require that pinch of salt. If you’re anything like me, I take ranges in books with a pinch of salt and then have to figure out what we can really use on the job. So you stop writing the top G and then another player on a gig plays your regular G up the octave and says ‘why didn’t you write that up the octave?’. So you write a top G and some player tells you that’s too high. We hear crazy high trumpets screaming in big band charts all the time for instance, so then you go and check a trumpet range in a book and then you see a top C. Range charts also seem to contradict what we hear.

Does anyone actually see an oboe range in a textbook and then think ‘I need a buttery oboe sound here’ and proceed to only use the lower register? I prefer practical words like ‘difficult’ or ‘controllable’ to know how my writing will affect the player. I also enjoy the kind of pompous adjectives that get attributed to various parts of instrumental ranges like a sonic wine tasting. A low Bb on a sax versus it’s top F# is completely different in terms of intonation, dynamic, control and black and white dots on a stave don’t reflect this very accurately. At worst they don’t seem to represent reality, or at best imply that each note feels exactly the same as every other note, like a piano. If you’re anything like me, instrument range charts kind of frustrate me.